“I need some time off,” she said.

But Maggie did take advantage of Sully’s clean bill of health, the extra help around the crossing and the beautiful late-spring weather by heading into the surrounding hills for a few hours here and there. On a few quiet days Cal went with her, hiking into the hills, enjoying the beautiful views and breathtaking vistas. Instead of tents they’d carry a blanket and lunch and be back at the crossing in time for a shower and dinner.

Maggie was happy.

And, she had someone to sleep with at night. Not that much sleeping was involved. It seemed to her that Cal was settling in, getting comfortable. Now that there was help after four in the afternoon till closing up the store, Maggie was having dinner with Sully and Cal, most nights at their kitchen table. Maggie and Cal traded off cooking, cleaned up the dishes together, sat out on the porch at the store or by a fire near the lake. They sat at a table together checking their laptops for email and news. And Cal liked to read. He spent at least a couple of hours every afternoon reading—maybe in one of his lawn chairs, maybe in a hammock, maybe on the porch.

He worked vigorously but he wasn’t around constantly; he certainly wasn’t underfoot. He drove out a few times a week, checking out the surrounding area, bringing home groceries and incidentals. He’d been to Leadville, Timberlake, Fairplay and a few other little specks of towns. He dropped in on Stan the Man at the Timberlake Police Department and they had a hamburger together, he reported. He met Paul Castor, the deputy Stan bragged was a computer genius. “He claims to be in his thirties,” Cal said. “He looks twelve.”

His truck and closed pop-up camper were parked behind the cabin that had become his but even though he was helping around the store and property, he was still camping. Sometimes he got out the fishing pole, sometimes fired up the Coleman stove to make his own breakfast or fry a fish he’d caught, even though he had access to the small kitchen in the store or Sully’s kitchen in the house.

“We lived off the grid a lot when I was a kid.”

“As in camping?”

“We lived in a lot of odd places. There was a commune near Big Sur. That was kind of cool—there were lots of kids to play with. There were times we camped, but it wasn’t recreational, it was lack of proper housing. Or it was part of traveling—my parents decided we should see the country so we spent a year on the road.”

“How amazing,” Maggie said.

“In retrospect, my father might’ve been on the run from his delusions. We were essentially homeless, living in a very old converted bus. But we did have a lot of unique and interesting experiences. And every couple of years my grandparents would snag us away from my mom and dad and keep us on the farm for a while—six months or a year.”

“I guess it’s just in your blood,” she said.

“In a way.”

“If you’re interested in hiking and hate being cold, why aren’t you on the Appalachian Trail?” she asked.

“I experienced a lot of that trail as a kid,” he said. “We spent a little over a year in Tennessee.”

“Doing what?” she asked.

“Not much,” he said. “In summer we picked vegetables.”

“The whole family?” she asked.

“The whole family. We picked up a lot of temporary work here and there. My favorite place to pick vegetables was California, around Fresno. The Central Valley. I learned some Spanish.”

“You’ve had a remarkable life,” she said.

“That’s a nice, positive spin,” he said.

Maggie took that to mean it had been a hard life.