Seeds of Anger

A renegade botanist hunted by eco-terrorists takes a brilliant high school junior to be his protege’. The boy’s police officer father has been killed in the line of duty and his mother is dying.

SEEDS OF ANGER

(A short novel)

By

Robert Cherny

A Club Lighthouse Publishing E-Book

ISBN 978-1-926839-42-4 

All rights reserved

Copyright © 2010 Robert Cherny

Photography © 2010 Robert Cherny

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely co-incidental.

For information contact:

[email protected]

A Club Lighthouse Mainstream Fiction Edition

Published in Canada

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

This novel has been prepared in two formats. The PDF is rich with full colour photographs. The second format is straight text only without the photographs.

Even the PDF format leaves something to be desired in terms of the quality of the photographs. The original un-cropped high resolution JPG images are available either printed or on a compact disc from bbphotoworks.etsy.com.

I hope that in whichever format you choose to read this book that you enjoy it.

Photo Credits:

The photo of the O-2 at the beginning of Chapter Nine was provided courtesy of the Cessna Aircraft Company. It is used with permission.

All other photos were either taken by the author or his wife Betsy. The majority of these were taken in Central and South Florida.

Bob Cherny

Kissimmee, Florida, Summer 2010

Chapter One

Silent tears trailed down Sonny’s face as he watched the movers work on the house across the dirt road from where he sat on the front porch of the old “Florida Cracker” style house he had grown up in. Someone was moving in over there. He knew he was too old to be crying like a baby. His friends, what few he had, were chasing girls and getting ready for college, but what was left of his life was falling apart in front of him. His worst fears were coming true. When Sonny and his mother had broken up the twenty acres his grandfather had bought for his new bride half a century ago into five acre lots, Sonny had known in his heart that some day they would get the land back. The separation was temporary and he could live with it. Or so he thought. They needed the money. His dad was gone and his mom was sick and he was too young to work. All they had was the land and since they could not farm it, they had to lease it out

When the developer had leased the three lots other than the one Sonny’s house stood on so he could build houses, Sonny believed it was temporary and he could live with it. They needed the money.

When the developer had started to build the first house, Sonny believed it was temporary and he could live with it, although he did secretly wish that it would burn down and the developer would give up. But he knew they needed the money and as long as the developer was developing, they would have income.

The developer abandoned the partially built house when the bottom fell out of the housing market and the property reverted back to them. Sonny was thrilled. They had their land back, but they still needed the money.

Then a real estate agent had stopped by asking about the empty, partially built house. He said he had a client willing to lease the house even unfinished as it was. Not only that, but he wanted the other two vacant lots as well. Sonny did not know what to think, but they needed the money and high dry lakefront property even this far away from town was hard to come by.

Sonny’s mother had signed the lease. The new tenant had paid the first year’s lease in cash and had set up an escrow account with a local attorney for the second year. Sonny was surprised by that, but the agent had said it proved he was honest. To Sonny’s way of thinking, it proved the opposite. Only someone up to no good would pay in cash. Why would someone pay in cash for that much land? Still, the money was a good thing. They were guaranteed that they would have enough money to live on for two years. Maybe after that they would get the land back. He could hope.

Sonny heard the screen door open and close. His mother sat beside him on the porch swing. He looked at her. She was pale. Her hands trembled as she settled on the swing. It was not a good day.

“How are you feeling, Mom?” Sonny looked at the folds in her gown where her breasts had been and sighed.

“Not one of my better days,” his mother said softly. She stared at the movers across the road for a moment. She looked at Sonny and sighed. She hated giving up the land as much as he did. “At least the rent will cover our bills for a while. Without my insurance from work and your Dad's pension, we would have run out of money long ago.”

Sonny tried to be brave and said, “Tomorrow will be a better day.”

“We can hope, Sonny. We can hope.”

That had been one his father’s favourite expressions. Whatever resoluteness Sonny might have had in the face of his mother's illness dissolved. Whenever his mother repeated the saying that Sonny’s father had used so often, Sonny thought about his father gunned down in a madman’s shopping mall shooting spree. “Do you miss him? Do you miss Dad?”

