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  Also new were the fruits of financial success. For the first time in my life I had money. When I left home I hadn’t even owned a suitcase. Now I owned a leather set from Louis Vuitton. McKay and a few of the other staffers helped me pick out new clothes, showing me what was cool and what was in fashion. For the first time in my life I bought expensive brand-name clothing. It had to be expensive. Not that I had to impress anyone but it was cathartic, I suppose. It was my way of flipping off the past.

  Just six months after I started, I pulled into the driveway in a soft-gold convertible BMW 320. I walked into the house. “Monica!”

  She came running out of the bedroom. “You’re home!” She threw her arms around me. After we kissed she said, with her forehead still pressed against mine, “I thought you were going to be back this morning.”

  “I was. I just had some errands to run.”

  “I’m not your most important errand?” she asked.

  “You’re not an errand. You’re my pearl.”

  She smiled and kissed me more. “I’ve missed you so much.”

  “I’ve missed you so much too,” I said, stepping back from her. “And I have a surprise for you.”

  “What?”

  “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise. Close your eyes.” She closed her eyes and I took her hand and led her out to the front porch. “Okay, you can open them.”

  She opened her eyes. For a moment she just stared in bewilderment. “Whose car is that?”

  “It’s yours.”

  “Mine?”

  “Go see it.”

  “Omigosh!” she shouted. She practically bounded out to the driveway. After examining the car from all angles she said, “It’s really mine?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s too beautiful.”

  “Not as beautiful as you,” I said. I handed her the keys. “Let’s go for a drive.”

  She drove out of the neighborhood, then down Jefferson Boulevard to the Baldwin Hills overlook. Back home, she pulled into the driveway and turned off the car. “I’ve got to show this to Carly.”

  “You know she’ll be jealous.”

  “Of course.” She laughed. “That’s why I want to show her.” She leaned over and hugged me. “You’re so, so good to me. I just wish you didn’t have to be gone so much.”

  “It won’t always be this way,” I said.

  “How can it not be?”

  I couldn’t answer her. Instead I said, “I still haven’t told you the best part.”

  “There’s more?”

  “Yeah. You can quit your job.”

  Monica looked at me blankly. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you can. Why would you work when you don’t have to?”

  “I like what I do. I’m helping people. It gives me purpose. Besides, you’re gone all the time. What would I do?”

  “I don’t know. What do rich wives do?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been rich. And I’m not a wife.”

  I frowned. “We still haven’t done anything about that yet?”

  She held up her left hand and playfully examined her ring finger. “Nope. It’s still bare.”

  “I must have overlooked that.” I reached into my pocket and brought out a navy-blue velvet box. She looked at it, then up at me. “What did you do?”

  “Errands,” I said. “Open it.”

  She took the box from me and flipped open its lid. Inside was a white gold band with a large seawater pearl surrounded by small, marquise-cut diamonds. She gasped when she saw it. “I’ve never seen a ring like it.”

  “It’s to always remind you that you’re my pearl of great price.”

  Her eyes welled up with tears. “Charles.”

  “Will you marry me already?”

  She again threw her arms around me. “Yes, yes, yes. A thousand times yes.” After a moment she leaned back. “Put it on me.”

  I pulled the ring from the box and slid it onto her finger.

  “It looks like a flower,” Monica said. “The diamonds look like petals.”

  “The jeweler called the ring a pearl flower,” I said. “It’s a seawater pearl. The diamonds are a tenth of a carat each. There are twelve of them. One for each hour on the clock, which is how often I think of you.”

  “It’s perfect,” she said, hugging and kissing me. When we parted she said, “When should we get married?”

  “We could drive down to the county building right now and get it done.”

  “I want a real wedding,” she said. “But I know it will never happen the way I want. My mother will just get drunk. And she’ll boycott the whole thing if my dad comes.”

  “Then why don’t we just get married in Idaho so your father can be there. We can buy a plane ticket for Carly.”

  A broad smile crossed her face. “I would love that. What about your family?”

  The question made me hurt a little. “We’ll invite them,” I said. “Boise’s not that far from Ogden. Maybe they’ll come.”

  “Of course they will. It’s a big deal.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think I’m part of their world anymore.”

  She looked at me sympathetically. “It’s their loss. You are my entire world. And if we’re all the family we have, then I’m a lucky girl.”

  I reached over and hugged her. “I love you.”

  “I love you with all my heart,” she said, her mood changing back to excitement. “So when are we doing this?”

  “How about December?” I said.

  “Why December?”

  “It’s the only time of the year we don’t do seminars.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “As a dog returns to his vomit . . .” Proverbs 26:11.

  —CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY

  Seminar attendance always fell sharply during the holidays, so four years earlier McKay decided to lean in to the reality and just gave everyone the month off at half pay. Then he went to Vail, Colorado, to ski, coming back full force the first week in January when people were still holding to their new year/new life goals of prosperity.

