Email wasn’t his only problem. Money was still tight. His meals consisted of beans and canned meat, just like the early days when he’d gone to live with Orville. He couldn’t help thinking about the grocer who had helped him ration his limited funds and made sure he had enough to eat. Knowing now that Orville had stashed a veritable mountain of cash in the safe inside the old truck out back actually brought a smile to Desmond’s face. The old roughneck was miserly and mean as a snake, but in the end, he’d had a sort of logic to him. Desmond actually missed the man. He also worried that he had squandered every bit of money Orville had so carefully saved all those years.

After Christmas, four more of the companies he owned options in folded. They hadn’t wanted to ruin their employees’ holiday, but they also didn’t want to start the year wasting any more investor money.

Each email was a punch in the gut. He felt the prospect of financial security slipping away. It focused him.

He dug in, tried to figure out why some companies survived and others went up in smoke. It seemed almost arbitrary. He spent hours thinking about it, reading articles, studying books on business history.

The week after Christmas, Peyton insisted that he stop eating canned meat and beans for every meal.

“You’re going to get some weird digestive disease and die, Des. The obituary will say, ‘Desmond Hughes, talented programmer and lover of books, died of pork and beans in an RV park outside Palo Alto.’”

He laughed and relented, letting her cook at least half his meals. They were a lot tastier. He also began staying at her place without exception; another one of her theories was that the electric heater was going to cut out in the night and he would freeze to death in the Airstream. Neither one of them really believed it, but in the days before New Year’s Eve in 1997, they spent every night together, and neither of them was cold.

Chapter 68

Chapter 68

In the helicopter, Desmond watched the sun set over the mountains. Peyton was still asleep beside him, her head on his shoulder.

There were so many things he wanted to ask her. Why they hadn’t ended up together—how they had lost what he had felt that night in Half Moon Bay. What had happened to them.

When Peyton stirred, he leaned forward and caught her eye. She seemed to sense the change in him. “What did you remember?”

“Us.”

She looked away, down at Hannah, who lay still, her breathing shallow.

Desmond gripped her arm. “I remember the Halloween party, and xTV, and that mermaid ornament and the glass heart and Half Moon Bay and that badly carved oil rig I gave you.” He smiled, but she didn’t return it. To his surprise, she looked away.