Sonny’s mother stifled a sob. “Every day. I miss him when I wake up in the morning and he’s not there. I miss him when we sit to dinner and his chair is empty. I miss him when I go to bed at night and I know he won’t slide between the sheets trying not to wake me, but knowing he does every time. Most of all I miss him after my treatments. When I was pregnant with you and sick so much he would hold me and comfort me and remind me how much he loved me.”

“Why did he have to die?” Sonny whimpered as any semblance of strength he might have had flowed away.

“If he had not stood up that day, how many other people would have died? He did what he had to do. You know that.”

“I know, it’s part of being a policeman. But why him?”

“There's no answer. We’ve been over this again and again. Sonny, you have to move on. You need to stand on your own.”

“And why did you get sick? Is God mad at us? Did we do something wrong? Are we being punished for some sin?”

“Sonny, don’t do this to me. I need you to be strong like your father.” She choked on the words. “Your father would want you to be strong.”

“But I’m not strong. Look at me. I look like a skeleton. My joints stick out like I have no muscles at all. I can’t play sports. I’m too clumsy and I can’t lift anything because I’m too weak. I’m not like Dad, I can’t be Dad. I’m sorry.” Sonny put his face in his hands and cried.

“Sonny, what did your Dad always tell you? Strength is not in your body. It’s in your mind.”

“I know, but I can’t be like that. I’m not strong.”

She looked at him for a second and then said, “The characters in those books you read all the time, are they strong?”

“Some are.”

“Are they strong physically or mentally?”

“Some of both.”

“Sonny, you’re smart. You’re one of the smartest kids in school. Can’t you see how important that is?”

“Mom, school’s easy. This is hard.”

“I know, but you have to use that strong brain of yours to get you through it.”

“I’ll do my best.”

The movers closed the doors on the shipping container that dominated the yard across the road. Once he had verified his load, the driver attempted to pull out without hitting the big old oak tree that loomed over the corner of the driveway. The turn was tight and the driver had to make several manoeuvres before he could get the container on its trailer out to the graded road. For fifteen minutes Sonny and his mother sat silently watching the driver and the two movers who helped him extricate the container from the driveway. When they heard the truck accelerate on the hard packed, unpaved roadway beyond the end of their property Sonny turned to his mother and said, “Did the real estate agent tell you where this guy was from?”

“No.”

“Must have come from overseas someplace.”

“Why do you say that?”

“His stuff came in a sea container and not in a moving van. If he came from the US, Canada or Mexico he would have trucked his stuff here. That container was on a ship.”

“I see those containers on trains and trucks all the time.”

“I know, but that’s because they came off a ship.”

“If you say so.”

“Why would someone bring their stuff from overseas to live here? There is nothing here than anyone who has been anywhere would want to live here for.”

“Yes, there is and someday you will see that.”

Sonny looked at his mother for a moment. The late afternoon light made her look even paler than when she had first sat down. “Mom, would you like me to make dinner?”

“If you think you can do it.”

“Mom, I can handle mac and cheese.”

“Yes, please. I would love for you to make dinner.”

Chapter Two

Over the course of the next week, delivery trucks came and went from the house across the road. The carpenters and painters were first, followed by the carpet people. Sonny watched the kitchen and bath cabinets being delivered one day as he returned from school. He could sense the urgency with which the house's new occupant was making it habitable. Sonny could see lights on late into the evening and hear the sounds of construction almost until the time he went to bed.

Furniture began to arrive the second week and by the end of that week, Sonny thought the house was done, except that at the beginning of the third week, a truck pulled into the driveway towing a massive generator. The driver and his helper mounted the generator on concrete blocks and removed the wheels. It was true that in thunderstorm season and when there were hurricanes, this part of the county, so far away from the population centres, was usually the first to lose power and the last to get it back. Some of the other people around had generators, but that generator was huge.

The monstrous generator made sense to Sonny in an “over-kill” sort of way, but when the electrical contractor showed up and stayed for several days, Sonny's curiosity almost overwhelmed him. In spite of his burning desire to investigate this immense electrical installation, he maintained his distance. Sonny was not sure if he wanted to know what was going on over there, but his curiosity burned. He did assuage his drive to learn about this anomaly across the street by bringing a table to the front porch so he could do his school homework out there. Sonny prided himself on being a good student. He wasn’t the school's best student, but he was in the top ten, and that would be good enough to get him into the Florida state college of his choice, if he made up his mind to go at all.