  Our final two shows of the season were in Salt Lake City and Denver. I finished the second day in Salt Lake at four o’clock, leaving me the rest of the evening free.

  Salt Lake City was only thirty-eight miles south of Ogden, close enough to visit my family. Knowing that Utah was one of our stops, I had been thinking about going home for some time. Monica and I had sent my family a wedding invitation several weeks earlier, and we still hadn’t heard back.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d been back in Utah since I’d left. I suppose I hadn’t visited them before because I didn’t want to face the reality that I was dead to them. But now that I had accepted that reality, I didn’t feel fear, just the pain of rejection. For better or worse, I needed finality. I needed to either fix the relationship or let it go forever.

  I hoped to fix things. I had changed. I wanted my family back—two of them, at least. Mike would now be older than I was when I left. I wanted to see my mother. I wanted her to be proud of what I’d become. I suppose some part of me even wanted to see my father, but for a different reason. I wanted to show him how wrong he was about me—that I wasn’t a loser.

  I rented a Cadillac. The guy taking my order was a little surprised. He said he’d never rented a Cadillac to someone my age before. Maybe I was just trying to prove something, but my father had a love/hate relationship with Cadillacs. He loved the car and hated that he would never own one.

  I rented the most expensive Cadillac they had and drove to Ogden.

  It was already starting to get dark as I drove into my old neighborhood. I felt strangely out of place, perhaps like a soldier returning to a battleground years after the war had ended.

  My childhood home looked quiet and small. For all the pain associated with it, it now looked impotent. The ground was covered by six inches of snow, and tiny specks of snow played in the air.

  My father’s t
ruck was parked up against the side of the house, looking about the same as it had when I left. It had to be almost forty years old by now. It was covered with snow, windshield and all, with about a foot and a half of snow on the cab. If my father was home, he hadn’t left the house for a while.

  I parked the Caddy in front of the house, then trudged through the snow up the walkway to the front door. The porch light was still broken from when I was nine and I’d thrown a rock at it. My father had beaten me with the handle of a garden hoe for that one.

  As I stood at the door, I wondered if I should knock. I checked the door handle. It wasn’t locked, so I slowly opened the door and stepped inside. The front room was dark and cold and smelled of mold. Maybe it had always smelled of mold.

  “Anyone home?”

  No answer.

  “Mom? Mike?”

  “Who’s here?” came my father’s gruff voice.

  Of course he was home. I walked to the door of my parents’ room. My father was lying in bed. At least what was left of him. Like everything else around me, he looked old and small and impotent.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” he said.

  “Where’s Mom?”

  “Who knows where your mom is. She left.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know where. She don’t talk to me.”

  “How long has she been gone?”

  “Why should I answer you? It was your fault she left.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Few weeks after you left, she left. She blamed me for you leaving.”

  “What an injustice. You were such a good father.”

  He looked at me spitefully. “You’re no better than me. We’ll see what kind of father you are.”

  Being compared in any way to him infuriated me. I was now larger than him and twice as muscular. I wanted to beat him the way he used to beat me.

  “You driving a Caddy now?”

  I wondered how he knew that. “I am today.”

  “Look at you, wearing a fancy suit, driving a Caddy. You some big shot now? You come to tell me you better than me?”

  “I came to tell you that I’m getting married.”

  This gave him pause. “Okay. You told me. You can go.”

  “How do I find Mom?”

  “You’re talking to the wrong man.”

  “You always were the wrong man. What are you doing in bed at this hour? Are you sick?”

  He looked at me darkly, then with an evil smile pulled the sheet back. His right foot had been amputated. The leg looked grotesque. The sight of it made me sick to my stomach.

  “What happened?”

  “Diabetes. I had it all along. I give myself shots now. Don’t do much good, though. Doctor says way things are going I’ll be blind soon.”

  “How do you get by? Financially?”

  “That’s none of your business. Never was.”

  In spite of our past, I pitied him. “Do you need anything?”

  He scowled. “You wanna know if I need something. I don’t need nothing from you. You left, you stay gone. You’re not welcome here, boy.”

  “I never was. Good-bye, Dad.”

  Before leaving the house I walked to my old room. I flipped on the light switch but without effect. The bulb was burned out. But I could still see things from the hallway light. It looked exactly the way I remembered it, except smaller.

  The bed, what had been my bed, was covered with all the letters I’d written to Mike and Mom. Even the shoes I’d sent him with my first landscaping check were still in postal wrapping. No wonder my mother and brother had never answered my letters. They didn’t even know where I was. I left the mail on the bed even though there were checks in there.

  “There is no God but me,” I said softly. I walked out of the house without saying anything else to my father.

  “Stay away!” my father shouted after me through the closed front door.

  I started up the Cadillac, revved the engine a few times, and then, for the second time in my life, left a world I hoped to never see again.

  But something my father said followed me back. Something painful. “We’ll see what kind of father you are.”

