Family Tree

Then she made a one-eighty turn toward the door and walked out into the alley. Her stride was purposeful. Gaze straight ahead. Chin held high.

That was probably the reason she tripped over the cable. The fall brought her to her knees, keys hitting the pavement with a jingle. And the humiliation just kept coming. She picked up the keys and whipped a glance around, praying no one had seen.

Three people hurried over—Are you all right? Did you hurt yourself?

“I’m fine,” she said, dusting off the palms of her hands and her scraped knees. “Really, don’t worry.”

The phone in her shoulder bag went off like a buzz saw, even though it was set on silent mode. She marched past the construction area. Workers were still struggling with the lift, trying to open the hydraulic valve. She shouldn’t have let Martin talk her into the cheaper model.

“You have to turn it the other way,” she called out to the workers.

“Ma’am, this is a hard-hat area,” a guy said, waving her off.

“Leaving,” she said. “I’m just saying, you’re trying to crank the release valve the wrong way.”

“What’s that?”

“The valve. You’re turning it the wrong way.” What a strange conversation. When you discover your husband banging some other woman, weren’t you supposed to call your mom, sobbing? Or your best friend?

“You know,” she said to the guy. “Lefty loosey, righty tighty.”

“Ma’am?”

“Counterclockwise,” she said, tracing her key chain in the air to show him the direction.

“Annie.” Martin burst out of his trailer and sprinted toward her. Boxer shorts, bare chest, cowboy boots. “Come back.”

Her hand tightened around the key chain, the edges of the maple leaf biting into her flesh.

The Segway tour group trolled past the end of the alley.

“It’s Martin Harlow,” someone called.

“We love your show, Martin,” called another girl in the Segway group. “We love you!”

“Ma’am, you mean like this?” The workman gave the valve a hard turn.

A metallic groan sounded from somewhere on high. And the entire structure came crashing down.

2 (#ulink_21dff90f-7646-5df8-bf5b-f78a11662772)

So, Dad,” said Teddy, swiveling around on the kitchen barstool, “if the water buffalo weighs two thousand pounds, how come it doesn’t sink in the mud?”

Fletcher Wyndham glanced at the show his son was watching, an unlikely choice for a ten-year-old kid, but Teddy had taken a shine to The Key Ingredient. Most people in Switchback, Vermont, tuned in to the cooking show, not because of the chef or the hot blond cohost. No, the reason was behind the scenes—a quick blip in the credits that rolled while the slightly annoying theme song played.

Her name was Annie Rush—the producer.

The most popular cooking show on TV was her brainchild, and she’d been born and raised in Switchback. Teddy’s fourth-grade teacher had gone to school with Annie. A while back, the show had filmed an episode right here in town, though Fletcher had kept his distance from the production. Since then, Annie held celebrity status, even though she didn’t appear on camera.

That was just as well, Fletcher decided. Seeing her on TV every week would drive him nuts. “Good question, buddy,” he said to his son. “That one looks like he’s walking on water.”

Teddy rolled his eyes. “It’s not a guy buffalo. It’s a girl buffalo. They make mozzarella cheese from the milk.”

“Then why not call it a milk buffalo?”

“’Cause it lives in the water. Duh.”

“Amazing what you can learn from watching TV.”

“Yeah, you should let me watch more.”

“Dream on,” said Fletcher.

“Mom lets me watch as much as I want.”

And there it was. Evidence that Teddy had officially joined a club no kid wanted to belong to—confused kids of divorced parents.

Looking around the chaos of the house they’d just moved into, Fletcher pondered an oft-asked question: What the hell happened to my life?

He was able to precisely locate the turning point. A single night of too much beer and too little judgment had set him on a path that had changed every plan he’d ever made.

Yet when he looked into his son’s face, he did not have a single regret. Teddy had come into the world a squalling, red-faced, needy bundle of noise, and Fletcher’s reaction had not been love at first sight. It had been fear at first sight. He wasn’t afraid of the baby. He was afraid of failing him. Afraid to do something that would screw up this tiny, perfect, helpless human.

There was only one choice he could make. He had shoved aside the fear. He had given his entire self to Teddy, driven by a powerful sense of mission and a love like nothing he’d ever felt before. Now Teddy was in fifth grade, ridiculously cute, athletic, goofy, and sweet. Sometimes, he was a total pain in the ass. Yet every moment of every day, he was the center of Fletcher’s universe.

Teddy had always been a happy kid. The kind of happy that made Fletcher want to enclose him in a protective bubble. Now Fletcher realized that, despite his intentions, the bubble had been pierced. The end of his marriage had been a long time coming, and he knew the transition was hard on Teddy. Fletcher wished he could have spared his son the pain and confusion, but he needed to end it in order to breathe again. He only hoped that one day Teddy would understand.

“The water buffalo is a remarkable feat of nature’s engineering,” said the cohost of The Key Ingredient, who served as the sidekick of the life-support system for an ego, aka Martin Harlow.

“Why is that, Melissa?” asked the host in a phony voice.

She gestured at the sad-looking buffalo, standing in a small pen against a none-too-subtle computer-generated swamp. “Well, the animal’s wide hooves allow her to walk on extremely soft surfaces without sinking.”

The host stroked his chin. “Good point. You know, when I was a kid, I thought I had a fifty percent chance of drowning in quicksand, because it happened so much in the movies.”

The blonde laughed and shook back her hair. “We’re glad you didn’t!”

Fletcher winced. “Hey, buddy, give me a hand with the unpacking, will you?”

The big items had all been delivered, but there were several loads of unopened boxes.

“The show’s almost over. I want to see how the cheese turns out.”

“The suspense must be killing you,” said Fletcher. “Hey, you know what they make with the mozzarella cheese?”

“Pizza! Can we order pizza tonight?”

“Sure. Or we could just eat the leftover pizza from last night.”