What We Find (14 page)

* * *

Maggie’s muscles ached, and for good reason. She’d thrown herself into physical labor. She’d far rather enjoy the calisthenics of sex, but her lover had taken to the trail. He’d been gone two weeks and she was trying to accept the idea that her fling was over and she wouldn’t see him again.

Maggie ran the store, organizing, learning, stocking, ordering, even balancing the books, which was mostly accomplished by computer program, thankfully.

“Know how to make a small fortune?” Sully asked Frank. “Take a
large
fortune and put it into educating a neurosurgeon who decides to quit and sell picnic supplies.” Then, turning toward Maggie he said, “You’re going to ruin your hands in the garden and shelving. For the love of God, go home!”

“No,” she said. “Not yet. And I didn’t quit—I’m taking a break.”

She drove to Denver one day to meet with her lawyer and the plaintiff’s counsel, spent three exhausting hours in deposition and then stopped in Golden to visit her mother. That was a mini nightmare—it was one endless argument. Phoebe was outraged that her daughter would throw away all the prestige of her career to stock shelves in a little country store.

“I also garden, hike, do a little rock climbing and I’m thinking of going out on the trail for a couple of overnights.”

“Dear God, what if you run into trouble?” Phoebe asked.

“I have bear repellant and won’t hesitate to use it on any animal that threatens me.” And by that she meant human or animal. Phoebe didn’t seem to know about the predator Maggie had shot, thank God. There had only been a small story that included the names of the felons, the general location and had not named the minor child. Maggie had been described as the “local proprietor of a family-style campground.”

She drove back to Sully’s the same day. When she got to Leadville, she drove all around the town looking for Cal’s truck with its camping trailer. She didn’t see it anywhere. Clearly he’d gone. Lied to her and left her with a promise he wasn’t about to keep.

Going out on the trail overnight was just an experiment, a way to simulate what Cal was doing, how he was feeling wrapped in his solitude. He had to think, he said. About what? she wondered. When Maggie let herself think too much she saw all the carnage of the emergency room on one of the worst days of her life. A bunch of teenage boys in a terrible accident, three head injuries. One neurosurgeon. It just wasn’t worth the exercise.

Instead of camping in the wild she hauled stock, weeded, cleaned the public bathrooms and showers, raked, scrubbed Sully’s house from top to bottom and rearranged furniture.

“Damn near broke a leg in the night just trying to go to the john. You about got it out of your system yet?” Sully asked while they had their morning coffee on the porch at the store.

“What?”

“Cal, that’s what. I guess you think I’m just stupid.”

“Look, I admit I wish he hadn’t gone but it’s probably for the best. He’s just some jobless loser, living in a tent, who couldn’t tell the truth about anything even if it bit him in the ass.”

Sully leveled a stare at her. “You catch him in a lie, Maggie?”

“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t lying!”

Sully scowled at her. “I think they need you in Denver,” he finally said. “I think
I
need you in Denver.”

“I have too much invested in you to leave now,” she said.

“God help me.”

One day a letter came for Cal from the Colorado State Supreme Court. “Dad?” she said. She held it out to him. “What the hell could this mean?”

Sully took the envelope and held it for a second. “Hmm. Reckon it means he’s coming back. Unless he sends me a request to forward it.”

“I don’t see how it could mean that,” she said. “Clearly he’s on the run.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sully said. “From what?”

“Well, this isn’t a jury summons! He’s not a resident!”

“Maybe he is. You don’t know everything.”

“I don’t know anything! He’s probably wanted!”

“Indeed,” Sully said sarcastically.

“What is it, then?”

“It’s a man’s private mail and as postmaster I swore an oath and part of that oath is to keep my nosy daughter from picking through the mail. You better keep this to yourself, Maggie.”

“Don’t you agree it’s pretty suspicious?”

“I agree it’s pretty personal and none of your business.”

“Well, jeez,” she said. “Not like he’s here to question, now, is it.”

