Chapter 4

It takesme a couple of weeks to learn Trinity's whole story. It probably should have taken longer—since there are laws about client confidentiality for a reason—but it's amazing what people will say when they think you don't know who they're talking about, and you seem uninterested. A little time Googling her family and a few evenings hanging around in the right bars gave me enough information to piece the story together.

It helps that her father was something of a local legend—one of the first celebrity chefs to dominate the local foodie scene. His restaurant—Embarcado—was regularly featured on travel shows and Best of Austin lists. I'd eaten there countless times. His sudden death left the family-run restaurant in flux. The restaurant was run by a third-party management company while the case was in probate, but now that it's out of probate, Trinity's sister, Savanah, has been fired as head chef and is out of work.

The probate battle was just as messy as Trinity had described, possibly worse. Her sister's lawyer was a joke, her brother's lawyer a ruthless shark. No wonder Trinity hates lawyers.

The bigger question though is why I care at all.

I'm not sentimental. I'm not thin-skinned. I'm not easily offended.

And yet …

And yet I can't shake off the words of one annoying little candy striper.

Yeah, yeah … she's not a candy striper. She's a grad student. Studying somatic therapy. Yeah, I looked it up. Whatever.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what she does or what she thinks of me. She's too young for me either way. And clearly not the least bit interested in me, despite how amazing her ass looked while she was in downward dog. Despite that she seems to always smell like cinnamon and home. Despite my urge to rub my nose along her neck and suss out if it's her clothes that smell like cookies or if it's just her scent. All of which is a moot point, since I'll probably never see her again.

Still, now that I know how fucked up her situation is, it's knowledge I can't unlearn.

Her finances are fucked. Possibly for the rest of her life. And not just hers, either. Her mom's and her sister's as well. All because her father was too narcissistic or self-centered or whatever to get his shit together. I don't practice family law, but I know this kind of thing happens all the time.

No one wants to think about their own mortality. So, they put off having the hard conversation with their lawyer, and then their loved ones pay the price.

It's not my fault or my responsibility to fix it. Obviously. I have no involvement in the case whatsoever. Trinity is nothing to me other than a random woman I happened to spend a half hour stuck in an elevator with.

Except that she's also the therapist who has been working with Margaret. One of Margaret's favorite people, according to Margaret's PT, Anthony. A therapist who is three years into a PhD that she might not be able to finish because her dad's death pulled the safety net out from under the entire family.

Despite all of that, it is not my problem.

Except to the extent that shit like this pisses me off. Lawyers have a bad enough reputation even without fucked-up probate cases and negligent lawyers.

Another couple of weeks pass, and I'm still thinking about Trinity's situation, which is clearly a sign I don't have enough going on in my life.

By noon on a random Saturday, I've already visited Margaret and worked out. I sat by her side for part of an old black and white western. She called me by my father's name the entire visit, and I had to assure her dozens of times that I wasn't high.

You want to know why I don't visit her more often? There it is. It's fucking exhausting. Every week, I go and sit with her for an hour, pretending to be her beloved son, telling her a carefully crafted lie about how "I" finally got my life together.

Yeah, it brings her peace—this story I've made up for my shithole of a father, about how "I" got clean and found a job. How the love of a good woman and becoming a father transformed "my" life. It's a story she loves hearing, and every time I tell it, it's like ripping out my own heart and grinding it to dust beneath the weight of a thousand what-could-have-beens. Because in reality, my mom and I weren't enough. Nothing either of us did made a damn bit of difference.

Frankly, I'm always proud of myself when I leave Precious Meadows and don't go straight to the nearest bar and pour a fifth of whisky straight down my throat. The temptation to do so is why I visit first thing in the morning most Saturdays. Visit her, exercise until my mind and body are numb, and then find a way to make it through the rest of weekend.

And there's still thirty-six more hours of the weekend stretching out ahead of me. And, yeah, I know this makes me sound like an asshole. First-world, cis-male, white dude problems. Oh, no! I have too much spare time!

With the weekend stretching out before me and nothing better to do, I get in my car and head out of town toward the lake.

About six months ago, my biggest client and best friend since college, Ian Donavon, checked out of life in Austin and moved to a compound out on the shores of Lake Travis. Yeah, that Ian Donavon, the creator of the Cookie Jar app that everyone under the age of forty uses to manage their money.

I don't want to sound like too much of a co-dependent pussy, but there should be rules about this sort of thing. If you spend your entire adult life living within walking distance of a guy, he should have to get your approval before he becomes a hermit.

Like I said, my biggest client and my best friend. Until six months ago, he'd lived in the condo next to mine. I saw him nearly every day at work. I'm an intellectual property lawyer. When Ian first started Cookie Jar, he didn't have the money to hire an established IP lawyer, so he hired me and paid me in stock options. Suffice it to say, thanks to those stock options (and not being a total dumbass about how I invested), I could retire at thirty-four if I wanted to. But what the fuck would I do with my time if did?

Now Ian lives an hour away and I only see him a couple of times a month. Suddenly I have too much time on my hands.

Which is one of the reasons I don't feel bad about showing up at his house unannounced.

It's a haul to get out to his place on the north-west shore of Lake Travis. By the time I reach his property, I'm a little grumpy. Once I leave the main road, his private drive narrows, snaking through the oaks and cedars, before opening up to a view of the three-story modern showpiece of a house.

Ian has tons of acreage, a sizable stretch of cliff-side waterfront, and a house that could grace the cover of Architecture Digest. Despite all that, he's an antisocial nerd. Other than the housekeeper I hired for him, and the food delivery guys, I'm the only person he sees anymore.

Which is why, when he opens the door and sees me, he strains to look behind me and says, "I don't suppose you saw the pizza guy on your way in."

"I did not."

