“You wouldn’t like it.”

“I’m a great, experienced hiker!”

“No, you wouldn’t like watching me think. It’s like watching paint dry.”

“You’re a miserable tease,” she said. “I don’t even know your real name!”

He grinned. “I loved you trying to guess, though. It was fun hearing what you’d come up with next. You’re very creative.” He sighed. “It’s California. I’m California Cesar Jones.”

She was struck silent for a moment. “You have got to be kidding!”

“I wouldn’t kid about that. It’s on my driver’s license and everything. But don’t make me go through all that now. Just please kiss me goodbye.”

“You promise you’ll get in touch when this pilgrimage is over?”

“Yes, I promise. Thank you for everything you did for me.”

She kissed him deeply, held him tightly, damned fate for this. Just when she started to feel she was with a man who could carry his weight, he confessed that he was nuts and had to work on his issues by trotting over the mountains. Boy, could she pick ’em. Whatever saint was in charge of her love life was terrible at it.

He slapped her on the ass. “Take care of Sully. Take care of you.”

“Be careful,” she said.

“You bet I will.”

He climbed in the truck and pulled away. He drove slowly down the dirt drive to the road and without even thinking she followed, walking along behind him.

Beau was barking and running to her as Cal pulled out of sight through the trees. She turned to see Sully approaching.

“Gone, is he?” Sully said.

She nodded. “Did you know he was going?”

“He said so a couple a times this week. That the weather was just about mild enough for him, that he’d planned it all along. And he thanked me several times for the hospitality and for letting him lend a hand. Damn fool thing to do—thank me. Might as well a thanked me for having a damn heart attack.”

“We’re never going to see him again, Dad,” she said. “And that’s a shame.”

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

—Henry David Thoreau

Chapter 8

On the fourth day out on the trail, west of Boulder and north of Vail in the mountains, just north of Rocky Mountain National Park where the air was pristine and the sky a beautiful blue, where he could see for miles and great, magnificent mountains rose and fell all along the horizon, Cal set up his little tent and dug a trench around a small fire. It was the end of the day. The sun was descending behind the Rockies. “This looks like as good a place as any. What do you think?” he said, aloud.

Of course there was no answer.

It was two years and two months since Lynne Aimee Baxter Jones had taken her last breath. It was approximately the same time of day, but on the first of March it had been so cold and dark. They had talked about the end for a long time, for months.

In the beginning they’d been so happy, so oblivious to the things that could go wrong. Cal had started out by working in the public defender’s office, passed the bar and got a lot of great job offers. Then Lynne passed the bar, gathered a few like-minded friends, wrote grants and within a couple of years she was operating a storefront legal clinic for the underprivileged. She won an award from the city of Detroit and was appointed to a legal oversight committee by the governor, a watchdog team running herd on lawyers with intent to mislead and gouge an unsuspecting public, particularly those of low income.

Meanwhile, California Jones was becoming famous in his own right, a white knight in the criminal law community. He was actually becoming rich, kid lawyer that he was. Cal had some gifts that he’d acquired from his off-balance, crazy family. One was an incredible memory. His father had taught the kids how to memorize and since they rarely attended school, it became imperative. Otherwise, when they did have a chance to go to school, they’d be humiliated by how little they knew. Or, given what their mother taught them, they might know all the wrong things. Cal could recite almost the entire novel To Kill a Mockingbird. He grew up wanting to be Atticus Finch. While Lynne took great pride in accepting very little compensation, Cal was enjoying a terrific income for the first time in his life.