“You heard me,” Sully returned emphatically.

* * *

When Cal had been gone three weeks, Maggie wasn’t sure how long she could continue to drive him from her mind with hard work and outdoor activities like hiking. She began to slow down. But just to reassure her the universe was not yet on her side, she saw a familiar black Lincoln move slowly up the drive toward the store.

She looked skyward. “Really?” she asked God. “Like this wasn’t enough?” Then she hollered, “Dad!”

Her father came running out of the store, a hunk of his turkey sandwich still hanging out of his mouth. He stuffed it back in before he could speak. “What the hell, Maggie?”

She pointed a shaking finger at the car. “Phoebe and Walter.”

Sully chewed and swallowed. “Well, that took ’em longer than I thought it would. Brace yourself, Maggie. They’re here to do war.”

“How do you know?” she asked.

“Phoebe hasn’t been near this place since she left and took you with her thirty years ago. Hell just froze over.”

Walter parked the big car beside the store and got out. He walked toward the porch, alone. “Where’s Mother?” Maggie asked.

“I decided to come on my own. Don’t you think she must have run out of things to say by now?”

“Highly doubtful,” Maggie said.

“Hey there, Walter,” Sully said. “Want lunch?”

“That sounds great, Sully.”

“Ham or turkey?” he asked.

“Turkey. Thanks.”

Walter came up on the porch. He wore yellow golf pants with a peach collared shirt and white sweater. He was a handsome man, she’d give her mother that. Phoebe had had two husbands and both were fine-looking men. Sully was stockier and had those strong arms and shoulders; Walter was reed-thin with silver hair and a surgeon’s long, slim fingers.

“Can we sit?” Walter finally asked.

“Yes. Right. Listen,” she said while she was taking her chair. “I’m sorry about the money, Walter. All the money you invested in my education and career and—”

“Maggie, do you think I came here to talk about money? I thought maybe we could have a conversation without your mother. Doctor to doctor?”

Maggie frowned. This was rare with Walter. “Where does Mother think you are?”

“The club. Where else would I be?” Then he grinned like a naughty little boy.

Maggie could count on one hand the number of times she’d had a serious and private conversation with her stepfather, yet each one had been meaningful. It wasn’t just that Phoebe rarely gave him time to speak, though that was often the case. On top of that, Walter was hardly verbose. And he was relatively soft-spoken. They loved working with him in the operating room. While other surgeons were swearing and throwing things, Walter was saying please and thank you.

Sometimes it seemed as if Walter saved himself for those important messages while Sully spit out weighty and sarcastic wisdom all day long.

“Here you go,” Sully said, putting a tray on the porch table. There were two wrapped sandwiches, two prepared and wrapped green salads with a packet of dressing and fork enclosed, two bags of chips and two bottled teas. “I’ll leave you alone to talk...”

“Join us, Sully,” Walter said. Then he looked at their surroundings. “This is a nice place. Quiet. Comfortable.”

“It’s usually quiet during the day, except on weekends when there are more than the usual boats on the lake,” Sully said. “Most folks are exploring or hiking or rock climbing. They’ll all be back, stirring up their grills and washing off the grit of the trail. Let me get my lunch. Don’t wait for me.”

Walter immediately unwrapped his sandwich and opened his bottled tea, taking a drink. “Well, I’ll give you this—you picked a good place to unwind. What a beautiful day.”

“Walter, forgive me, but I’m overcome by the strangest feeling.” He just lifted one gray brow as he bit into his sandwich. Then Sully was with them again, sitting at the table, his half-finished lunch on a tray in front of him.

“You were saying?” Walter asked.

“I said, this is strange. I can’t decide whether to be touched, grateful or scared to death. Whatever prompted this little meeting... Are you going to lecture me about leaving my job?”

“I was under the impression it was a time-out,” Walter said. “Are you actually quitting?”

“No. I don’t know,” she said. She couldn’t eat her sandwich. “The truth is, I don’t know what to do. What if I didn’t go back to it?”

