Brady, taking a break from his university work, found himself contemplating the years since he had left Wellmore and made his way through college and graduate school. No one, not even Mimi and her father, knew that over those years he had become famous. Well, not in.a personal way since he was rabid about his privacy, but he had worked on research for a new type of car battery that was now widely touted as the answer to the problem with electric vehicles; making a battery with more storage and less time at a charging station.

He was a very wealthy man. Very wealthy. What continually astounded Brady, though, was how little that money meant to him. He had grown up in honky-tonks and ratty hotels and with few personal items. His toys and especially his treasured books, had been gleaned from church donation cellars and found left behind by people in hotel rooms and other places. When he first signed over the rights for his successful research to the conglomerate who was manufacturing the batteries, he looked at the amount of money he was getting and it made no sense to him. What in the world did people DO with such a vast amount of money? He had been a twenty-nine year old PhD with a university job he loved, drove a junker that Aunt Mattie had helped him buy when he got his first driver’s license and lived in a one room apartment near the campus so he could walk to work.

Now he was one of those tech-y millionaires, well billionaires if he was honest, and it meant nothing to him. He knew he needed to figure out the finances and how to use the money for the good of humanity, so to speak, but he was absolutely clueless about where to even begin such a project, so for now the money was invested and just kept growing.

So here he was in Aunt Mattie’s little cottage that he kept beautifully maintained, and he was content. He sipped on a small tumbler of excellent bourbon, stared into the fire, and contemplated how the hell he could be so rich and still feel there was something he just wasn’t “getting” about life, and he knew he finally had to actually face the boogeymen of his life as a child if he ever wanted to get to happy.