The electrical contractor finished and left. A satellite television and internet provider’s installer spent a day putting dishes on the roof. Most people only put up one dish. This guy put up two. Sonny assumed one was for the television and one was for the internet since they only had dial up access this far out in the county.

A large truck arrived once the electrical contractor was done and delivered what Sonny recognized as sophisticated and expensive electronic science laboratory equipment. Some of the names on the boxes he recognized from the labs at the university where he had gone to summer school. His mother had sent him away to a special summer program for high school students at the university medical centre to help him get over his father’s death. It had helped, but it was not enough.

Three days later a crew arrived to dig out and lay a huge concrete pad in an open spot away from the trees. The following day the electrician returned and ran power from the generator to a post next to the slab.

A month passed as Sonny sat every afternoon doing his homework on the front porch watching his new neighbour industriously make his new house ready. Sonny’s curiosity and suspicions grew with each passing day. Sonny wrestled with himself over his suspicions about his new neighbour. Perhaps he had read too many thrillers where the villain was someone totally unexpected. Then there were the stories where the protagonist had gone into hiding for his own safety. There was simply too much going on across the street for Sonny to let it be.

On the last Saturday before Sonny’s junior year final exams, he was eating breakfast with a book open on the table when he heard a knock on the door. His mother’s condition had improved considerably in the last several weeks now that this run of treatments was over. She answered the door.

“Mr. Donizetti, please come in.”

“Mrs. Taylor, how are you feeling this morning? You look ever so much better than when we first met. Have your treatments finished?”

“Yes, they have, for now.”

“Well then, we shall pray for your complete recovery.”

“Thank you.”

“Is your son here? I wish to speak to both of you.”

“He is in the kitchen.”

Sonny stood as he heard the foot steps approach. He turned to face the door. A man Sonny judged to be in his fifties with thinning grey hair entered the kitchen. Sonny recognized him. He was the man from across the street who had inflamed his curiosity. He looked even larger up close than he did from across the road. He was a big man. The man had an athletic look to him with broad shoulders and muscles visible through his tee shirt. This did not look like the sort of man that would have an electron microscope delivered to his house. He looked like a mountain climber or a safari guide.

The man held out his hand and said, “I am Thomas Carlos Donizetti. I have moved in across the road, but you know that. I have seen you watch me from the porch while you did your homework.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Donizetti. I am Andrew Jackson Taylor the third, but everyone calls me ‘Sonny’.”

“Then you should call me ‘Thomas’ if we are to be friends.” He pronounced it as “T’mas” with the accent on the end. Thomas graciously took Sonny’s mother’s hand and touched it to his lips. “How should I address you?”

Sonny’s mother blushed. “Brenda,” she replied shyly.

Thomas glanced at the book on the table and grimaced. He picked it up and studied the cover for a second. “Oh, dear, I am sorry. ‘Introduction to Calculus’ is what you read at breakfast?”

“Yes, sir,” Sonny replied with a quick glance at his mother.

“Hideous stuff,” Thomas continued with a shudder. “A necessary evil, but that makes it no less painful. I hated calculus in college and I still hate it. How are you doing with it?”

“It's okay. I don't hate it, but I don't like it much either,” Sonny said with a shrug.

“Do you understand it?” Thomas asked.

“Mostly,” Sonny replied.

“You must have a good teacher. This is difficult material for one your age. ‘Mostly’, as you say, is good enough for most people. Please, may we sit? I have a business proposal to discuss with you.”

Sonny, Thomas and Brenda sat at the table.

Thomas put both his hands flat on the table. “I would like to use the boat dock that is on your part of the property.”

“I would let you willingly,” Brenda replied, “but it is not safe.”

“Which is why I bring you this proposal. One of my dearest friends and business associates has a float plane and we need a boat dock for him to land safely. If Sonny does not have other plans for the summer, I would like to enlist his assistance in repairing the dock. I will provide the materials and pay Sonny for his time at the same rate as I would pay someone from the local labour pool.”

