“Or women looking for empowerment by playing in a typically male environment. Something like that—rough and rugged. Look at Ensley. She looks like a Barbie doll, but as soon as you see her compete in the rodeo, you see her power and grit.”
“Before you notice her other attributes?” George asked.
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Well, if she ever heard you say she looks like a Barbie doll, she’d kick you in the balls.”
“Yeah, I know. She heard me once, and that’s what she tried to do.”
“I think selling was a mistake,” George said. “I don’t believe a job will ever give her the satisfaction and personal challenge she found in ranching.”
“It’s a shame she had to sell the ranch to find that out.”
“I don’t know that she has—yet. But she wouldn’t take my calls before the closing. She probably figured I’d try to talk her out of selling.”
“Would you have done that? I know I would have tried. Couldn’t she live in North Dakota and do her job remotely?”
“She’d hate it. She’s always wanted to live and work in New York City.”
“With both parents gone, I guess it makes sense.” JC finished his drink. “So, dinner tonight is a celebration?”
“That was the plan, but now I don’t know if she’ll be laughing or crying in her beer.”
JC hoped she wouldn’t be crying and regretting her decision since she couldn’t undo it. It was like selling stock one day and watching it double in value the next. You had to live with your mistake.
“Why’d she come to Cambridge for dinner? With you both in the city, you can do that anytime.”
“One of her clients is a professor of American history here. He wrote a book about Teddy Roosevelt’s time in North Dakota, so she came up to meet with him. I told her I’d pick her up at seven thirty. If you want to come along, we should leave soon.”
“I think I will after all. Do you have a car?”
“No, I’ll schedule an Uber.”
JC paid the bar tab while George tapped on his phone. “Done. The driver should be here by the time we get downstairs.”
JC had come to the club hoping to find a dinner companion and found George. After the past three weeks, he’d been looking forward to a relaxing evening with good friends. What he’d discovered in Asia needed to simmer on his mind’s back burner for several days before he tried to unravel the implications and decide on his next steps. In the past, being with friends had always helped him clear his mind. He hoped it still would.
“I saw a picture of you with a hot blonde in The Washington Post,” George said. “You were at a black-tie charity auction. You got something going on with her?”
JC shook his head, trying to dislodge the uneasy memory of his date that night. The woman had been more interested in other men at the event than in him. Or maybe he’d shown such little interest in her that she looked elsewhere.
“I needed a date. A friend fixed us up. It worked for the night. That’s all.”
“Sounds like you’re living up to your reputation,” George said. “But I don’t believe any of the bad-boy rumors. You have more respect for women than any man I know.”
“Yeah, well.” JC shrugged. “I don’t have time for a relationship, and it’s less complicated if women know upfront that I’m not interested or looking for anything permanent.”
George clapped JC on the shoulder. “Maybe not right now, but you’re a born family man. You’ll settle down eventually.”
Except for Uncle Cullen, the men in the clan hadn’t settled down until their late thirties, early forties, and JC intended to follow suit.
But it was about more than age.
He’d asked his mom when he was a teenager how she knew she was in love with his dad, and she said, “When you love someone, you love their journey.” So far, he’d never met a woman whose journey even interested him. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He’d always been interested in his cousin Emily’s journey and how she’d transitioned from a child of the mid-1800s to a twenty-first-century physician.
But even though he was interested in her journey, she wasn’t his soul mate, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever find one.
He followed George out of the Porcellian Club, and the Uber driver was there by the time they reached the curb.
They settled in the backseat of an SUV, and George asked, “How’s Austin? I followed his rehab early on but haven’t seen any press reports in months. How long has it been? Two years. Right?”
“Yeah. It was touch and go for a long time.” JC would never forget his brother, Kevin, calling to let him know that Austin, Kevin’s stepson, was in the hospital. JC hopped on a plane and flew to Cleveland to be with the rest of the family. The medical reports were horrible.
Austin had severed the femoral artery in his left leg and cracked his sacrum. The cartilage connecting his right and left pubic bones pried apart about ten inches, causing nerve damage. It was a coin toss whether he’d be impotent for the rest of his life. The dislocation of his knee tore every ligament in the joint, and it severed the peroneal nerve, which carried the signal from his brain to lift his foot. The specialists didn’t think he’d ever have full control of his foot again.
Afterward, JC spent months seesawing between blaming Austin for his reckless behavior and worrying he might not survive. The accident pulled the rug out from under every member of the family, and while they’d all returned to their pre-accident lives—except for Austin—the rug remained uneven and twisted.
“The pain had to have been horrible.”
JC flinched as Austin’s screams replayed in his memory in surround sound. “It was constant and unbearable. The morphine drip never trickled down fast enough.”
“Has it let up? I mean, he’s not in constant pain now, is he?”
“Not like he was, but Dad’s afraid
