Corinne and I live in my dream home in New Mexico. A home Linda had built for the retirement she never lived to see. Though I was only 53 when Linda died, I no longer had the heart for my business. So I retired. I did my best to erase the fact that I had lived in Florida since I was a child, and moved to our 21 acres on a mountainside near Santa Fe. I set forth building a handicapped-accessible addition for my aged mother-in-law, who somewhat impatiently waited in a Florida assisted living home for her big move.

Corinne had moved here from Spain four years earlier "to become a cowboy." She lived in a funky century-old house attached to a rickety hotel owned by the Simoni sisters at the center of the New Mexican village of Cerrillos. Quite the opposite of me, during her adult life Corinne had lived on six continents. She spoke five languages. Though she had mounted one gallery exhibit of her art here, her friends mostly knew her as an extraordinary gourmet cook.