Sonny thought for a second and then said, “There are gators in that lake. How can we work on the dock and not get eaten?”

Thomas smiled. “We work from boats. First we sink a line of posts and then we stretch a metal fence between them strong enough to keep the alligators out. It won’t keep the littlest alligators out, but it will keep the big ones out and they’re the ones we need to be concerned with. Even with the fence, we’ll work from the boats because large reptiles aren’t the only things in that water that bite.”

“I’m not very strong,” Sonny said meekly. “Don’t you want someone stronger than me to help you?”

“No,” Thomas shook his head. “I want someone smart. Strong is easy. Smart is tough. Look, if you can handle this calculus, you can do what I need.”

“Fixing the dock isn’t going to take more than a week or two,” Brenda said. “You mentioned the whole summer.”

“That’s why smart is better than strong,” Thomas said. “I have enough projects to last into the fall and perhaps longer. Some of this I could do by myself, but these kinds of jobs always go better with two people.”

“What kinds of jobs?” Sonny asked.

“I ordered a greenhouse kit to go on the slab. It comes in a big crate and it needs to be assembled. I’ve done it before, but it takes two people,” Thomas replied.

“What do you grow in this greenhouse?” Sonny’s mother asked.

“Orchids, they’re a hobby of mine.”

Sonny had not told his mother about the electron microscope or any of the other lab equipment he had seen carried into the house. He did not think this was the time to bring it up, but somehow orchids as a hobby and an electron microscope did not add up. The float plane bothered Sonny, too. Drug runners used float planes. The long straight roads through the nearby swamps had been runways for drug runners for decades. Rumour had it that some still were. Still, this guy did not look or talk like a drug runner. To Sonny’s way of thinking this had “mad scientist” written all over it.

“Orchids are pretty,” Sonny said calmly, trying to be as nonchalant as possible. “I have a friend at school that likes to take pictures of flowers. Do you think we could bring him some samples?”

Thomas smiled. “We might even pay him to come and take pictures to document my collection.”

Sonny smiled and looked to his mother for approval. “I think it’s a good idea. When can I start?”

“After exams,” Brenda said sharply.

“When are exams over?”

“My last exam is Friday week.”

“Then we start bright and early Saturday morning two weeks from today.”

Chapter Three

Sonny arrived home after his last exam and carefully put his books on the shelf. Even when his father was alive they did not have much money, but his father had insisted that Sonny buy those books that made sense to buy instead of having to turn them in at the end of the year. Sonny had a collection of textbooks and literature that filled a small bookcase. Sonny’s father had been very proud of his son’s academics and did everything he could to encourage Sonny to be absolutely the best he could be. He stressed that Sonny not judge himself by his classmates, but rather by the standard of his own work and merit.

Sonny put on a pair of shorts and headed out to the dock. He had helped his father replace some of the planking a few years ago and understood the dock’s construction. He knew that tearing off the old planks would be hard work, but replacing the rotted beams underneath would be much more difficult. Sonny was not afraid of the work, but he was concerned that he would not be able to measure up to Thomas’ expectations of him.

When Sonny arrived at the dock, he observed the ugliest beat up old float boat he had ever seen and two barges made from even uglier float boats tied up to the dock. A brand new flat bottomed “Jon” boat lay pulled up on the shore line. The barges were piled high with aluminium deck plate and aluminium beams. The float boat had an air compressor and some tools Sonny did not recognize. At first he was a little confused as to how the chain saw fit into all this, but as he thought about the materials he saw in front of him, he began to figure out how it all went together.

“Figure it out yet?” Thomas asked as he walked up behind Sonny.

Sonny had heard the footsteps and was not surprised by Thomas’ question. “I think so.”

Thomas put his hand on Sonny’s shoulder. “Good. Tomorrow we will find out if you are as smart as I think you are. But tonight, I have dinner for you and your mother. Please come over about seven.”

“I need to ask my mother.”

“She already agreed.”

“Seven then.”

Thomas turned and walked away.

