Chapter 2

David watched as his mother hurried after her husband. Nora needs to know about this, he thought.

George fussed and tried to run away. Darla grabbed him and plopped him on her lap, telling him to sit.

"What a mess," David muttered.

"You're feeling guilty again, aren't you?" Darla said, frowning at him. "Every time there's a glitch in our family, you blame yourself; you say if you weren't the way you are that we'd be normal. Well, I tried normal, and normal isn't all it's cracked up to be, buster, so back off, or I'll give you a piece of my mind."

"Wrong. I was thinking about taking a quick trip to let Nora know what's happening," David said.

George squirmed out of his mother's lap. She let him go.

"You'll do no such thing!" Darla exclaimed. "Joe and Mom will inform Nora at a time of their choosing, just like they informed us." She chuckled. "At least we now know why Mom hasn't been herself lately. She told me when she was pregnant with you that she had morning sickness so bad that it lasted into the afternoon everyday." Looking around for her son, she spied him in the pantry. "Get out of there, George."

The boy obeyed, mostly because he'd found what he wanted — a bag of Goldfish crackers. He sat on the floor and started to stuff his face with the crackers.

David nodded his head toward the door his mother and father-in-law had exited moments before. "What will they decide? They're at an impasse."

"Whatever they decide is their choice to make, David," Darla said.

David frowned at her. "Not if the baby's mine," he said.

Darla sighed, letting all the air out of her lungs with a whoosh. "Big brother, as smart as you are, sometimes you can be a first-class numbskull. You heard Joe. That's his baby Mom is carrying. End of discussion. Keep your nose out of this. It's between Joe and Mom."

Not if the baby's mine, David said again, but silently.

"I don't care what the law says, Carol," Joe said. "I don't care if you believe that it's the woman's sole decision to abort or not abort. I won't be a party to murdering a little baby."

"It's a fetus, Joe, not a baby. If my son is the father, the child could be born horribly deformed or mentally deficient or both."

"Which could happen if the baby's mine, as well. At your age, the incidence of Down syndrome goes way up, for example. Whatever happens, we'll handle the outcome, Carol." He sighed. "To start with, that baby is mine — period. I don't want you to test its paternity because the results of the tests would be irrelevant. I'm the father." He glared at her. "Got it?"

Carol didn't respond. Instead, she said, "What else."

He looked confused.

"You said, 'to start with, '" Carol said.

"Oh, that." He huffed a short laugh. "I love you. You're my wife, and we're going to have a baby, which couldn't please me more. Just the thought of holding a newborn of mine in my arms again gives me goose bumps. So, lighten up. Be happy with me."

Carol shook her head in wonder. Yep, she'd picked the right man to grow old with. "All right," she said. But I will order the tests, she added silently.

"No abortion?" he said.

"Not unless the pregnancy is life-threatening for me," she said — her out in case she had to abort. The right doctor would go along with the subterfuge.

He frowned but nodded. "That goes without saying. About Nora, we'll tell her about the upcoming happy event, but we won't tell her that the identity of the child's father is in question."

"David will tell her."

"Probably, no make that likely. Doesn't matter. The child is mine — period. We'll stonewall her and everyone else." He grinned. "I'm going to be a daddy again."

He's in denial, she thought. No good can come from his approach to this problem. Hiding from a dire crisis with your head in the sand doesn't make the crisis go away. It lets the crisis bite you on the ass while you're bent over.

David was wise enough not to debate the decision with Joe and his mother, but he was adamant about discussing it privately with his mother later.

With the traumatic incident momentarily tamped down, Carol said, "You dropped by, David. Why?"

"Oh, to ask you to tend George," he said.

"Which you're not up to," Darla said. "You're still feeling queasy, aren't you?"

"Are you sick, buttercup?" Joe asked.

"Morning sickness, Dad," Darla said.

"Oh," he said.

"I'm fine, now," Carol said. "I'll tend him, but before you leave, we need to talk about another subject. Joe's working too hard."

"So are you, Mom," David said. "Which is silly. With my new way of doing business, we'll have so much money that I'm going to give half of it away as a hobby."

"Huh?" Joe said.

"The experiment worked, Joe. I connected with you in the future — twice, first on Friday morning, and a second time tomorrow morning. I looked over your shoulder and read tomorrow's Wall Street Journal. When I invested this morning, I bet the farm, so to speak. Knowing what will happen in the markets today made the investments a sure thing. Mom, I bet your money and Darla's, as well. We'll make in the neighborhood of $250,000 today, which will be an average day for us." He went on to explain day trading, index and currency options, and the increased margin available with the new approach to his business. "I should make about $100 million over the next twelve months. So, Joe, working your damned fool head off to show a profit with the ranch isn't necessary, and Mom, you'll need some accounting help, and we'll all need some tax help. I would like you to close out the trades each day, Mom, but that shouldn't take you more than fifteen minutes. Before Darla and I leave, I'll sit at the computer with you and show you how. Don't worry. It's easy. And, Joe, you'll need to be up early each day with the Wall Street Journal close at hand, but you're up early anyway. That's why I selected you to help me with that end of the business."

