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I wait, hoping he’ll think a little harder and recall a delivery of assorted boxes that will contain straws, but his half-lidded brown eyes tell me he has the patience of a Buddha and will outlast me at this staring contest.

It’s fine. I pop the dome back off the cup and begin slurping down the sugary cola layer, giving myself an instant brain freeze. Slapping a hand against my forehead to press the ache back inside, I return to my car and get back on the road, grateful for the instant sugar high.

With the open highway in front of me, my mind drifts as usual to all the places this road could take me. As I pass a sign indicating that San Francisco is just over 300 miles away, I contemplate ditching my court appearance. I could be at Pier 39 in time for a late lunch. Visions of clam chowder in a sourdough bowl tempt me to veer off course, but I’d never hear the end of it from my sisters.

With my face deep in the cup, I reach the blue layer of Slurpee and welcome all the sugar into my bloodstream. Maybe I can claim the Twinkie defense in court. Too much sugar, erratic behavior, not my fault.

It’s worth a shot.

CHAPTER 2

Luke

My legs drum against the bench outside the courthouse, where I scowl at my cell. John Edwill, my lawyer, continues droning on speakerphone, telling me everything I don’t want to hear.

“They’re going to come at you hard.”

“Yes. You say that every time. That’s why I mortgaged my life to hire you. You need to come back at them just as hard.”

“I know, I know. I’ll do what I can, but you really screwed the pooch when you married a woman in the Wellington family. If you’d have asked me, ‘John, what woman should I marry if I think there’s a chance we’ll end up in a custody battle?’ I’d have categorically named every last woman in the nation other than a woman in the Wellington family.”

“Sorry I didn’t consult you when I was busy falling in love.” Or whatever I was doing. The “love” stage sure didn’t last long.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. How could you know?” He laughs as though I was being serious. As though laughter has any place in this conversation. “Point is, they’re going to say Scout needs a stable family environment, and Elizabeth can provide that, since she's been in therapy and remarried and really seems committed to being a good parent.”

“Who cares if she went to therapy? She left when Scout was one. She married the man she was cheating on me with.” I worry that I sound butthurt instead of merely stating facts. “That’s not a good stable environment for a child.”

“Courts like a family. You’re a single dad. You work long hours. You’ve been inconsistent with Scout’s schedule…” He doesn’t finish his sentence, probably because he’s said those words so many damn times that he knows I can recite them by heart.

“Sorry I missed a doctor’s appointment or two. But Scout’s happy. My son has a great life with me.”

“Courts also like money. She has it, and you don’t.”

If John knows he’s hitting me in my biggest pain point, he doesn’t care. When I was growing up a hundred miles north of here, on borrowed land where my parents worked from dawn to dusk running a ranch, I dreamed of having my own tiny plot. It didn’t have to be big. But it would be mine.

For years, I helped my parents pick avocados and lemons for twelve hours a day because they couldn’t afford to hire more workers. Then they drove their produce to markets themselves until I was old enough to see over the dashboard of the family truck and do it for them. I was all of twelve, and my early growth spurt was a godsend.

I vowed then that I would work my ass off, save my pennies, and one day buy a piece of land so my parents wouldn’t have to work so hard. And here I am, ten years after the day I bought my first square of farmland, supporting my parents, who are now retired and living on the Oregon coast. I own a hundred-acre ranch, a dairy farm, and miles of undeveloped land that I sell off slowly when the price is right. By all accounts, I’ve made something of my life. I own land. The American Dream.

Leave it to a spoiled socialite from Los Angeles to make me feel like that’s not enough. And leave it to me to be dumb enough to marry her four years ago. But I was thirty-six, I wanted a family, and she was the bright, shiny distraction that made it all seem possible.

“I have enough. My take-home pay is plenty enough to raise a kid, and then some.” I’m already putting money into Scout’s college fund, and he has what he needs. But I get John’s point. Elizabeth doesn’t just have money. She has a shit ton of money. Enough to send Scout to an exclusive private school, to take him on trips to see the world as he grows up, to offer him pitching lessons, since baseball is his all-time favorite sport.

As though a kid too young to play T-ball even needs goddamn pitching lessons.

“She’s barely seen him since she drove out of here like her tail was on fire. Taking him out to lunch and on a shopping spree once in a while doesn’t make a person a good mother. It doesn’t make up for the day in and day out love and attention I’ve given him for the past three years.”

I start pacing back and forth in front of the courthouse, shielding my eyes from the aggressive sunlight and shoving a hand in my pocket to retrieve a pair of sunglasses.

“I know. I just want you to be prepared in case things go south. Her lawyers, the Wellington lawyers…”

Holding the phone away from my ear, I let him drone on. It doesn’t matter what order he puts the words in or how he substitutes them for new ones like a fucking thesaurus. They all point in the same direction—I could lose custody of my son.

“Tell me something positive for a change, can you possibly do that?”

I hear shuffling on the other end of the line and can picture John moving papers around the way he does when I sit in his office. “Look, I’ll be there in half an hour. Until then, try to stay calm. Take a walk around the block. Do some meditative breathing.”

I roll my eyes. Meditative fucking breathing? This guy really doesn’t know me. “Just don’t be late, okay? I have a couple of new ideas.”