THOMAS GREETED SONNY AND his mother at the front door. Sonny could see that the main floor of the house had been divided into three large work areas and a small vestibule leading to the stairs.

Thomas took Sonny’s mother’s hand and said, “Brenda, allow me to assist you up the stairs. The living areas are all on the second floor.”

Sonny’s mother smiled and said, “Thank you, Thomas. You are a gentleman.”

Sonny trailed behind, craning his neck for a better look at the boxes piled in the corners of the work rooms. He recognized the labels as being names of many of the companies that had provided lab equipment for his high school and for the summer school he had attended the year his father had died.

The upstairs was divided into a master bedroom, guest bedroom, master bath and eat-in kitchen. A balcony had been added off the dining area so that in good weather meals could conveniently be eaten outside. Since the weather was excellent, they ate out on the balcony.

Thomas had made a simple dinner of field greens, roast chicken, au-gratin potatoes and mixed vegetables. They had ice cream with hot fudge for dessert. Thomas was very interested in the progress of Sonny’s mother’s treatments and how they made her feel. He had almost a doctor’s familiarity with the dynamics of the cancer treatments and the implications of their use. Within moments of sitting to dinner, Thomas and Brenda entered into the discussion that would dominate the evening. Sonny became merely a spectator as he watched his mother open up to this virtual stranger who seemed to understand her condition even better than the doctors who attended to her.

On one hand, Sonny was thrilled that his mother could talk to someone who was calm and rational. On the other hand, he was concerned about how quickly this smooth talking stranger with the strange accent had won over his normally reserved and secretive mother. Thomas was simply too nice. As he looked at Thomas he thought that when something seems too good to be true, it usually is.

As Sonny and his mother left for home, Thomas said, “Sonny, I know you felt left out tonight, but we have all day tomorrow to talk.”

Sonny smiled and said, “Thank you.”

Thomas returned the smile and said, “See you at seven in the morning?”

“Seven it is.”

AT PRECISELY SEVEN THE following morning Sonny stepped up to the dock. Thomas was there with a large cup of convenience store coffee in his hand.

“Sonny, you ready?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“So, what’s the plan?”

“I thought you had the plan,” Sonny said.

“I do,” Thomas replied with a smirk, “but I wanted to see if you figured it out.”

Sonny smiled. Today was going to be full of mind games, and he liked that. “We’re going to set a semi circle of posts around the dock and stretch the mesh between them.”

“Good. Then what?”

“We’re going to clear all the vegetation from around the dock so we can work.”

“Good. Then what?”

”We’re going to take that chain saw and cut off the railings. No sense in saving the wood. Most of it is rotted and we can’t use it again.”

“And what are we doing with what we remove?” Thomas coached.

“Putting it in a pile next to the chipper,” Sonny replied quickly.

“Then what are we doing next?”

“We cut the deck planks out from between the beams and cut the cross beams as we go.”

“And what do we do with the pieces?”

“In the pile.”

“Next?”

“I’m not sure whether we cut the long beams and then unbolt them from the pilings or we unbolt them and then cut them.”

Thomas nodded. “What are the advantages and disadvantages of each method?”

“If we cut the beams first, they drop easily out of the way. Gravity is our friend. But then we are stuck with the task of unbolting smaller remaining pieces that might spin and not hold still while we fight with the rusted bolts.”

“If we unbolt them first?”

“We are fighting gravity all the way. The weight of the beam is resting on the bolt as we try to turn it increasing the friction and the beam is trying to rotate away from the piling making it difficult to hold. But the whole piece won’t spin on us while we try to remove the last bolts and we don’t have to deal with the lap joints.”

“What do you recommend?”

“We cut them loose first.”

“Are you ready for the Great Kenansville Chain Saw Massacre?”

Sonny laughed. He picked up a set of protective eye wear he had purchased for use his school labs and handed a set to Thomas. “Dad said I was always to wear these when I was doing construction or working with chemicals.”

“No wonder you’re so smart! You take after your father.”

Sonny stared at Thomas for a very long second. He took a deep breath, but even as he tried to restrain himself he failed. “Being smart didn’t keep him from getting killed. I’m alive. He’s dead. Do NOT compare me to him ever again. I loved my father, but he got himself killed.”

