“Does she have a lawyer?” Cal asked.
“Not yet, but she said she’ll have to find one. She has nice stuff but she doesn’t exactly have money. And she’s heard bad things about court appointed lawyers, like they get a little lazy on these free clients.”
“I don’t think that’s necessarily true. But I think you’re going to need a little help here, Tom. Legal help.”
He shook his head. “I’ll go online and study up. There’s gotta be lots of help online. I bet if I break down and tell Jackson, he’ll help me look things up. After he recovers from his nervous breakdown. That kid is smarter than anything. But I—”
“Tom, you need a lawyer.”
“Cal, I can’t hire a lawyer. I can’t even bail her out—she’s gonna have to sit there till her court date in a week or so. We get by job to job. We’re doing all right but there’s not two nickels left over, trust me.”
“You have options. There’s got to be a legal clinic around here somewhere. Might be Denver or Colorado Springs, but there’s help out there. An attorney with experience in criminal defense would be best. Or maybe I can help you. I’m an attorney. But I have no experience in Colorado statutes. I can learn, though. It’s not complicated, just a matter of looking things up.”
Tom’s mouth was hanging open. “You’re a what?”
“Lawyer,” Cal said. “A defense attorney, as a matter of fact. I practiced in Michigan and the state of Colorado has graciously extended licensing to me here.”
“You’re a lawyer? And you’re raking campsites and taking out trash?”
Cal smiled. “I am a man of many talents. I also have a checkbook in the truck. Let’s go by the bank so you can get Becky out of jail.”
*
Maggie enjoyed the drive back to Sully’s. She used the time to think about her conversation with Walter. The first thing she was going to do—she was going to find a way to show Walter how much he mattered in her life. She had two pretty awesome fathers, nothing alike, and each in his own way, sensitive and astute. She wasn’t sure what would have become of her if she hadn’t had both of them in her life.
So here we are. Four and a half months ago she’d felt she had lost everything. She’d thought she had nothing. No one. No one but Sully. And even Sully, she’d thought, hadn’t really wanted her. And no one needed her. Oh, there had been patients but she was hardly the only neurosurgeon.
Almost five months later her biggest discovery was that she wanted it all. She wanted her fathers, her dippy mother, a husband or at least a full-time partner. And a child. She wanted that child she felt had been taken from her. She wanted a full home life—and she wanted to practice again. She wanted to pull her salad out of the garden but also to go to excellent restaurants now and then. She wanted everything. There would have to be compromises, but she’d figure that out.
Who was that husband going to be? It was not going to be Andrew; that relationship was far behind her. But was there any way to convince California Jones he’d be happy with her? She had the slightly paranoid fear she was a placeholder and that he hadn’t yet decided what his life would look like in the future.
As she drove into the campground, she came upon the strangest sight. There were people on the porch of the store, the porch of the house, and several were sitting in cars. And Stan’s big SUV police cruiser was parked between a huge bull and the store. There were a couple of turned-over picnic tables, a collapsed tent and a healthy dent in the police cruiser.
“Maggie, stay in the car!” Stan’s voice boomed over his loudspeaker.
There, in the grassy area between the store and the campsites, the bull was grazing lazily. But it was very clear that before he settled down to lunch, he’d scared everyone half to death.
She looked at the ceiling of her car. “When I said all, I wasn’t counting on this!”
Come forth into the light of things,
let nature be your teacher.
—William Wordsworth
Chapter 15
Colorado was an open-range state. That meant the cattle roamed where they would, though ranchers took some measures to keep their herds segregated. The lake and the campgrounds and homes around the lake were surrounded by cattle ranches and grazing land. The entire valley was cattle land with a little silage farming for feed. If you didn’t want cows in your yard you had to fence yourself in, and that included public roads, lands and parks. Though it wasn’t a daily issue, there were times a piece of fence was down and cattle wandered onto the roads and highways, into parks and yards.
Ranchers usually kept closer tabs on their bulls, especially if they were a little testy, as this one was.
Maggie spied Cal on the porch and gave him a sheepish wave. He waved back.