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“You still need to create,” she said. “You know that.”
“Oh, I do. Most of the time it’s with things to help me. Some are fails or I’m just tweaking something that exists. I’ve got a team of engineers now working on ideas that I used to. The price of success. You know those things.”
“Which came at a cost for you,” she said.
“Laine, you know as well as I do, what happened to me at twenty is what made me the success I am today. Without one there wouldn’t be the other.”
She’d heard this one too many times in her life. “Yes and no. Success comes in more than the form of money. I think you’d have other successes and would have developed something else to help people.”
“Unless you’ve got a magic ball, we’ll never know.”
“Nope. I love my father just the way he is,” she said.
“Just like I love my daughter. I hate to cut you off, but I’ve got a massage scheduled and they are waiting for me.”
Her father had people come to the house a few times a week. She knew that. It helped with circulation in his legs and back. He worked his arms enough that it felt good there too.
He’d told her these things for years. They didn’t have too many secrets in their life. If they talked longer, she might have brought up Carson, he didn’t give her a chance and it was probably for the best.
Her next call was to her mother. “I’m not interrupting you, am I?” she asked when her mother answered on the fourth ring, which led her to believe she was busy.
“No,” her mother said. “I was fishing my phone out of my purse. Stewart and I just got home from the store.”
“Oh,” she said. “I’ll let you go if you’ve got things to put away.”
“They can wait,” her mother said. “It’s not food. How has your week been?”
“It’s been great,” she said. She did text her parents a few times during the week but nothing major. More like what her father called welfare checks so he knew she was alive and well.
“How is your finger healing?”
“It seems to be fine. I see the specialist next week.”
“I’m sure your father gave you a hard time about getting the best there is,” her mother said, laughing.
“He did, but I don’t see the need for it. I’m seeing the doctor that had the first appointment here. It’s a waste of my time to spend half a day traveling on the ferry. Besides, I’m in good hands.”
She needed to tell someone about Carson other than Avery.
“How is that?” her mother asked.
“Remember the radiologist I told you about?”
“I do,” her mother said. “You told me he was cute.” Her mother laughed on the other line.
“He is. We’ve been on a few dates. We crossed one thing off my adventure list yesterday. He made his own list too.”
“Really?” her mother said. “What was that?”
“Ax throwing.”
“You threw an ax with a broken finger?”
“I had a doctor with me and it was totally fine. Any other finger might not have worked. But after that we played video games.”
“You have little tolerance for video games,” her mother said.
Laine used to say that when she was younger. She didn’t see the point in them. “It was fun. It was pinball and car racing. Not handheld devices. Then we went to dinner and came back here and talked for hours.”
