She grabbed the Rocky Mountain News from the floor and fanned herself for relief. The week-old paper marked the day she had sent her daughter off to visit her ex-husband for the week, so that she could devote all her energy to the computer crisis. Six straight days away from Taylor was a new record, one she hoped would never be broken. Even dead tired, she couldn’t wait to see her.
Amy was driving an oven on wheels by the time she reached the Clover Leaf Apartments, a boring collection of old two-story red brick buildings. It was a far cry from the cachet Boulder addresses that pushed the average price of a home to more than a quarter-million dollars. The Clover Leaf was government-subsidized housing, an eyesore to anyone but penurious students and the fixed-income elderly. Landscaping was minimal. Baked asphalt was plentiful. Amy had seen warehouse districts with more architectural flair. It was as if the builder had decided that nothing man-made could ever be as beautiful as the jagged mountaintops in the distance, so why bother even trying? Even so, there was a four-year waiting list just to get in.
A jolt from a speed bump launched her to the roof. The truck skidded to a halt in the first available parking space, and Amy jumped out. After a minute or two, the redness in her face faded to pink. She was looking like herself again. Amy wasn’t one to flaunt it, but she could easily turn heads. Her ex-husband used to say it was the long legs and full lips. But it was much more than that. Amy gave off a certain energy whenever she moved, whenever she smiled, whenever she looked through those big gray-blue eyes. Her grandmother had always said she had her mother’s boundless energy — and Gram would know.
Amy’s mother had died tragically twenty years ago, when Amy was just eight. Her father had passed away even earlier. Gram had essentially raised her. She knew Amy; she’d even seen the warning signs in her ex-husband before Amy had. Four years ago, Amy was a young mother trying to balance a marriage, a newborn, and graduate studies in astronomy. Her daughter and coursework left little time for Ted — meaning too little time to keep an eye on him. He found another woman. After the divorce, she moved in with Gram, who helped with Taylor. Good jobs weren’t easy to find in Boulder, a haven for talented and educated young professionals who wanted the quintessential Colorado lifestyle. Amy would have loved to stick with astronomy, but money was tight, and a graduate degree in astronomy wouldn’t change that. Even her computer job hadn’t changed that. Her paycheck barely covered the basic living expenses for the three of them. Anything left over was stashed away for law school, which was coming in September.
For Amy, a career in law was an economic decision, not an emotional one. She was certain she’d meet plenty of classmates just like her — art historians, English literature majors, and dozens more who had abandoned all hope of finding work in the field they loved.
Amy just wished there were another way.
“Mommy, Mommy!”
Amy whirled at the sound of her daughter’s voice. She was wearing her favorite pink dress and red tennis shoes. The left half of her very blonde hair was in a pigtail. The other flowed in the breeze, another lost barrette. She peeled down the walkway and leaped into Amy’s arms.
“I missed you so much,” said Amy, squeezing her daughter tightly.
Taylor laughed, then made a face. “Eww, you’re all wet.”
Amy wiped away the sweat she’d transferred from her cheek to Taylor’s. “Mommy’s truck has a little fever.”
“Gram says you should just sell that heap of junk.”
“Never,” said Amy. Her mother used to own that heap of junk. It was about the only thing she’d managed to come away with in the divorce. That, and her daughter. She lowered Taylor to the ground. “So, how is your dad?”
“Fine. He promised to come visit us.”
“Us?”
“Uh-huh. He said he’ll come see you and me at the party.”
“What party?”
“ Our party. For when you gradgy-ate law school and when I gradgy-ate high school.”
Amy blinked twice, ignoring the sting. “He actually said that?”
“Law school takes a long time, huh, Mommy?”
“Not that long, sweetheart. It’ll be over before we know it.”
Gram came up from behind them, nearly panting as she spoke. “I have never seen a four-year-old run that fast.”
Taylor giggled. Gram welcomed Amy back with a smile, then grimaced. “For goodness sakes, you’re an absolute stick. Have you been living on nothing but caffeine again?”
“No, I swear I tried taking a little coffee with it this time.”
“Get inside and let me fix you something to eat.”
Amy was too tired to think about food. “I’ll just throw something quick in the microwave.”
“Microwave,” Gram scoffed. “I may be old, but it’s not like I have to rub two sticks together to heat up a late lunch. By the time you’re out of the shower, I’ll have a nice hot meal waiting for you.”
Along with a month’s supply of fat and calories, thought Amy. Gram was from the old school of everything, including diet. “Okay,” she said as she grabbed her suitcase from the back of the truck. “Let’s go inside.”
The threesome walked hand in hand across the parking lot, with Taylor swinging like a monkey between them.
“Home again, Mommy’s home again!” said Taylor in a singsong voice.
Amy inserted the key and opened the door. Home was a simple two-bedroom, one-bath apartment. The main living area was a combination living room, dining room, and playroom. Gram sometimes said “the girls” had turned it into one big storage room. Bicycles and Rollerblades cluttered the small entrance; the small ones were Taylor’s, the big ones were Amy’s. There was an old couch and matching armchair, typical renter’s furniture. An old pine wall unit held books, a few plants, and a small television. To the right was a closet-size kitchen, more of a kitchenette.
Amy dropped her suitcase at the door.
“Let me get started in the kitchen,” said Gram.
“I help!” Taylor shouted.
“Wash your hands first,” said Amy.
Taylor dashed toward the bathroom. Gram followed. “Your mail’s on the table, Amy. Along with your phone messages.” She disappeared down the hall, right on Taylor’s heels.
Amy crossed the room to the table. A week’s worth of mail was stacked neatly in piles: personal, bills, and junk. The biggest stack was bills, some of them second notices. The personal mail wasn’t personal at all — mostly that computer-generated junk written in preprinted script to make it look like a letter from an old friend. In the bona fide junk pile, a package caught her eye. There was no return address on it. No postage or postmark, either. It appeared to have been hand-delivered, possibly by a private courier service. For its size, it seemed heavy.
Curious, she tore away the brown paper wrapping, revealing a box bearing a picture of a Crock-Pot. She shook it. It didn’t feel like a Crock-Pot. It felt like something more solid was inside, as if the box had been filled with cement. The ends had been retaped, too, suggesting the Crock-Pot had been replaced with something else. She slit the duct tape with her key and opened the flaps. A thick plastic lining encased the contents, some kind of waterproof bag with a zipper. There was no note or card, nothing to reveal the identity of the sender. She unzipped the bag, then froze.
“Oh my God.”
Benjamin Franklin was staring back at her, many times over. Hundred-dollar bills. Stacks of them. She removed one bundle, then another, laying them side by side on the table. Her hands shook as she counted the bills in one stack. Fifty per stack. Forty stacks.
She lowered herself into the chair, staring at the money in quiet disbelief. Someone — an anonymous someone — had sent her two hundred thousand dollars.
And she had no idea why.
2
Lazy swirls of orange, pink and purple hovered on the horizon in the afterglow of another southern Colorado sunset. From the covered wood porch of his boyhood home, thirty-five-year-old Ryan Duffy stared pensively at what seemed like nature’s daily reminder that endings could be beautiful. The spectacle slowly faded into darkness, a lonely black sky with no moon or stars. The brief burst of color had nearly fooled him. He felt guilty now for having thought even for a moment that his father might be better off dead.