Chapter 45: Friday

"Is anyone going home for the summer?" Saul asked. No one was. They had all decided to keep on working — on the house, on the business, and on college.

"I'm thinking about going home for a couple of weeks at the end of the term," Mary said. "I'd kind of like to get to know my mother. Telephone only goes so far."

They were sitting in the living room, the windows were open and the spring sun warmed the house. On their protected property, they had gotten into the habit of wearing clothes mainly for decoration, if at all.

Sigrid took over. It was one of their Friday noon, pre-study meetings.

"We have a problem. The business is making money. Not a lot yet, but it looks good for the next few months. If Will gets more commissions, it'll get worse."

"Worse? Sigrid, you're nuts."

"No, I'm not. We've never decided what to do with the money the business earns. We're all sitting here, a bunch of college kids living off our folks. But we're making money and we need to decide what to do about it. Here are a couple of ideas. We can put the profits back into the business, we can split them and pay our parents back or reduce the amount they have to pay. Or, I suppose we could all go to Europe for the summer."

Alex said, "There's another thing we could use the money for, and that's the house. We need to get the grounds in shape — I know we're working on Tom's Project List like a bunch of slaves, but it's a big job. We want a sauna, we want to see if the swimming pool is useable, and we really need to replace the outer wall downstairs with some sliders or something. Oh, and sometime we ought to think about some better furniture."

"I'm not so sure your folks would really like the idea of putting our profits into a house my father owns instead of reducing their financial burden," Saul said.

Tom spoke up. "Sigrid said this was coming. So, I talked about it to my dad the other day. He asked me if we are planning to stay with the group when Sigrid and I get out of college. And I guess we are, if it all works out. So, he said, he'd just as soon go on with things as they are, we should retain any profits. He said he'd budgeted for my college and, even though he could use the money for something else, he doesn't mind using it as he'd planned... I don't know how he'd feel about our putting it into the house, I'd have to ask."

"That still doesn't deal with the question of improving somebody else's house."

"What if we make improvements out of our profits and charge your father for them? No, that's weird, doesn't work," Anne shook her head.

Sigrid said, "Well, we could make improvements, keep track of the cost, and when Harry sells, he either pays us back or distributes it to our folks. Have to work out a way to relate our input to market value, but..."

"We're going to be here another three years at least," Heather said. "We've got to make improvements that go beyond the sweat equity we're putting into trimming those god-damn hedges. No matter what. Place is wonderful, but it's still a crash pad."