Thomas opened his mouth as if to say something and thought the better of it. He put on the eye shield and said, “Right. Let’s set some posts.”

Sonny clenched his fists and tightened his jaw as he waited for the anger to wash over him. When he was rational again, he asked, “How big a circle do you want to make?” They were here to build a dock and not to fight about past events.

“About forty feet radius. We’ll leave most of the posts in place after we’re done and only open enough for the channel to the dock and the large radius provides needed manoeuvring room.”

“Makes sense. Do we measure with that white clothesline?”

“Yes.”

Sonny and Thomas measured two forty foot lengths of rope. Using the float boat’s twenty-four foot length for a mobile measuring device, they placed the first two posts forty feet off the end of the dock and twenty-four feet apart. Leaving the float boat in place, they transferred to the fourteen foot flat bottomed aluminium Jon boat and used its seat as a measure to give them ten feet between posts for the curves around either side of the dock’s end. Once they came even with the end of the dock, they went straight back until the water was too shallow for the Jon boat.

They broke for lunch and picked up again afterwards. Wearing high rubber boots, they drove the remainder of the posts up to ten feet beyond the water line. They set a temporary post between the two original posts they had spanned with the float boat and ran the mesh between the two original posts so that it and the centre post could easily be removed when they were done. Once the mesh had been secured on all the posts, they broke for the day.

Sonny was so tired that night that he collapsed on his bed and immediately went to sleep. After Sonny’s explosive reaction to the comparison with his father, he and Thomas had not talked while they worked beyond the communications necessary to complete the tasks at hand.

ON THE SECOND DAY, Thomas mounted plastic pipes on the two original posts and on top of the pipes he placed solar powered decorative garden lights. He wrapped red coloured plastic around one light and green around the other.

“Channel markers?” Sonny had asked.

“Exactly.”

Once the channel markers were in place, they set to the task of clearing the vegetation that had grown up around the docks. Thomas inspected every plant that came up out of the water. Some he tossed in a pile and some he placed in a horse trough he had filled with water for the purpose.

They positioned the boats around the dock so they could work safely. Sonny firmly gripped a large box end wrench which they placed on the head of each bolt holding the beams to the pilings. Thomas used the air wrench to break the layer of rust that held the nuts to the attachment bolts. Once all the nuts had been loosened, they ended for the day.

On the third day they started the demolition. Thomas cut the old wood free and Sonny hauled it away. Rather than peel back the decking first as Sonny had suggested, they completely removed all the wood between the furthest sets of pilings before moving to the next set closer to shore. By the end of the day Friday they had removed all the wood from the concrete pilings and had run it through the chipper so that all that remained of the old dock’s wood was a pile of mulch.

Thomas and Sonny sat on the bank admiring their progress. Hoping he had found a less inflammatory bridge to Sonny, Thomas said, “Your grandfather must have given this dock a lot of thought. Those concrete pilings weren’t driven into the lake bed. They were poured with footers. The pilings were poured with plastic sleeves so the bolts could be passed through to hold the wood without damaging the concrete. This was a carefully planned project.”

“It was completed before I was born. My grandfather, my father and my uncles built it during a lake draw-down. When the water management people drained the lake to harden the bed and remove the invasive plants, a lot of the land owners around here took advantage and poured dock pilings before the water came back up again. There’s a dozen around here built like this.”

“Must have been quite an undertaking. I’ll bet it took a lot of teamwork. Sounds like it could have been an exciting project for them to work on together.”

“It was,” Sonny replied thoughtfully. “My dad told me about it when we had to fix it. It was the last project they all worked on together. It was the last time he saw one of his brothers. The dock held special meaning for him. I guess that was why it was so hard for him to tear up the wood damaged in the hurricane a couple of years back. It was like he was doing a disservice to his brothers’ memories.”

“How many brothers did your father have?”

“Two.”

“Did you know them?”

“One died before I got to know him, the other we don’t talk about much.”

“What happened to them?”

“His oldest brother went into the Navy and was killed in a training accident at sea.”

“I am sorry to hear that. What about the other?”

