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childhood on the rough South Side of Chicago. He loved to say his parents were so poor he had holes in his shoes growing up. The button-down shirts and loafers he wore now were all chosen by Mom. It didn’t matter to him what he wore.
    He was an engineer who ran his own business designing and installing screening rooms and commercial theaters. He’d started the company mostly because he bridled when anyone gave him an order.
    With his thick hair and his Marlboro Man swagger, he was the type of dad who was noticed by all the ladies. I’d heard one of the moms at drop-off ask, “Who’s that?” while throwing her shoulders back with a big smile. I’d shot back, “That’s my dad .”
    Our house sat at the highest point on a hill overlooking a golf course in a little suburb of Los Angeles called Porter Ranch. My parents had lived downtown when my sister was born, and they’d crammed her into their small apartment. Before long they realized they needed more space, and perhaps some distance from Mom’s parents and sisters, who lived two blocks away.
    All of the homes near them in neighborhoods Mom liked, like Hancock Park, were far out of their newlywed price range. So they’d hunted deeper and deeper into the Valley until they found a four-bedroom house they could afford. Dad loved to tell the story about how, by the time they got all the way out to Porter Ranch, there were only two houses still for sale in our division of tract homes: the pretty little model home at the bottom of the hill that was small but smartly trimmed, and the big expensive one at the very top of the mountain.
    The developer wanted forty thousand dollars for the model, but Dad got him to fork over the crown jewel for just four thousand more. It had already more than doubled in value since we’d lived there, and we weren’t selling anytime soon, no matter how many open houses Mom dragged Tiffany and me to on the weekend. The white stucco façade, Spanish tile entry, and brown shingle roof suited Dad and us girls just fine, even if Mom was permanently aspirational.
    When my parents had recovered from the down payment, they put in a rolling green front lawn to meet the long black tar driveway, creating arguably the nicest home for blocks around. The house itself sat back on the lot for privacy, and the sweeping backyard offered a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree view of all the unsettled territory to the north and east of our development. The hills just beyond our community rolled on for miles, unspoiled by other homes or any sign of life. We seemed to live on the very edge of Los Angeles, and I imagined that somewhere way off in the distance lay Nevada, or maybe China.
    The cliff our house sat on dropped straight down to the twelfth fairway directly below, and Mom lived in fear that the wind would blow one of us off the edge, tumbling hundreds of feet down the hill. But it never happened. Tiffany and I often made plans to scale the brush down the cliff rather than driving or walking all the way around on the road, but it was impossible if you weren’t a mountain goat. Coyotes lived in the undeveloped area to the north and ventured into the brush on our cliff after sunset, eating more than one of our cats for dinner over the years. Anytime a cat didn’t show up for a few days, we’d know he’d turned into a meal.
    Dad put the silver-blue Pontiac into reverse and backed down the driveway, then coasted out of the cul-de-sac. It was only a ten-minute drive to school, but at this rate, the trip would take three days. My father never hurried for anybody.
    “How long does it take you to get to the office after you drop me off?” I asked. I had been to his workplace before and played with the Xerox machine in the office area where a dozen or so people worked at desks. The office part, where they designed and sold sound and projection equipment, connected to a huge warehouse filled with inventory. The complex seemed very far away from our home. I figured