"Huh. He's late."

"Probably because you live forty-five minutes from the nearest pizza place."

Ian pads barefoot through the foyer, leaving me to shut the door behind me. I toe off my own shoes by the shoe rack to the left of the door and follow him through the open concept living room to the kitchen area.

"Want some coffee?" he asks with a nod toward his fancy ass espresso maker.

He doesn't offer to make it for me. I'm pretty sure if he did, that would be a sign he'd been taken hostage and there were gun-toting terrorists just out of sight.

I start myself a cappuccino while he sits down in front of his laptop, which is on the bar in front of the windows overlooking the lake.

"What are you working on?" I ask, while I wait for the coffee maker to work its magic.

"Researching bacteria that can dissolve plastics into their constituent molecular parts."

I release a huff of laughter. "Of course you are."

Ever since selling Cookie Jar for an obscene amount of money, Ian has kept himself busy working for a nonprofit that funds scientific research. He's the kind of guy who is smart enough to pick up and understand nearly anything. So, he researches grant proposals and makes recommendations about funding them.

"You ever read anything about therapy chickens or somatic therapy?"

"No. You want me to research it for you?"

"Nah. Don't worry about it."

I settle into the chair next to his with my coffee and scroll on my phone until the pizza arrives a few minutes later. Ian doesn't close his laptop until there's a slice of greasy pizza to lure him back to the real world.

It would never occur to Ian to ask why I drove out to see him today, so I broach the subject on my own. "I worry about you out here all by yourself."

He shrugs. "I'm not out here by myself. You're here."

"Yeah, I'm here now." I grab my own slice of the pizza from the box that's now open between us. "But that's, what? Once or twice a month?"

"So come out more often." He pushes back from the bar and crosses to the refrigerator.

I twist on the stool to watch as he pulls a Shiner Bock from the fridge, glancing back at me as he tips his head in question. I nod.

He grabs the two beers, pausing by the sink to twist off the caps and toss them in the trash. He stands there for a second, staring out the window over the sink. That window looks out at the "front" yard, facing away from the lake, where there's a pool and a little guest cottage that probably dates back to the original house that was here back in the sixties.

After a decade of friendship, I'm used to the ebb and flow of conversation with Ian, with the long silences where he gets lost in his own head.

I'm on to my second slice of pizza by the time Ian returns to the bar with the two beers.

"You should move out here," he says as he slides onto the stool. "You could live in the guest house."

I nearly spew the beer I just took a sip of. I swallow hard. "Why the hell would I move out to the lake to live in your guest house?"

"You're obviously lonely."

"I'm not lonely."

He just shrugs. "Who do you even hang out with now that I don't live next door to you?"

"I have other friends." I don't. Not really. I have plenty of acquaintances, but not many other friends. "I have family."

He raises an eyebrow. "You visiting your grandmother much?"

"Sometimes," I hedge.

"She ever recognize you?"

"Sometimes."

He doesn't push on that issue, because he knows it's a tough one. For a moment I'm tempted to tell him about Trinity, the lovely and effective therapist who seems to haunt my every waking moment.

But what would I even say about her?

I met someone I can't stop thinking about?

Her family needs help. I want to be the person to do it, but I don't know how to offer her money.

Scratch that. I know if I offer her money, she'll throw it back in my face and laugh while doing it. Knowing that she would never in a million years accept help from me is as frustrating as it is admirable.

I've been there. I know all too well what it's like to need things you can't afford.

I doubt Ian would understand that even if I tried to explain it. He's not someone who needs anyone.

"Just saying." He takes a bite of pizza and stares out at the view. "It's peaceful out here."

"Yeah, I'm sure it is." One of the reasons Ian moved out here is because he had a short but tumultuous relationship with a starlet. Between her fame and his money, the media hounded him after their breakup. So, yeah, of course he prefers it out here now. But I'm pretty sure I'd be crawling out of my skin after twenty-four hours. "Besides, I have a perfectly nice condo in the city and it's within walking distance of my office."

"So?"

"So, I'm not moving out here and adding two hours to my commute."

"You could work from home."

"I'm not going to work from home. I have other clients."

Ian arches his eyebrow skeptically. Nether or us address the issue of whether or not I'm lonely. Ian probably because he's not going to believe anything I say. Me … well, for the same reason. And who knows, maybe he's right?

"By the way," he says, "I've a couple more names for you."

"Send them on."

Ian is always referring clients to me, people he comes across whose ideas need legal protection but who can't afford to hire a lawyer on their own. Sometimes I do the work pro bono. Sometimes Ian covers the cost as a way of investing.

After that, he launches into a description of work these potential clients are doing. It's not until later that evening, as I'm leaving his place, that a thought occurs to me.

Maybe he didn't mention me moving into the guest house because he really thinks I'm lonely. Maybe he's the one who's lonely.

The idea is absurd. Ian is the most self-reliant, self-contained person I know. Still, no man is an island, right?

About five minutes from his house, I pull over and do a quick search on my phone as an idea starts to take shape. After a bit of research, I send Ian a text.

How often do you eat pizza?

Most days.

Why?

You don't go out much

And not many places deliver to you

There's also a Mexican-ish place.

What the hell is Mexican-ish?

Like tex-mex?

No. More like Asian fusion.

I don't even know what to say to that

You need a personal chef

?

Someone to cook for you

I don't need a personal chef

I'm fine

I'll figure something out

I don't hear from Ian again for another week. When I do, he texts about something completely different. Which means he probably thinks the conversation is over and that he won the argument.

But it doesn't really matter. Years ago Ian decided he didn't want to bother with "boring things" like paying his bills, and he made me manager of his estate. He has insane amounts of money budgeted for the management of his house. Which he'll never notice if I'm paying his chef out of my own pocket.