“Was your childhood horrific?” she asked.

“I hated the way I grew up,” he said. “I hated the instability of it, the constant worry, the embarrassment. Some of the best times were when we went back to the farm or lived in a hippy-dippy commune type community where everyone was a little wacky and we didn’t stand out so much. I worked so damn hard to leave that lifestyle behind. You can’t even imagine how hard I worked to appear normal, how driven I was to have stability and security. I worked and studied like a damn dog, achieved considerable success in the practice of law early in my career. I had the house, the car, the money in the bank, the reputation. It was like I was on a treadmill set at high speed and to get off was to die. Then, when it hit a snag, when I lost Lynne and couldn’t stop the pain, what did I do?” He laughed. “I went back to the gypsy roots of my childhood, living loose and lean, trying to find myself all over again.”

“Because you learned that true happiness isn’t material,” she said.

“Everyone knows that, right? But I was pretty damn happy in my material world, being one of the most sought-after young defense attorneys in the state. I didn’t need the lesson, Maggie—I knew money can’t buy love. Love buys love. And hard work is admirable. But loss is inescapable. It’s part of life, and one thing a bank account won’t help you do is get over it faster.” He took a breath. “I shut off the treadmill.”

“Are you happier now than you were a year ago?”

“You know I am. But there’s one thing that remains from my dissatisfaction of my childhood—I feel best when I’m useful and when I’m helping people. Although they don’t talk about it, the same seems to be true for Sedona and Dakota. We knew from early ages that our father is mentally ill and our mother is a flaming codependent and enabler. I think we might’ve overcompensated.”

“Ya think?” Maggie asked with a laugh. “A lawyer, a psychologist, a decorated war hero?”

“I really think you had to see that,” Cal said. “Now if you want to talk about the future, you can do that knowing I come from a family with some very obvious cracks in the porcelain.”

“Cal, it will never be like that with me,” she said. “I’ve seen a hundred men like Jed, delusional and afraid. Most of the time they have nowhere to go, won’t take their meds when they have them, don’t have the means to get help even if it’s available. If he didn’t have your mother, he’d probably be homeless or dead. In fact, I’m sorry to say I think your mother stands in the way of Jed getting help by protecting him and taking care of him as she is. I’m sure she’s doing the best she can with what she has to work with.”

“Well, you should know up front, I’ll always look after them, but there will always be definite boundaries. My mother has no boundaries where my father is concerned—he has her full attention. Sedona has very smart boundaries—if there’s some kind of crisis, she comes alone and never stays at the farmhouse. If they don’t appear to be in crisis, she has brought her kids to visit them a few times, but the kids are well educated on the problems their grandparents live with. Sedona brought them as a kindness to our mother.”

“Makes sense, I guess.”

“I don’t think my parents have ever been on a plane so there’s no danger of them visiting. I think.”

“You think?” she asked.

“I always brace myself for the day he goes off on a wild hare and decides it’s time to pile in that old minivan and get on the road again...”

“God help us all,” she said. “What do you do in a case like that? Call the highway patrol?”