Raymond leans back as though all is now perfectly clear and takes another sip of iced tea. I stare at him, nonplussed.

“What?” I say at last. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, you know,” says Raymond with a shrug. “The spring. The money.” He eyes me closely. “I’m talking about the money.”

“What money?” I retort with a flash of irritation. “You keep talking about money, but I don’t know what you’re going on about.”

“You don’t know?” Raymond gives a little whoop. “He never told you?”

“No!”

“Oh, Graham. Not so holier-than-thou now.” He gives a sudden guffaw.

“What are you talking about?” I’m exploding with frustration.

“OK.” Raymond flashes me a grin. “Now, you pay attention. This is a good story. We all first met in New York, the four of us, waiting tables. Corey and Brent were science grads. I was a design postgrad. Your dad was…I don’t remember what your dad was. We were young men, waiting to see where life would take us, and we decided to go west. Have an adventure.”

“Right.” I nod politely, though my heart is sinking. People say, “This is a good story,” and what they mean is, I’m going to share a random slice of my life with you now, and you have to look fascinated. The truth is, I’ve heard this story a million times from Dad. Next we’ll be on to the sunsets and the shimmering heat and that time they spent the night in the desert. “So, where does money come into it?”

“I’ll get to that.” Raymond lifts a hand. “Off we went, traveling around the West. And we talked. A lot. No cell phones back then, remember. No Wi-Fi. Just music and conversation. In bars, sitting around the campfire, on the road…wherever. Corey and Brent used to spitball ideas. They used to talk about setting up a research company together. Bright boys, both of them. Corey had money too. And looks. He was what you might call the alpha male.”

“Right,” I say dubiously, remembering the tanned, weird-looking guy we met in Las Vegas.

“Then one night…” Raymond pauses for effect. “They came up with the spring.” A little smile dances around his mouth. “Ever heard of a balloon spring?”

Something is ringing in my mind, and I sit up straighter. “Hang on. Corey invented a spring, didn’t he?”

“Corey and Brent invented a spring,” corrects Raymond.

“But…” I stare at him. “I saw articles about that spring online. There’s no mention of Brent anywhere.”

“Guess Corey had him airbrushed out of the story.” Raymond gives a wry chuckle. “But Brent helped invent it, all right. They came up with the first notion together one night by the fire. Sketched out the concept right then and there. It was four years before it was actually developed, but that’s where it all began. Corey, Brent, your dad, and me. We all had a stake in it.”

“Wait, what?” I stare at him. “My dad had a stake in it?”