Joe and his mother sat stunned.

"Jesus," Joe finally breathed.

"I spoke with Darla this morning about charity in the trenches. Here's what I mean by that." He described his philanthropic intentions. "Thinking about how the government wastes the taxes we pay, I decided to be proactive and eliminate as many taxes as I could and do some good with the money my way."

"Charity in the trenches could be dangerous, son," Carol said.

"Then I'll hire a driver, an ex-soldier, to protect us when we go out among the great unwashed. Whatever. Joe, I want you to hire enough help and train them so you can walk away from this place for weeks at a stretch. Mom, you need a housekeeper, maybe a cook. I plan to hire both for the compound."

Carol looked stricken. "What about... what about the way we are?"

David laughed. "With the way I am, I think I'm capable of hiring the right people for the job, people who can not only keep their mouths shut but also won't condemn us for the way we are. In fact, I think we should hire our help out of shelters, shelters for the homeless or for battered women. I'll recruit bodyguards from the VA Hospital, ex-Special Forces NCOs, maybe. Nora said she'd help with my new hobby." He snorted. "Of course, as a trade off, I had to promise to put on tights and a cape."

Carol laughed. "I figured she'd con you into donning your super cape again."

"Yeah, she likes the attaboys she gets when I help," David quipped. "Well, waddaya say? Are you with me or against me?"

Carol looked at Joe.

"You are working too hard, Carol," Joe said.

"Hah! You're the one working from cain't-see to cain't-see. I'll go along with this if you will."

He gave her a hard look, and then nodded. "All right, to a point," he said. "But I will not become a gentleman rancher. I will run this ranch."

"Fine by me," Carol said. "Run it, but promise me you won't do the work."

He shook his head. "I'll work the horses."

"Fine, but mucking out the stalls, mowing the fields, bucking hay bales, and other hard labor has got to stop. Promise me, cowboy."

He nodded, and then grinned. "I can live with that."

Each of them rolled a large shopping cart down the aisles at ToysRUs. David selected toys for boys, Darla for girls, and ignoring gender, Carol tossed whatever caught her attention into her cart. When David had outlined what he wanted to do that day, Carol said she'd join them. George was riding in Carol's cart helping her with selections by pointing and saying, "That one there, Grandma."

Filling six carts with toys was fun. They stuffed the escalade to the brim except for where they sat, and David drove them to the CASS emergency family shelter on the west side of town.

The manager, Darrell Pointer, was delighted with the donation and happily gave them a tax-deduction receipt for the amount on the receipt from ToysRUs (less the cost of the toys George would keep).

"I noticed on your website that families are only allowed to stay at your shelter for ninety days," David said to the manager. "What happens when the time runs out?"

"Some find permanent housing," he said.

"And some don't," David said.

He shrugged. "Some families, for various reasons, can't cope with what it takes to end their homelessness, Mr. Stanley."

"Call me David, please. Do you have families that are close to coping but not quite there when the ninety days are up?"

"We do, I'm sorry to say, but I'm required to enforce the ninety-day rule."

"Would it help if someone supplied some furnished apartments at say half-rent for six months?" David asked.

He frowned. "Even at half-rent, the deposits and utilities could present insurmountable barriers, David."

David nodded. "Let's assume there'd be no deposits and the half-rent included utilities. Could you save some families that you wouldn't otherwise save?"

"We'd need to continue our other services to make sure they understand what they must do to cope with the world around them, but the simple answer to your question is yes," Darrel said.

"How many families almost ready but not quite capable of ending their homelessness do you turn away each month?" Carol asked.

"Varies," Darrell said. "One to five."

"How many children in each family?" Darla asked.

"That varies, too." He chuckled. "One to five."

"So," David said, "if we supplied you thirty furnished apartments at half-rent or less without deposits and utilities included for six months, you could save sixty families a year that you wouldn't otherwise save."

"I wish," Darrel said. "Even then we'll lose some of them, up to half."

"But the effort would be worth while, right?" David said.

"Oh my, yes!"

At the next stop, they met Nancy Grayson, a nurse at the VA Hospital. She was black and brusque, but she sincerely cared about the soldiers in her ward. She got to know them, not just as patients but also as human beings. She knew what they worried about, what gave them joy, and learned about their families and loved ones.

"How would you like to be one of our charity operatives?" David said after he felt comfortable that she'd do a good job for them.

"Huh?" Nurse Grayson said.

"That's a title David made up this morning," Darla said. "We want to give but we want the money to go to good people and for good causes."