On November 16, 1993, at the age of twenty-six, with a net worth of 1.9 million dollars, I retired from work. I was free.
I didn't spare a thought about the clients I was abandoning. After all, those assholes had talked to the feds about me, had shown them records. I could understand that. But not a single one of them, not one out of the forty or so the feds talked to had bothered to give me a little call and let me know that the FTC and the FBI was sniffing at my ass. Fuck them. They'd paid me their money and I'd advised them well. Our relationship ended right there.
Darla was another matter. The closing down of Stevens Consulting left her without a job. I'd lured her away from a job that she'd hated by offering her a handsome salary. This had been in the days before sexual harassment became the issue that it is today and Darla had been expected to offer special services to her previous boss as a condition of continued employment. Naturally she'd been prepared to offer those services to me when I hired her and had been quite surprised when I didn't request them. I had changed her view of the world as she knew it.
She became a very loyal employee, a secretary that other businessmen and women could only dream about. She also became a friend during the many hours we spent alone in the office. She was very attractive and I can't say that I hadn't enjoyed looking at her nyloned legs on occasion as she typed on her computer or answered the phone, but I never once considered bedding her. I told her the news of the closure of Stevens Consulting and she broke into tears.
Her tears dried up when I gave her her severance package. I gave her a check for twenty thousand dollars and a lifelong offer to consult in investment for her free of charge. If she played her cards right she would never have to work again and she knew it. She gave me a huge hug, a kiss on the cheek, and an unspoken offer to continue the affections in my office. I gave her an unspoken denial and we parted.
Though Nina was still locked in the rigors of residency, I had nothing but time on my hands now. Using my computer I could monitor and adjust our investments, dispense advice to my few clients: Maggie and Mike, Jack and Mary, Mom and Dad, Darla, Tracy; by checking my computer and spending less than two hours per week before it. Our net worth had reached the point where it could only get bigger as long as I kept shifting it from rising stock to rising stock. I began to spend a little on self-pleasure.
During the last two years of Nina's residency I learned to fly an airplane and purchased a Cessna that could hold four people. I learned to sail on Puget Sound, even venturing into the open water of the Pacific Ocean and learning the finer points of open sea navigation and handling. I learned to play golf, bringing my handicap from an initial twenty-six all the way down to a nine.
I learned to hunt for deer and elk, my father-in-law taking on the responsibility of teaching me. I purchased a Winchester 30-06 and fired it at a range until I could hit a target the size of a quarter from two hundred yards. My first trip to the Idaho panhandle in October I brought down a four point buck. The next October Jack and I climbed into my Cessna and I flew us to the most remote airstrip in Northern Wyoming that we could find. We spent a week camping out, drinking beer, and basking in maleness. We both bagged an elk on that trip and had to arrange for the meat to be shipped home via ground transport because it's sheer weight would have overloaded my plane.
I kept myself amused by my many pursuits during those days, never recklessly spending money, but gratefully abandoning my miserly ways at the same time. We remained in our simple three-bedroom house, our neighbors never knowing or suspecting that we were multi-millionaires. In fact, since they knew Nina was a doctor in residency, they kind of figured that I was some sort of unemployed loser that had latched onto her. I never bothered to correct this impression.
As the end of her residency began to come into view we began to talk about what was next. Where we would go, what we would do. It wasn't a long discussion. Both of us longed to leave Seattle behind. We hated the weather, we hated the bustle of living in such a large city. We both wanted to go home.
Three things happened in the last six months of her residency. The first was that Nina began looking for a position in a Spokane emergency room. The trauma center expressed immediate interest in her and the employment process began. I flew her back and forth for interviews three times and she was offered the position. Her starting date was to be two weeks after she passed her final boards.
The second thing occurred directly because of the first. I began to scout out locations for our future home. We had long talks about our dream house during this time. I assured her that we could afford whatever it was that we came up with and that I would make it happen. We both listed what we wanted and compared the lists. Eventually we came up with a master plan. I searched out and eventually found a good architect. He flew with me to Spokane and we began scouting out land for sale in the region. It didn't take long to find exactly the plot we were looking for. I started the legal process of purchasing the land while my architect began the process of planning the house we wanted. Construction began three months before we were to leave Seattle.
The third thing that happened had nothing to do with houses and jobs. Well, almost nothing. Nina and I had several long discussions and finally, two months before we returned to Spokane, a month after our new house had begun the process of being built, Nina threw away her birth control pills. October 18, 1995, the day she started her first day as a staff physician in the emergency room of the trauma center, she was two months pregnant.
We spent our first six months back in Spokane living in a house we'd rented in the River View section while construction on our dream-house was underway. Nina swoll up with pregnancy, her breasts edging into the territory of the C-cup for the first time in her life. She continued to work and I continued to oversee the construction, making sure everything was just right.
Our house was being built on four acres of shoreline property on Lake Pend Oreille. It was a very rural part of the lake, accessible only by a twisting, two-lane road. Our land was covered with evergreens and brush. No water or electricity ran there and we had to arrange to have it; as well as a septic system; put in. The location was exactly forty-two miles from the Spokane City Limits; forty-eight miles from the trauma center. Nina assured me that she didn't mind the commute. It would take her just under an hour both ways but since her schedule was only three twelve hour shifts one week and four the next, it wasn't a terrible hardship. After the horrors of internship the schedule, including the commute, seemed almost serene.
I was able to watch the land change from forbidding forest to a nice plot overlooking the lake. The house itself is nearly six thousand square feet. It has seven bedrooms, five bathrooms, a large family room, two dens, a game room, and a wine cellar. It has a built-in swimming pool that looks like a tropical lagoon (Nina's idea). It has a tennis court and a par three golf hole (my ideas). It has a large, redwood deck in the back with access from the master bedroom and the living room. The deck contains a covered hottub capable of holding eight adults in comfort. Forty-eight steps lead downward from the deck to a private dock and a huge boathouse. These days the boathouse contains a forty-foot cabin cruiser, a ski-boat, a small bass boat, and a couple of jet-skis. Real water enthusiasts are we Stevens'.
One month before Nina's due date the finishing touches were finally completed and we moved in. We kept up with tradition and made love before the boxes were even unpacked.
Laura Stevens entered the world on June 18, 1996, a tiny, red-faced infant, nearly bald, that looked so much like her mother that it was difficult to believe that I had anything to do with the conception.