LITMIR.BIZ

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wearing lately whenever he thought about Maggie. “Unbelievable. Overwhelming. I was getting used to the idea this wouldn’t happen to me.”

      “But it’s not a surprise, is it?” she asked. “The baby?”

      “Nah, we wanted a family. Maggie’s way more fertile than she bargained for—it happened right away. We’re still getting used to the idea, but it feels great. You’ll see someday...”

      She was shaking her head. “I don’t think so. Don’t get me wrong, I look forward to being an auntie but I’m not all that into the mommy scene. I didn’t grow up looking after little kids like you did.”

      “You saying you don’t like kids?” he asked.

      “I love kids,” she said. “When they’re someone else’s. But... Can I ask a personal question?”

      “Sure. Be gentle with me,” he said, but he smiled when he said it.

      “Do you ever worry about the schizophrenia thing?”

      Their father, Jed, was schizophrenic and he wasn’t medicated. Rather, he was self-medicated—he smoked pot every day. It kept the delusions a little quieter. Jed was, quite honestly, crackers. And schizophrenia sometimes ran in families.

      “I worry about everything, including that. It appears Jed didn’t inherit his disease or pass it on, unless someone’s holding back information. But I have Maggie. She’s much more logical and pragmatic. She began listing things we could worry about—the list was long. It covered everything from childhood cancers and illnesses to teenage pregnancy and she suggested, firmly, that we deal with each problem as it appears. You have to remember, Maggie handles catastrophic head injuries and brain tumors for a living—you can’t scare her. And if mental illness is one of our problems, trust me—we’ll be managing it in a different way than Jed does.” He paused. “How are they?”

      “I saw them briefly before I left and they’re exactly the same. Mom said she was glad I was going to be around you, that you probably needed me. I have no idea where she got that idea. I told her not to tell anyone but Sedona and Dakota where I was. I don’t know who would ask but I want to cut ties with that old life. I mean, I still have my Des Moines support, but we don’t give out information on each other. Mom was fine, Dad was getting ready for a big security briefing of some kind. In other words, he’s in Jed’s world. You call them, don’t you?”

      “I haven’t talked to them in a couple of weeks—I’ve been busy with the barn. I’ll check in. Sierra, are there debts to clear or something?”

      “No,” she assured him. “I just don’t need anyone from rehab or my old party days tracking me down. I’m good.”

      “If you have issues like that, tell me. Better to straighten it out than ignore it.”

      “I don’t have those kinds of issues, Cal.”

      “Okay. But if I can help... Just get settled.”

      “I worry about them, too, Cal,” she said.

      “But there’s nothing we can do,” he reminded her. “Let’s go find Maggie. She’s dying to meet you in person.”

      * * *

      Sierra drove the pumpkin, following Cal’s directions to Sullivan’s Crossing. As she oohed and aahed at the scenery, she thought one of the great things about rehab had been learning she was not the only person with a totally screwed-up family. Given the fact that her sister Sedona and brother Dakota were living functional and what appeared to be normal, conventional lives, it seemed to boil down to her parents, and all because Jed didn’t want to be treated for his schizophrenia and Marissa, her mother, didn’t push him. Crazy parents weren’t unusual in rehab. In fact the number of people who had been drinking or drugging their way through delusions was astonishing.

      She had told a small lie. She’d told it cheerfully and with good intentions. Truthfully, she wished she could have children. But there were multiple problems with that idea. First, she had a very bad history with men—she chose the worst ones imaginable. And second, not only did she have to deal with schizophrenia in the family tree but also addiction, which also tended to run in families. How could she risk cursing a child with such afflictions? Add to that, you’d have to trust yourself a great deal to be a good parent and she wasn’t even close. Self-doubt was her constant companion.

      “You get to see this scenery every day,” she said to her brother. “I was mainly coming here because you and Maggie are here but it’s an amazingly beautiful place.”

      “I wonder if you ever get used to it,” he said. “I still can’t believe I’m lucky enough to live here.”

      “How’d you end up here?” she asked.

      “You know,” he said. “Wandering. Trying to find myself, sort of.”

      “Sort of?”

      “I was roaming. It’s in our genes. Plus...” He hesitated. “I was looking for a place for Lynne. A place for her ashes. I gave her my word—I’d leave her in a beautiful place and then I’d let her go.”

      “And did you?” Sierra asked.

      He was quiet for a moment. “I found a beautiful place. By that time I’d met Maggie. And my life started over.” He reached over and touched her knee. “Your turn to start over, kid.”

      “Yeah,” she said, suddenly feeling tired. Scared. It came upon her at the weirdest times, that fear she’d turn out to be a failure. Again. “Right. And looks like a great place to do that.”

      “I think of this as home,” Cal said. “We never really had a home.”

      “We had the farm,” she said. “Sort of.”

      “You had more of that than I did,” he said.

      Their parents, who described themselves as free spirits, hippies, freethinkers and nonconformists, raised their family on the road, living in a bus converted into an RV, but it was really just a disguise. Jed was sick and Marissa was his enabler and keeper. Marissa’s parents had a farm in Iowa and they landed there quite often, all of them helping on the farm and going to school in Pratt, Iowa, a small farming community. Then they’d take off again, on the road. By the time Sierra was eight they’d settled on the farm full-time, taking care of the land for Grandma after Grandpa passed away. Cal finished high school there.

      Then he left to seek his fortune, to go to college with the help of scholarships and loans. She had been only ten. He passed responsibility for her on to Sedona, next oldest. When Sierra was twelve, Sedona left for college. She got herself a full ride and went to a hoity-toity women’s university back East and though she called, she rarely visited. When Sierra was fifteen, Dakota left, enlisting in the Army at the first opportunity. Then it was just Sierra. Sierra with Jed and Marissa. Counting the minutes until she could get away, too.

      Not long after they all left her she discovered beer and pot.

      * * *

      The Crossing, the place where Cal had found his woman and his second chance, did not look anything like Sierra had expected. It was a completely uninhabited campground. Little dirt pads were separated by trees, the foliage just beginning to turn leafy. The sites were dotted with little brick grills here and there. The picnic tables were all lined up by the side of a big old store with a wide porch that stretched the length of the building. There was a woman sweeping the porch—had to be Maggie. She stopped sweeping, stared at them, smiled and leaned her broom against the wall. She descended the steps just as they got out of the little car.

      “Sierra!” she said, opening her arms.

      “How did you know?”

      She hugged her and then held her away to look at her. “You couldn’t be anyone else. You belong to your brother as if you were his twin. Maybe I’ll have a daughter and she’ll look exactly like you.”

      Sierra blushed. “Would

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