  Years later, those words came back to haunt me.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Walking through peaceful grounds years after the battle, the soldier can still hear the cannons.

  —CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY

  Before leaving Ogden I stopped at the house of Lois Gant, one of my mother’s Avon clients and best friends. I could hear the slow shuffle of her walker as she came to the door, followed by the sound of her unchaining locks and turning the dead bolt. She slowly opened the door. Even though I’d been gone four years, she looked like she’d aged twenty. Or maybe I’d just forgotten how old she was.

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  “How are you, Mrs. Gant?”

  She looked at me quizzically, as if unsure of who I was. Finally, she said, “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

  “I’m Charles James.”

  Her expression didn’t change. “I don’t know any Jameses.”

  “I’m sorry. You would know me as Charles Gonzales. Fiona’s son.”

  The old lady’s eyes widened. “Oh my, Charles. Of course. It’s been years. Come in. Come in.” She pulled the door open.

  I walked into the small house and shut the door behind me. It was like going back in time. I remembered the old oak hall tree and the framed picture hanging in the foyer of Jesus holding a lamb.

  “Please, come sit down,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t stay long. I need to get back to Salt Lake.”

  “Pity,” she said. “I miss having company. So how’s your mother doing?”

  “That’s why I came by. I haven’t seen my mother since I left. I was hoping you knew where she was.”

  “I thought she went with you.”

  “No. She left after me. I don’t know where. My father doesn’t know where she is.”

  “ ’Course he doesn’t know, the old sinner. She was always too good for him.”

  “I won’t argue that. So you don’t know where she is?”

  “I’m sorry. I haven’t heard a thing from her since she left.”

  “Thank you, anyway. Sorry to bother you.”

  “Oh please, you’re no bother. It’s nice having company. Can I get you a cookie?”

  “No, thank you. I’m okay.”

  “You always had an Oreo when you came by. Sometimes you came by just to get an Oreo. I still have some in the cupboard. Lord knows I don’t eat them. I just have them here for the kids when they come by. But you’re the only one who ever did.”

  “Maybe just one,” I said.

  “All right.” She hobbled off to the kitchen. She returned almost five minutes later holding a single Oreo cookie in a tissue. “There you go,” she said.

  I took the cookie. It looked old and stale. Since nothing else in her house seemed to have changed since I was last there, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the cookie was from the same package as the last cookie she gave me.

  “Thank you,” I said. “And thank you for everything. You were always good to my mother.”

  “That’s the way the Lord Jesus would have us be. You were good kids. But that father of yours is some kind of a sinner, God forgive him. I suppose we’re all some kind of sinners. I hear he cut his foot off.”

  “I just saw him. They amputated it.”

  “Well, the Bible says if your right foot offends you, cut it off. Better than having your whole body cast into hell. I guess that’s what God helped him with.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Good luck finding your mama. Please give her my love.”

  “I will. And thanks again for the cookie.”

  “Anytime,” she said. “Come back soon.”

  As I walked to the car, she locked the door behind me. I tossed the Oreo into a bush.

  Chapter Thirty-Threer />
  Walt Whitman wrote, “We were together. I forget the rest.” I think that pretty much sums up the day.

  —CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY

  Monica and I were married on Friday, December 11, about forty miles south of Boise on the Mountain Home Air Force Base. The wedding was small and perfect in its own way. The ceremony was attended by Monica’s dad; his girlfriend, Eileen; Carly and Ryan from California; and three of Monica’s dad’s coworkers from the base with their wives.

  At the last moment Monica’s mom called and said she was coming, but she never arrived. We never found out what happened. Monica never asked.

  The only attendee from my side, other than my former boss, Ryan, was Steven Vey, McKay’s inventory manager, and his wife, Taylor. I knew Steven but wasn’t close to him. I figured he was there because he was the only one from McKay’s company who was geographically convenient. He lived in Meridian, Idaho, about ten miles west of Boise. McKay apologized profusely for not being there but he had made commitments long before I had announced the wedding.

  The wedding ceremony was held at the base recreation center and performed by the base chaplain, a Mormon high priest from Mountain Home, Idaho. Afterward we had our wedding dinner at her father’s place.

  Monica was unbelievably gorgeous. I guess the only part that was unbelievable was that she was mine. My feelings for her were akin to worship. She wore a strapless, champagne-colored satin wedding dress with lace appliqués (with miniature pearls, of course) and a chapel train.

  Perhaps the only thing more memorable than her beauty were her vows. She looked me in the eyes and said, “I promise to give all of myself to you. I will spend the rest of my life making you happy. You will be my one pearl of great price.”

  “You will be mine,” I said. “Forever.”

  We spent our wedding night at the Grove Hotel in downtown Boise, then flew out at noon the next day from the Boise airport to LAX and directly to Maui for our honeymoon. At McKay’s recommendation we stayed at the Grand Wailea resort hotel.