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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.”
