Prologue
Most days, she did her exercise at noon and relaxed in the pool afterward. Floating on her front, head in the water, thinking. The Santa Barbara sun was hot on her naked back as she drifted over to the black granite infinity edge facing the ocean and rested her head in the half inch of water flowing past. It made a very small burbling noise. She shoved back and turned over, eyes closed, working her hands to move herself about. This is my thinking moment, she thought, just floating and letting the sun warm me.
Chapter 1
His heart attack was at work, and he was in the hospital cardiac unit after a short ambulance ride. Thirty years of climbing the executive ladder were over. They let him out of the hospital in a week, and she took her father home.
He looked at her and said, "Allie, my heart is in bad shape. Too much stress for too long. Surgeon said if I want to live, I have to take early retirement and go somewhere I can have a healthy existence."
He stretched out on the sofa and closed his eyes. She sipped a glass of wine to quiet her nerves and didn't like what she saw. Ralph Jenkins, computer industry pioneer, betrayed by a body to which he had not paid enough attention.
He opened his eyes and stared at her. "What am I going to do, honey? I don't know anything except computers." She walked to him and knelt. Taking his hand, she kissed a bristly cheek and said, "Dad, I am going to take a leave and we will work something out. You are not to worry. Right now, you need to rest and let your body heal."
He was fifty-three and she was twenty-eight, an only child of a marriage that dissolved long ago. She still saw her mother one day a year, in London. They didn't know how to relate to each other, so were polite and distant. The tie that bound them together was very slim indeed.
Ralph slipped into a nap, but she stayed on the floor, holding his hand. Other than gender, they were much alike. Smart, introverted, aggressively self-sufficient. Determined to make some kind of mark on the world. His contributions to compiler design and optimization were well known. Growing up, he had never encouraged her about computers and she followed her muse into European literature and languages. His assignments abroad propelled her into other cultures and other social milieu. She was independent from an early age and never thought of herself as a Daddy's girl. But each opportunity to go on her own, starting with university years, had passed by, untaken.
She got up from his side and went to the guest bedroom to change. Her current job was in Paris, translating and editing technical publications for a lab directed by one of her father's friends. They had been there together until recently, when the company asked him to replace the head of an R&D facility in North Carolina that had gotten into trouble. As soon as she heard he was in the hospital, she had packed a suitcase and flown to him. She looked at the meager contents of her bag. She needed shorts and there weren't any. In fact, there was nothing comfortable to deal with the heat and humidity of a North Carolina summer. They had to get away, she realized.
Gently touching her shoulder, he woke her from a jet lag nap. "Hi, would you like to get some lunch?" They walked to the car, hand in hand. His gait was improving. They went to the small dining room of his golf club and had salads, looking out at the championship course filled with men in carts. He played golf poorly and told his associates, laughing, "Golf is the responsibility of the marketing department."
He looked at her and said, "Allie, I don't want you to wreck your life looking after me. There is plenty of money to pay for help." His eyes had some of their fire back.
She stared back and replied, "We've been together for twenty-eight years and I am not abandoning you. This climate is not healthy. And it's worse up north. What about California?"
He responded, "We could be snowbirds, the Caribbean in the winter, a New England cottage in the summer."
He had fine hands with long fingers. She worked his fingers and traced his palm with her nail.
"Let's not make permanent decisions now. I have a school friend whose family lives in Santa Barbara. There are a lot of computer people there. The UCSB department is good. Perhaps they would make you an adjunct and you could keep your hand in." She squeezed it and smiled at him, "I don't think my famous father is ready to go cold turkey on his life's work."
They stood to go and he gave her a special hug. "Allie, you are such a boost to my morale. Lying there last week in the ICU with an oxygen mask, I thought I was a goner."
She tightened her arm around his waist. "Not yet, dad. Not yet."
He improved every day and saw the doctor once a week. The company was being very generous, but had their own heart doctor check him over. The verdict was the same, too much heart damage to return to a senior executive position. He said, "Your EKG looks awful, Ralph. Take the pension and disability and go someplace relaxing."
He was intrigued by Allie's suggestion about Santa Barbara, but the doctor would not let him travel. "Maybe in a month, Ralph."
Allie volunteered to fly out and reconnoitre. He worried about her job. "They are being very nice, dad. A few more weeks will be ok." She didn't tell him she had already resigned.
In the usual way, her friend's mother had a real estate agent in mind, and Allie spent an afternoon learning the highs and lows of Santa Barbara homes. Higher was better, with nicer views and less fog. And more expensive, of course. Toward the end of the day, the woman said, "I'm going to take you to a place that some friends are going to put on the market soon. It is too much house for them now and they are moving to a nice retirement home at the other end of the city. If you are seriously interested, I can arrange a private transaction with a reduced commission."
The house was up a steep road, on a pad carved out of the hill. A modern design with lots of glass and strong horizontal lines. On the south side was a gorgeous pool that dominated the patio and had incredible views of the ocean and the Channel Islands in the far distance.
The agent said, "Three thousand square feet, three bedrooms, three baths, everything in the kitchen updated last year. A fabulous infinity pool." The owners were cordial and gracious, and not ready to talk about a sale date or a price.
On the way back to her hotel, the agent told Allie that the property was very attractive in the local market and an offer would need to be close to three million. "The husband was in commercial real estate in Chicago before he retired, and thinks he still knows about these things." They smiled at each other and Allie asked what was needed to get on the inside track when the house came to market.
"If you are in a position to make an all cash offer, we may not need an escrow, and he would like that. Told me that he always did his deals on a handshake."
She had dinner with her friend's family and picked up all the local gossip. They said that the neighborhood of the glass house, above the Bowl, was considered very desirable and if she and Ralph had that much money, they would not regret buying it.
Knowing her father was meticulous about these things, Allie used the time on the flight east to make a careful sheet of notes about her real estate tour, describing various places, the price/altitude ratio, and the virtues of the last house she had seen. Because it wasn't listed, there were no photographs, and she realized she should have taken some with her smartphone camera. And wondered whether her father would commit three million to a house he hadn't seen.
