Chapter 2

Robert Leclair had always been lucky in money matters. By the time he was twenty-two, he was the owner of a small cannery in Atlantic City and he had six people working for him. He would go and talk to the fishermen as well as the farmer in a fifty miles radius and try to buy from them - at a low price - some of the surplus that their garden produced or the excess harvest from the sea in the case of fishermen. He would buy everything that could be canned. He had his own brand name for the many products that he processed and sold to the stores throughout New England and as far south as Florida. As his business prospered he bought a new plant and he began to produce dehydrated food.

The army immediately realized the potential of the lightweight dehydrated food and he soon signed many contracts with the United-States government. By the time his son Martin was nineteen his father's company was well known throughout the country.

As his business successes kept on accumulating, Robert's health began to deteriorate. First his coughing got worst - the dozen of cigars he smoked every day didn't help - then his eyesight became so bad that he constantly had to have someone around him whenever he went into his half dozen processing plants to inspect things. Of course, by then his son Martin had taken over much of the administrative work and Robert had no doubt whatsoever about his son capacity to run his business.

But his health got worse, and less than a year before the beginning of the depression, he died of a heart attack in his bed. Before his death, being the well-organized man he was, he had written a will, which passed everything to his two children. Since Anna was just sixteen at the time of his death, Martin was left in charge of everything until his sister would reaches her eighteen birthdays. Until then he was the only one to take decision on matters that concern his father's business.

Martin began to enjoy so much the power that had suddenly felt on his shoulders, that he came to fear the day when his sister was going to demand to have her say on the administration of the company. As the months went by and he saw his sister's eighteen birthdays approaching, it became an obsession with him. Why should he share with his sister, what was rightly his? He had work very hard for many years with his father, and since his father's death the company had prospered even more because of his foresight and hard work. Why should he share half of the company with his sister, she hadn't even work half a day in her life?

Beside, it had been his decision to build the large warehouse and to keep the enormous inventory of cans goods and dehydrated foodstuff that was now worth its weight in gold.

Food was money and power now. Whereas before the depression, people were willing to work for money, they were now ready to do anything for food.

After giving the matter of his sister's approaching eighteen birthdays much thought, he decided one day that his sister should run into an accident before she reached the age of eighteen. So it was that barely a month before she became of legal age, she felt down the long staircase in the family residence. He had intended to kill her, but instead, she had hit her head a few times on the thick carpet in the process of falling and by the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, she was in shock and remained that way.

She could still walk properly and eat but that was about all. She could no longer talk and even if she looked find, it seemed that part of her mind had left her body in the fall.

He had intended to kill her but instead he had succeeded to transform her body - which was still as beautiful as ever - into an almost mindless mass of flesh. Her appearance was exactly the same but her wits and her personality had left her body.

Of course it all went down as an accident - he even claimed that at the time of the fall he had been in his room. The lawyers all agreed that he was to control his father's company by himself since his sister would never be able to take control of her share of the company.

He hired a nurse to take care of Anna, and for the following six months he had to endure her around the house as the nurse took care of her. Each time he looked at his sister, he was reminded that he was the one responsible for her condition and as the days went on he could stand less and less the sight of his sister.

Then one day he received a letter from his long forgotten Aunt Elizabeth living in Norwidge.

He was about to throw the letter into the fire when it suddenly occur to him that this could be the solution of his problem. Why not send Anna to live with her in Norwidge?