“If you are ready? Or do you want to get your jacket?” I asked.“I am ready, and I did not bring one this trip,” she said as she backed up to l...t me out and into the hall.“Then shall we?” I asked, offering her my arm as any gentleman would. She smiled and placed her hand in the crook of my elbow, playing up the role. We negotiated our way into the corridor and out of the building. She told me about her trip down and the morning of meetings she had managed to endure. She was looking forward to. I noticed that she had been filing her nails every time I woke up. Of course with my mind drug free, I realized that her nails didn't grow. "What's the nail file all about?" I asked.With a blindingly fast motion, she threw the file like a samurai warrior would throw a star. The nail file buried itself in the drywall across from her. "Shit, you know I'm going to have to pay for that?" Oh Maxine, Jennifer is not going to let you pay for any of this. I can tell she is scheming as you lay there. She had a lot of experience, in her own mind, of sticking with things. Watching Bob drive away on the Babe Bike had been the hardest thing she could ever remember going through, with the exception of not knowing if her parents were going to be alive or not when she got to them. But she had survived that. And she had survived keeping things in order until her parents got home.She viewed having to keep the household going as the thing that had saved her sanity after Bob left. It had kept her mind. “Yes,” and now he smiled.Well, I didn’t have to take the bus this time, and I didn’t have the rich guy’s PI to be giving me a ride either. I guess Mister Hanson had finally gotten the message that I didn’t want any of his shit or help or money or any of it, finally.’I did wonder about my daughter every once in a while; she’d be twenty-five now. I knew she wasn’t mine anymore, but in my heart she was, even though I had never even met her, not really. I wonder if my traitorous ex had ever told.