The profession suited him. He’d lived nomadically, traveling across the country, chasing new horizons, saving the lion’s share of his earnings. He rose to the role of engine driver. Read book after book. Romanced women both single and married. Played his guitar. Penned the occasional poem. Whittled wood. Sketched. Protested for causes he believed in. He’d fancied himself to be a renaissance man, a freethinker who didn’t subscribe to anyone’s code but his own.

He only ever splurged on one thing: electronics. He’d been reading issues of Popular Mechanics from cover to cover since he was a boy. Though he’d remained loyal to the record player all his life, he loved to purchase the newest gadgets in every other category. During her childhood, he’d been the first person she knew to adopt the DVD player, the use of flash drives, the Blackberry, the Kindle, the Wii, and the iPhone.

Thanks to his fascination with tech, he did something in the eighties that no financial planner would have advised. Ed Sutherland funneled every penny of his savings into the IPO of a single stock.

For a little-known company named Apple.

Much later, when she’d asked him why he’d taken such a risk, he’d shrugged and said, “I could tell you that I’d been following the market or that I’d done quite a bit of research. Those things are true. But that’s not why I did it. I invested in Apple because I had a gut feeling. I knew they were going to be a success.”

Quickly, his shares escalated in value. Content with his rambling life, he hadn’t parted with a single one.

It wasn’t until he was in his early fifties that his life had taken a dramatic turn. He’d had an affair with a married woman named Jade, whose military husband had been deployed at the time. Jade hadn’t wanted to keep her husband. Or her baby. Or—as it turned out—Ed. She and Ed struck a bargain. Jade would have the baby if he’d agree to become the baby’s sole parent. Her commitment took nine months. His, the rest of his life.

Every time Finley had talked to her father about Jade, he’d told Finley it was the best bargain he’d ever made and that he’d make it again a hundred times over.

Since he’d recognized that he couldn’t raise a baby on a pair of railroad tracks, he’d retired and sold just enough stock to purchase a mid-century modern house on a big piece of land near his hometown. He’d gone to work crafting model train cars in his home studio and raising Finley much like he’d been raised—with freedom, space for adventures, and animals.

Her dad loved her. And she loved her dad.