Emily sighed. “PDF, dad. Portable Document Format. It’s … it’s like a brochure for the Web.”

“Oh, I was thinking of the other PDF. Listen, I really want to help, so just let me know what I can do.”

“Check out the pages I made on GiveForward, Fundbunch, and GoFundMe,” Emily said, “and let me know what you think. I’m trying to put together a street team through my Facebook friends.”

“What do you need to get the ball rolling?” Lou asked.

“Just money from you and Mom, and Grandpa Dennis, and Nana, and Uncle Graham, to add to the five hundred the people at General Mills will be sending.”

“Consider it done,” Lou said.

He left out the part where he was scheduled to meet with his tax guy later that afternoon to help him figure out which of his raggedy collection of mutual funds he could sell. Based on hours of phone calls with Cap’s doctors in Atlanta, and his own research, Lou estimated the total cost of his sponsor’s care would exceed 150,000 dollars.

Still, brownies were a great start.

“I’ll e-mail you the links,” Emily said. “Can you get back to me in, say, an hour with your ideas?”

Once again, Lou eyed the stack of work surrounding him—the forms and follow-up reports dealing with the docs he was monitoring—each in serious, potentially career-ending trouble. Somehow, someway, he would find the time to do it all, including his weekend plans to fly back to Atlanta. The only person who might get squeezed out of seeing him was high-powered attorney Sarah Cooper, but their on-again, off-again relationship had been steadily drifting toward off-again, anyhow.

“Of course, sweetie,” he said. “Send the links my way and I’ll give them a look. Together, and with Mom’s help, we can pull this off.”

“You bet we can, Pops.”

“I love you, princess.”

“Love you, too.”

As Lou was hanging up, Walter Filstrup marched past his cubical without a word or even a glance, then left the office. The usually bombastic director, as difficult to read as time on Big Ben, had been icy and distant since Lou’s return from Atlanta. With the man’s wife out of the ICU and improving from her cardiac problem, it was clearly the lost election that was continuing to vex him—the lost election and the man he believed was responsible for it.

Chapter 20

CHAPTER 20

That which is attained without conflict or strife is rarely worth attainment at all.

—LANCASTER R. HILL, PERSONAL COMMUNICATION TO ROBIN BROADY, 1942

Three days later, Filstrup’s gloomy state of mind was unimproved. The man had not once mentioned the election results and had shown no curiosity at all regarding Cap’s condition.

Pleasantville.