Chapter 3: Size Does Matter

I was back in Florida a week and I was getting depressed. This is not where I want to be. I wanted to go home!

Home?

Did I just say ‘home’?

That is what I consider that farm in Mississippi. That is where my family is and I want to be around my family. I want to get to know my brothers and their kids. I want to be ‘Aunt JJ’ as Dove and Peg call me. I want to know my father and his two wives. They accepted me like their own daughter.

I want to go HOME!

But what about Kim. She needs me and her life is here. Her business, her home and most of all her son. I cannot ask her to leave all that for me.

She is working on another project that Leslie and she had thought about before he died. It was just expanding this one. She was talking to Tony Green about buying another orange grove. It butted up against this property and could easily be called Phases 4 and 5. I just could not get that interested in it and I guess it showed.

Monday morning I am sitting in my office at the reception center. Kim is at the quarry. My secretary buzzes me and says a man wants to talk to me about a job. I have no openings but what the hell, maybe it will get me off wondering what is going on in Mississippi.

In walks Albert Sloan. Nice looking, maybe 35 years old. He is from California, a graduate of UCLA with a degree in marketing. He was selling real estate in southern California for the last 10 years but decided he needed a change and drove to Florida. I’ll have to find out more of this story. Nobody drives across the entire country to change his life without a very good reason. We talk for about an hour and a half. I have him fill out an application and wait in the lobby for a minute while I make a phone call.

I call Robert, my brother, at O’Shea Investigations. After greetings are exchanged, I ask him to check this guy out. I fax him the application then I go out in the lobby and start to show this Albert, call me Al, around. In about 30 minutes I get a page and it is Robert. Everything checks out. I thank Robert and tell him I will see him soon and turn to Al. “Let me buy my new salesman lunch.” We shake hands and I lead him into the country club’s restaurant.

At a table in the back, I ask about his personal life. Wife, kids? None of the above. He has recently gotten divorced. I told you there was a reason for the cross-country trip. Now using my ‘gift’ I look into his eyes and ask,” Did she cheat on you?”