What We Find (Sullivan's Crossing, #1)(74)

Walter and Maggie just looked at each other and smiled.

Before Maggie left the club to drive home, she embraced Walter. “Thank you, Walter. You were a wonderful father. And I love you.”

*



Since Cal was driving through Leadville on his way back to the crossing, he stopped at that little hole-in-the-wall bookstore he liked. The bookstore was one of the places he was reminded of things he wouldn’t willingly change—he liked the old classics, he liked maps, he liked paper. He had an electronic reader and he used it sometimes, but he liked holding the book, smelling it. Books equaled freedom to Cal—the freedom to keep a few books of his choice, for one thing. You don’t store much of a library in a converted bus, the family’s favorite home on wheels. It was a little like hiking, like stocking the backpack—if you wanted several books, you had to sacrifice a few other items, like jeans and shoes. For Cal, those choices weren’t hard—he loved his books. Then it was the freedom of thought. Finally the freedom learning presented; the ability to achieve, to move forward.

Once he was in the bookstore, he was in no great hurry. He’d choose with care. He took a few books off the shelf and sat in a leather chair, carefully looking at the cover, copy, binding, first pages.

Someone on the other side of the shelf was fanning pages, sighing and grunting a lot. It sounded like a man who couldn’t get comfortable. But there was something a little familiar about the sounds. Cal left his short stack of books on the table beside his chair and walked around the double-wide shelf. Sitting in the corner, a couple of thick, oversize softcover reference books on his lap, Tom Canaday groaned again and rubbed his head.

Cal chuckled. “One of the kids forget to do a report or something?”

Tom looked up. “They’re all out of school, man. Well, Zach’s got some summer school because he won’t pay attention and he gets behind.” He looked down at the books in his lap. One was about lawsuits and the other—Colorado laws. “I got issues.”

“Need a hand?”

Tom had a pained expression on his face. “I can’t talk about it,” he said. “The kids don’t know anything about this and I can’t tell ’em.”

“Okay.”

“My folks don’t know anything about this. No one knows anything. No one can know.”

Cal sat on the thick table in front of Tom and lifted a book. “Legal issues, Tom?”

He sighed heavily. He looked like maybe he was going to cry.

“Maybe I can help?”

“I don’t think so, Cal.”

“Two heads are better than one,” he said. “I know how to keep a confidence.”

“I don’t know.”

“Whatever it is, you think there’s a book on it?”

Tom nodded. “I got a workbook on divorce in here. But what I need... I don’t know...”

“I’m a whiz at the library,” Cal said. “If there’s a book to help you solve your problem, I can find it for you.”

“You won’t say anything to anyone?”

“It’s in the vault. Let’s go get a cup of coffee.”

They walked down the street and around the block off the main drag to a diner the locals favored. While they walked, Tom talked.

“My ex-wife, Becky, she’s in trouble. Bad trouble. I don’t know where to start. I think I should start by telling you about us. Me. Maybe I should tell you about me.

“One of the problems with growing up in a small town, some of us just don’t think big enough. My dad had a small ranch. I played football in high school and helped my dad and the idea of growing into that ranch worked for me. I had a serious crush on Becky, who was a year younger, but I was planning to go to college and we were going to get married after. But being the genius I am, I got her pregnant. My dad’s real old-fashioned, he told me to quit school, get a job or two, marry her and sleep in the bed I made.

“Getting married, even though we were way too young and it was way too hard, that wasn’t so bad. We lived in my folks’ basement for a year or so, then we rented part of a house from a widow and it was pretty awful so I fixed it up until it was pretty darn nice. By the time Jackson was a year old the folks had come around and my dad and brother helped me fix up the house. In fact, I bet they paid for as many materials as I did. So, life was okay—I worked a lot, but I had good jobs. I drove a trash truck for a few years—dirty job but damn, the county pays good and the benefits are great. Then I started driving the plow and that pays great.

“We had Nikki and were a real content little family just barely old enough to vote. Then, after that there were a couple of accidents—Brenda and Zach. I don’t know if it was me or four kids or just the natural order of things, but when Zach was about four, Becky had had enough. She wanted a life. Can’t say I blame her. Four kids and a husband who works all the time—not much of a life.”

“What about you?” Cal asked. “You had just as many kids. And you worked all the time.”

“Yeah, but I had the life I wanted,” he said with a shrug. “Still do. Pretty much.”

“So you’ve been divorced how long?” Cal asked.

“She left about eight years ago, we’ve been divorced about six years now. We did it ourselves. Becky’s never been far away. She moved to Aurora, worked and went to school, came back to Timberlake and stayed with us all the time. At one point she thought it’d be a good idea if the girls lived with her and the boys with me.” He snorted and shook his head. “We tried it, but it didn’t last long. But she shows up regularly. In fact, sometimes it’s just like we’re married, only nicer.”