Grady was a simple man. He liked to hike, he liked his wife, and he liked his work. He merely tolerated their kids. Everyone had assured him that he’d eventually like them when they became little people instead of pink blobs, but they’d been wrong. He could be occasionally persuaded to do activities adjacent to hiking, such as rock climbing or camping, and did his best to avoid everything else.

Luckily, he was a wealthy man. He made enough to create college accounts for the kids (Lauren’s idea), pay for their house, buy all the hiking gear he could want, and cover the basic needs of life with plenty leftover to pay people to do the things he didn’t want to. He had a housekeeper, an accountant, and a nanny who was settling in as a personal assistant now that the kids required less attention. Lauren ran all the errands.

So Grady worked as long as Lauren would let him, hiked at least twice a week, and then occupied himself with whatever Lauren was doing the rest of the time. She liked a lot more things than he did, but he’d gotten good at pretending. She never noticed that he didn’t like their children these days, which meant no more therapy. He’d gotten tired of paying someone to fix his problems.

He was used to handling problems himself. After all, you only get promoted when there are vacancies above you and he didn’t like waiting for them to naturally open.

He didn’t like doing it, but found it satisfying. It gave him a reason to hike someplace new. Leave the bits where the animals would find them and let nature handle the rest. The evidence was always gone in a week and he didn’t even need to pay anyone. Simple.