“You’d hardly be the first. A good dozen of my colleagues from medical school gave up practicing. They found it wasn’t right for them for a variety of reasons. One went into business...didn’t do so well, as I recall. But another quit to write romance novels and she’s cleaning up.” He chuckled. “Another is living on a farm, growing organic vegetables and manufacturing salad dressing. Very good stuff,” he added, taking another bite. “Sully, this is a delicious sandwich.”

“We get a delivery from a greengrocer in Timberlake every couple of days. Enid makes the sandwiches and bakes all the cookies, brownies and muffins. According to Maggie, they’re going to kill us.”

“I’ll have to have one,” Walter said.

“Okay, now you’re scaring me,” Maggie said. “Why don’t you get it over with? Rip off that old bandage, Walter. Say it. Yell at me. You poured a fortune into me and now I’m threatening to walk away to bag groceries and...”

“I’ve never once raised my voice to Maggie,” Walter told Sully.

“Course not,” Sully said. “I do whenever I please, however, so she’s not being neglected in that area.”

“We’ve only had a few serious talks in my life and as I recall, they were so mild I hardly realized until afterward that you had any idea what you were doing. There was that time when I was a freshman in college that you came all the way out here from Chicago. You said you wanted to see the campus again—you’d seen it before I enrolled. But that was a ruse. You wanted me to change my major.”

“No, not exactly,” Walter corrected. “I thought you were too young to commit to a course of study. I wanted you to check a lot of different things while you had the chance. But I didn’t insist, did I?”

“No,” she relented. “But you had a good argument. And then there was that little talk we had before I married Sergei, the artist.”

“That one didn’t go as well, regrettably,” Walter said.

“You tell her to bail out while she could?” Sully asked.

“Not exactly,” Walter said. “I did suggest they had little in common and she might want to think on it a while longer. The kid was penniless. So was Maggie for that matter. But Maggie wasn’t going to stay penniless and I highly recommended a prenup. Nothing at all wrong with a prenup when one of the couple has great potential and the other doesn’t.”

“You have a prenup, Walter?” Maggie asked.

“We did,” he said. “It was Phoebe’s idea. It became null and void after a decade of marriage. That seemed reasonable. All that aside, you managed your situation very well. Sad but predictable.”

“I wasted a perfectly good marriage on him. And then there was the time right before residency—we had a very long talk about what it was going to be like, what kind of commitment I was making, how I had to be sure my personal goals matched my professional goals, that sort of thing. I’m still not sure what that means.”

“Now’s probably as good a time as any to think about what it means.”

“Listen, Walter, did you ever have second thoughts about important stuff? Like neurosurgery? Or maybe marrying a woman with a six-year-old? Or sinking all that money into a med student?”

“I’m a human being, Maggie. I’ve had second thoughts about everything. Giving important matters serious consideration and reevaluations is vital. I even have some regrets—but not about my practice, my wife or my stepdaughter. I was lucky in those areas of my life. At least, luckier than most men. Although I have to be honest—I think I’d rather have been a pilot.”

“Seriously? I never heard you say that before! But I remember your flying lessons. Didn’t you have an airplane for a while?”

“I was part owner of a Piper, but I didn’t keep it too long. Your mother wouldn’t go up with me. Such is life—we’re all different.”

Maggie took a bite of her sandwich, feeling a little more relaxed. “And, there was one other time. High school. Remember?”

“I remember,” he said, finishing off his sandwich.

She’d got a speeding ticket. She’d had girlfriends in the car and got caught annihilating the speed limit. She was going a hundred in a fifty-five. And of course lost all driving privileges for a long time. It didn’t matter that much as she was in boarding school where they weren’t allowed to have cars. But she went home some weekends. Walter was surprisingly firm in the no-driving department and even when her friends wanted to take her out, she was grounded. Then one Saturday night he said, “Come with me, Maggie. We’re going to the hospital. You’ll be out late.”