“He got drunk one night and wrapped his car around a tree. I found what was left of his body in the morning. He had crawled out of the wreck. He was still alive when I found him, but he died before the ambulance could get there.”

Thomas shuddered at the coldness with which Sonny had blown off both his uncles’ deaths. “Was either of them married?”

“Nope.”

“No kids?”

“Nope.”

“Do you have family on your mother’s side?”

“She was an only child.”

“What about her parents?”

“They were a couple of drunks,” Sonny said with disgust. “Died when the trailer they rented burnt to the ground.”

“What happened?”

“Fire marshal said they were smoking in bed. Coroner said they had enough alcohol in their system that you could have lit a bomb under the bed and they wouldn’t hear it.”

“Any other relatives?”

“If I have relatives on my mother’s side, I don’t know who they are.”

Thomas fell silent for a moment. “With your mother sick, and you the only heir to this nice chunk of real estate, doesn’t that make you kind of vulnerable?”

“Yeah,” Sonny answered with obvious suspicion.

“Look, I’ve got my own issues so I’m not going to get too involved, but if you need someone to talk to, I’ll be happy to listen. I can’t say how good my advice will be, but I’ll try.”

Sonny smiled. “I appreciate the thought. When my mom first got sick, her parents tried to get her declared incompetent so they could collect my father’s insurance settlement. I know exactly where I stand. Not everyone who claims to be your friend really is. You can count on your enemies to always be your enemy, but you can’t always count on your friends to be your friends.”

Thomas paused as he thought about this boy wise beyond his years. “Did you go to court to fight your grandparents?”

“Didn’t have to. The trailer coincidentally burnt down a coupla days after they started the proceedings.” Sonny looked away and did not return Thomas’ gaze.

“Do you think someone set the fire and made it look like an accident?” Now it was Thomas’ turn to be suspicious of his recent acquaintance.

“If someone did, it wasn’t me, but I kinda wish it was.” Sonny looked at Thomas sideways.

Thomas blinked at the depth and power of Sonny’s glance. The pain and anger were closely held in check, but lingered so very close to the surface. “Look, Sonny, life has dealt you a bum hand. I get it, but being angry doesn’t help anything.”

Sonny shook his head. “Nope, don’t. Don’t even make you feel better. Makes you feel worse and makes you do stuff you regret later. Best to keep on going and do the best you can with what you got.”

Thomas tried to meet Sonny’s eye, but Sonny turned away. “Sonny, when I hired you to help did you think that I did it out of sympathy for you?”

“Nope, you obviously needed the help.” Sonny shrugged. “I was close and I think you did it out of sympathy for my mother.”

“You win,” Thomas said sadly.

“Ain’t no winning to it. Truth is truth.” Sonny turned to confront Thomas. “The whole week we’ve talked about me. Now let’s talk about you. Any family?”

Thomas blinked. He paused before answering. “No, all gone,” Thomas said with a sigh. “I had a big family once, but most of them died and I lost touch with the rest. I don’t even know where to look for them.”

“What do you do for a living?” Sonny demanded.

“I’m retired.”

“What did you do before you retired?” Sonny pressed.

Thomas took a deep breath. “You want the truth?”

“Yes,” Sonny said firmly.

“If you tell anyone, it could get both of us killed.”

“Tell me the truth.”

”I was a hit man for a drug cartel. I’m out on parole,” Thomas said softly.

“Ri-ight.” Sonny’s voice was rich with his disbelief.

“Whether you believe me or not, there are dangerous people who would like very much to know where I am,” Thomas said softly.

“Would they kill you?” Sonny was not buying this.

“Yes, but they would not harm you or your mother. They only want me,” Thomas tried to combat Sonny’s scepticism. After a pause, Thomas said, “Your mother has invited me over for dinner tonight. Please do not breathe a word of what I told you.”

“What does my mother think you do?”

“She thinks I was a travelling salesman for a pharmaceutical company.”

“Were you?”

“No, but wouldn’t you rather her think that or what I just told you?”

“I suppose.”

“Thank you.”

Dinner that night was pleasant, although, as with the dinner on Thomas’ balcony, Sonny was virtually left out of the conversation.