No, Cal said, that only works on rice fields. It has the opposite effect on corn and wheat. Besides, you lease those fields to farmers.

But God, they were exhausting. So, unable to really help and refusing to be as codependent as Marissa was, Cal limited his contact with them. He visited about once a year and talked to them every two to four weeks. He’d like to just talk to his mother but she was attached to his father and there was no way to isolate her and pull her out of that mess, not even for a conversation. They were like conjoined twins.

Interestingly, Cal, his younger sister Sedona and younger brother, Dakota, all broke out of that craziness. With a vengeance! Sedona was a psychologist, married to a businessman, mother of two children, living a very stable, happy life. Dakota was an Army major, decorated for valor. He was so rigid and conservative it almost made Cal’s teeth ache to be around him.

But Sierra, the baby, was lost. She might be schizophrenic like her father but it was impossible to tell because of her drug use. She’d seemed all right into her twenties and was an excellent student, then it fell apart. Cal and Lynne had staged an intervention, explaining the situation with her father, and mother for that matter, and tried to get her help. But rather than finding the source of her pain in Jed Jones, Sierra found an ally. Apparently she understood about the wild notions and mysterious voices. Sierra was now on the farm with Mom and Dad, probably weaving, reading bizarre shit and toking it up with Dad in the afternoons. “Whatever works,” Marissa was known to say.

Living with, perhaps understanding how to function in such a family, had made careers for Cal and Sedona. They were the opposite of freewheeling, new-age, whack-a-doodle hippies. Maybe Dakota, too. It was almost counterintuitive—if the parents are hippies and revolutionaries, the kids end up moderate and conventional.

Cal kept hiking. Every third or fourth night he found a campground or little bit of a town where he could wash, eat a protein-heavy meal, drink a couple of beers, talk to people, resupply.

It was when his trail also became counterintuitive, when he had to hike south to hike north, that he realized how much he missed Maggie. They were a little bit alike. They were both struggling to move on from their dynamic but abandoned careers, both getting over difficult childhoods, both floundering a little as they reached for a lifestyle that brought peace and comfort. And they could both go back to where they’d been tomorrow, pick up the threads of their previous lives, and succeed in many ways. She could go back to Denver and step into the operating room and resume her role as a talented young neurosurgeon. He could go back to Grosse Pointe and his old firm would welcome him with open arms. But he didn’t think either of them would do that.

He’d been on the trail for fourteen days. He’d done what he came to do. He’d left Lynne in the wind on a beautiful mountain pass. He turned right then, in the middle of the trail, and began walking south.

* * *

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!”