It was spring of her junior year, and time was ticking on her college decisions. Leo just wanted to make sure that she knew the world was her oyster, regardless of his dad’s deep desire to keep her close. “I was thinking we could make a few college road trips together this summer. What do you say? You’ve never been to New York, and—”

She stared at him like he was speaking another language. “I’m staying here, Leo. IU has a great biomedical engineering program. I think I can get in.”

“That’s great. Have you looked at Purdue, too? They’ve got an fantastic engineering school.” One of his two best friends, Jack Monroe, the mayor, had graduated from the architecture school there.

“I want to go to IU,” she said. “I’m studying for the SAT.”

“You’d live there? In Bloomington?”

“Probably not.” She was still shoveling in the pasta, and he was still trying to figure her out. At her age, he couldn’t wait to get away, see the world, cut loose.

He got that not everyone was made that way. But he wanted to make sure that staying local was her choice, not his dad’s.

Her phone buzzed with a text. “My friends want me to go somewhere tonight, but I have to work a shift.”

“Look, I’m home now,” Leo said. “You don’t have to worry about taking care of Dad.”

“I still have to work.” She smiled at him in a way that made him feel like she was the older sibling. He knew that his leaving had made her the center of his dad’s attention. The apple of his eye. But maybe it had also made her into the kind of kid who worried too much for her age and felt too responsible. “If I get a scholarship, I’ll get free tuition.”

“I don’t want you to worry about money.”

“Thank you, Leo,” she said between bites. “But I want to score as high as I can on the SAT and get as much money for school as I can.”

“Those are great goals, but—”

“I don’t want to go to college parties and fool around. I want to get my engineering degree and go to med school.”

Okay. Were they really related? Because he’d be the first to admit that when he got to college, he’d looked for where the parties were before he’d looked for the library. That wasn’t to say he hadn’t kicked butt to keep his grades up and land an investment banking job in New York that he’d kept for almost ten years.

He’d made some money. But the super-long hours meant he missed fresh air and rolling hills and…his family. He was all about working hard, but he liked playing hard, too. And he enjoyed creating things. Creating food.