Chapter 1

Coincidence is an astonishing thing if you take the time to stop and think about it. Most of us don't. Oh, we think about it fleetingly, as it touches our lives now and then, but we don't actually give it the honor it is due. Some people think there isn't any such thing as coincidence, and that everything is preordained. They would call coincidence fate. I'm not one of those people.

Coincidence is neither good nor bad, in and of itself. The results can be either, of course, but you can't blame that on coincidence.

Take, for example the coincidence of my fiancé being involved in a fender bender with an up an rising NFL football star. Having been to a party and had a few drinks, he poured on the charm to talk her out of calling the police. She, it turns out, is susceptible to charm laid on by a jock.

Everybody said it was good I found out before the wedding ... like that would make me feel better or something.

Or, there is the coincidence that, when I left Chicago to get away from my ex and her new boyfriend, and was playing that game where you open an atlas and just put your finger down someplace, my finger landed on Hot Springs South Dakota.

Hot springs seemed like as good a place as any to just start over. It was close to things like Mount Rushmore and Sturgis. I'd never seen Mount Rushmore and, while I didn't own a bike, I might some day, and Sturgis would be right there, up the road. I'd never even ridden a bike, but I was feeling a little crazy-brash, so who knew what might happen. That gives you some idea of the mood I was in.

A little research told me there were about as many people in the national cemetery located in Hot Springs as there were walking the streets. That was fine with me because it meant having to get to know fewer people than had attended my high school. Its economic basis was tourism, and that was fine too, because all those people would show up once and never come back. That also tells you a bit about the mood I was in.

I was just looking for someplace to hide for a while, where nobody would know me and I could be something other than a certified public accountant. Tourist traps are always looking for workers, and being dirt poor fit with the way I was feeling just about then. There was also a big wild mustang ranch located there, and I had fantasies of magically becoming a cowboy, riding the range and living clean.

Hmmm ... shouldn't they be called horseboys on a horse ranch? Who knows? Like most men who go off half cocked in pursuit of healing a broken heart I was a dreadfully uneducated and unprepared man.

Of course I have to mention another man named Paul who was living my fantasy, working with horses every day, and who was sitting on top of one which made him the highest point around during a thunder storm. It was coincidence that put him right there, where the lightning bolt would strike, killing both him and his horse.

The string of coincidences wasn't over yet, though. It was coincidence that my radiator lasted precisely long enough to get me just twenty miles short of Hot Springs, and that the first people to drive by were Paul's widow and daughter.

Up in that part of the world, people stop for folks in trouble. It's as unlike Chicago as it's possible to be. And it wasn't just because they had their dog with them, which might have made them feel safer.

Lynne Simmons and her daughter Jill were something of a shock to my system. Lynne was one of those women who looks a little older than she really is, because she spends so much time outdoors. She had a windblown kind of look to her. But at the same time, her body just didn't match the impression of being older. Her face made her look like she might be in her forties, but her body said she was Jill's big sister. It was the kind of body that draws a man's eyes like a magnet. She was wearing tight jeans that were faded almost white in places, and a checkered shirt that was packed full of femininity. Wisps of sun bleached hair fell from under a cowboy hat that sat over pale blue eyes that didn't look at me suspiciously at all. She later told me that was because their dog, Buster, had given me his seal of approval. She trusted that dog's judgment.

Jill, on the other hand, was thirteen and looked exactly like thirteen-year-old girls do everywhere. She was kind of lanky and gawky, with a pony tail. She was slim, but had fresh young curves that were well on the way to becoming lush, like her mother's, some day. Jill was one of those girls who promised to be a looker in a few years. What made her a shock to me was how willing she was to talk to me as Lynne drove me to Bud's Auto Repair, in Hot Springs.

A lot of thirteen-year-old girls are uninterested in strangers, and in strange men in particular. Not Jill. She practically interrogated me, asking dozens of questions about where I was from, and what Chicago was like, and why I left. Her mother finally barked at her to stop being a "nosey ninny." I swear that's that she said.

Jill was undeterred.

"I'm just trying to learn something, mom. Aren't you always harping on that ... telling me to read books and all that?"

"There's a difference between learning things and snooping into other people's business," said Lynne.

"I don't mind," I said. "Back in Chicago a girl like Jill wouldn't even talk to me."

Lynne darted me a look as she steered the pickup down the road. Jill was sandwiched between us. Buster was happily letting the wind rush by in the bed of the truck. It was fairly close quarters in the cab. But it was Jill who spoke.

"Why's that?" she asked. "Are you some kind of sex offender?"

I was impressed with Lynne's ability to recover her equilibrium and get the truck back on the highway so quickly.

"What?" asked Jill, sounding injured. "I've heard about registered sex offenders. There's even a place you can go on the Internet to see where they live and stuff. We don't have any in Hot Springs, though."

That was Jill. She was - and I say it fondly - a motor mouth who saw no problem with saying exactly what was on her mind, whatever that might be. She wasn't trying to push anybody's buttons. She was just honest and curious.

Her curiosity (and probably my desire for somebody to feel sorry for me) was how my situation came out. I told them I had set off into the big wide world to find my fortune, just like some boy in a fairy tale. Jill thought it sounded cool. Lynne thought I was crazy.

"You were a CPA making good money and you threw all that away because a woman broke your heart?" she asked, shaking her head. "There are more women in the world, you know."

"I can't believe you said that!" said Jill.

And THAT is how I found out that Lynne's husband, who was Jill's father, had died when he was struck by lightning when Jill was six. Jill had been trying to get her mother to go on dates in the last couple of years, probably because Jill was at the age to think about boys, and dates, and all that sort of thing. Lynne was resisting.

"Let's not go into this again," she sighed, as her daughter ratted her out to a complete stranger. "I told you, I still have feelings for your father."

Jill turned her curious face towards me. "Do you still have feelings for your girlfriend?"

I felt my heart wrench in my chest. I was really feeling sorry for myself.

"I guess I do," I said. "I don't want to, but I do." Lynne had helped me out, picking me up like that, so I tried to help her out by passing along some of my wisdom to her daughter. "So I guess I know how your mother feels."

It backfired on me. Maybe on Lynne too, because Jill slumped.

"I hope I never fall in love, then."

At Bud's Auto Repair there was actually nobody named Bud. I found this out when I tried to be friendly and asked jovially if Bud was around. I later found out there had been no Bud since 1953, when Bud retired and sold his business. There had been four owners since then, none of whom felt the need to rename the business. The current owner was named Randy, and he said he'd have my car towed to his shop.