on one segment and thought about his father. Dr. Sachs said he should do this often, should think about his parents in a concrete and deliberate fashion. In his mind, he should wrap up each thought and store it away in a special place.
Even the bad ones? Cameron had asked.
Even the bad ones.
Cameron looked down at his shoes. He thought about the fight he’d had with his father that last day. I hate you, you son of a bitch. I hope I never see you again.
Go ahead and hate me, you little shit. Just make sure you don’t screw up in the tournament this weekend.
It’s not like you’ll even be there to see me screw up.
And this was supposed to help? he wondered, and moved to another square. When other kids’ dads were teaching them to ride a two-wheeler, Cameron’s father taught him to drive an electric golf cart. He’d been so little he couldn’t reach the pedals while sitting, so he stood like a streetcar conductor. His first time out, he ran right over a ball washer, leaving the nylon bristles like roadkill in his wake. Dad hadn’t gotten mad, though. He’d laughed and showed Cameron how to putt that day, and ever since, Cameron had sunk his putts with incredible accuracy.
You’re a natural, Dad used to say. Don’t let it fool you. Knowing you have talent only makes you lazy. The truth is, you have to work twice as hard.
Cameron’s father had lived his life that way, working hard, focusing, never falling back on talent alone. Now, Uncle Sean, there was an example of talent alone. It was erratic, winning him the Masters one year and losing him his PGA card the next. He’d changed, though. He was a different sort of golfer now, in control of his game.
Cameron didn’t know which brother he resembled more. A little of both, probably. But mostly, he was himself. He stepped to another square.
A woman pushing a kid in a stroller came out of the elevator. The kid was about Ashley’s age, with a grubby face and a smile that told the world he was happy for no particular reason. Dad used to sit on the floor with Ashley, stacking up blocks so she could knock them down, pretending to throw a tantrum when she did. That used to make her giggle uncontrollably, and Dad just loved that.
Had he known? Cameron had asked himself the question over and over again.
If Dad knew, it hadn’t mattered in the way he’d loved her, that was for sure. And somehow, Cameron knew in his heart that his father’s love for the baby wouldn’t change even if he knew the truth.
It meant the end of his parents’ love for each other, though admittedly that was probably gone well before Ashley came along. His father had fooled around before his mother did—with Jane. He didn’t even bother to hide it. Cameron’s mother took things a step further and had another man’s baby. By then, of course, the whole family was in pieces. Sometimes you go with the wrong person and do the wrong thing because you’re not thinking. Maybe that was what his mom had done.
It seemed like a lousy thing to do, but now they had Ashley. And Ashley was…simply a gift. An undeserved gift to this whole screwed-up family.
Stepping into another square, he saw the toddler in the stroller looking at him and he winked. He started a game of peekaboo behind his hands, but the mother didn’t see, and she wheeled the stroller away. Cameron tried to get his mind off his family, but reminders were everywhere—a magazine rack with a headline about a celebrity custody battle. A flyer advertising divorce for $99. His stomach churned with the fear that Ashley was at risk. If she was taken away, the whole family would collapse, he just knew it. They had survived losing his parents, just barely. But losing the baby…
He wondered how to get advice from a lawyer without letting on that there was a problem. Could he just go to some guy’s office and say, “This is a purely hypothetical situation, but if a kid is being raised by her uncle because her parents are deceased, and then it turns out he’s not her biological uncle after all, will that change who gets to raise the kid?”
If that was the law, then the law was wrong, he thought. As soon as he turned eighteen, he’d vote out the fools who had legislated