Jackpot Baby

“Do you think you’re going to like Jester?” she asked to divert the conversation. “It can be pretty quiet here in the winter.”

“That’s okay with me. Medicine gives me all the excitement I need.”

“What do you do with your spare time? There’s good skiing not too far from here.”

He grinned. “In L.A. I often saw the results of skiing accidents sent to us for sophisticated surgery and decided that unless I could ski in a tank, it isn’t for me. I’m more of a putterer.”

“You mean…gardens and home repairs?”

He nodded. “I’m looking for a house with a shed or a garage big enough to hold a workshop.” He sipped at his wine and looked around her living room as though checking for what should be repaired. “It’s embarrassing, but at heart I’m the typical suburban guy who’s happy with a house to work on, a yard to mow and bicycles to fix.”

Shelly was charmed by that revelation. He should fit well into life in Jester, where the biggest dream was to see the community thrive.

“What do you do when it’s time to play?” he asked.

“I have evenings and Sundays off, and I usually spend that time trying to catch up on the personal stuff there isn’t much time for during the week.”

He frowned. “That doesn’t sound restful.”

She shrugged. “I do have a cook at the restaurant who’ll watch things for me if I have to leave. And during busy times, there’s a high school girl I call on to help out. But mostly, I work. It’s what my parents did, and it’s what I’ve done most of my life. By the time I was six I was doing dishes and helping to clean up and prep for the next day. By the time I was ten I could replace a waitress and prepare chili or stew on my own. It was a happy life, but I worked all the time.”

He looked sympathetic. “Not precisely a childhood.”

She’d thought about that a lot and had come to what she considered a sane conclusion. “It wasn’t,” she agreed. “And sometimes when I was an adolescent or a teen I was resentful that other kids could play baseball in the park or go to the movies while I was chopping vegetables and waiting on tables. But I realized early in high school that one of my friends was always free to do what she wanted because her mother didn’t really care where she was, and another one got to do all kinds of things I couldn’t because she had a little brother who had leukemia and her parents were so busy with him, they didn’t worry much about her. So I got over my resentment.”

“Nobody’s life is perfect,” he agreed. “My father was a brilliant researcher in oncology, and my mother a pediatrician. They were warm and loving, but I seldom saw them. I had my own resentments, then I felt guilty because I knew they were out saving the world and finally decided to just appreciate what I had. But I think it’s okay to admit that you wish things had been a little different. It isn’t disloyal, it’s just healthy.”

“I know,” she agreed with a self-deprecating smile. “I just value their memory so much, I don’t want them to guess even now that the life they worked so hard at deprived me of a few things. Are your parents gone?”

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