Chapter 1

As soon as we crossed over the bridge into Kansas, at Kansas City, I started feeling better. By better, I mean I felt peaceful about returning. Prior to that, I would have been content to take things one day at a time, just like I had been doing since I'd left to go on my little five month long Odyssey.

Joyce was asleep when we crossed over into Kansas. I would have woken her, to let her know we were in Kansas, but she didn't feel the same as I did about the state. We had spent the day talking all about her plans for our future. She and I saw different visions, but I allowed her to tell me all about hers.

Joyce wanted us to both go off somewhere to attend college together. It was part of her 'new start' program for us. She'd have the babies, then after, in the fall, we'd find a school we could both attend together.

I'd asked her about who would be taking care of the babies, but she hadn't planned all the details yet, that's what she told me.

I asked her about what was going to happen with her job at the company. Joyce pretty much ran our entire shipping and warehousing program, for the entire country. She was the person who kept everything integrated, and running smoothly. My father depended on her to do that for him. I asked her about that, and again, she informed me these were just details that she'd attend to.

Joyce was the most determined person I'd ever met, and I found myself believing her when she told me she'd find ways to make everything work for us.

Driving on towards Ridgeline, I decided that I'd be well served to rely on Joyce's willingness to handle the details of our day to day existence. She was better suited to dealing with the little frustrations that kept cropping up for me. To repay her for this, I decided that I'd do my best to make sure she got the best I had in me to give her.

Just being around Joyce again was comforting to me. She was a resource to me. She was the extension of me I needed to help get things done. My strengths were more in the area of conception, getting the idea to make something good happen. Joyce's strengths were to take all the loose ends and bring them together in the best possible way. She told me that she always knew she needed someone to point her in a good direction. She said that is what I'd been doing for her, ever since the first day I'd hired her away from the accounting department.

I didn't tell her that my picking her had just been a happy coincidence. I'd picked her mainly because I knew Shirley wouldn't be jealous, because of the way Joyce looked. I didn't say anything, because I knew it made her feel good, thinking that I had recognized, right from the beginning, how well she and I would work together. It had worked out very well though, and, as I drove towards home again, I was determined to make sure it continued to work well, for both of us.

I loved Joyce, and it was a love that kept evolving and changing, growing, as we spent more time together. Maybe it was simply appreciation, because she was able to make me more than I would have been without her. I didn't think it was only that though. Sex with Joyce was as good as any I'd ever experienced. Joyce never held anything back. When she gave herself to you, it was her whole self. She didn't know any other way.

It was almost four in the morning, on a cold February night, when I pulled my car into my garage. I woke Joyce up just enough to get her to help me bring her into the bedroom. I helped her undress, watching as she crawled under the covers, falling instantly asleep again.

I couldn't sleep myself. I felt energized, in spite of the fact that I'd been driving since early the previous morning. I was home, and more than that, I felt like I was really back.

One of the reasons why I wasn't sleepy, was because I had so many thoughts running through my mind. I felt more like I used to feel, before the first trouble with Mama, and before the problems that had caused me to flee.

I wasn't well again, suddenly cured, but I was back in a frame of mind to participate in the process of living again. I was ready to re-enter the fray. Someone had been using my office while I'd been gone. All of my trading records and statements had been put in a cardboard box, and left beside my desk. On my desk, there were a bunch of papers and computer printouts detailing the shipping, sales and deliveries for the vending machine business.

I was curious enough that I went through the sales and delivery figures for the last quarter of the previous year. I was impressed with our growth. My being gone certainly hadn't had any negative effect on the vending business. Maybe I should have been a little disappointed at finding out that was the case, but I wasn't.

I stacked up all of Joyce's papers, as neatly as I could, then went through the contents of my box, reviewing the statements from my broker, and the status of my account balances in various trusts.

I saw where Frank had transferred my trading balance to another broker, then, after a month, he'd invested the money into a high yield money market account. In all the time I'd been gone, the funds taken out and transferred to the various group home accounts had amounted to far less than the income from the interest on the funds in my trading accounts. Right before the end of the year, Frank had made a large distribution into a new charitable trust he had created. I made a note to call him, to thank him for taking care of cleaning up the mess I'd left him to deal with.

Still, the earnings from the money market account were far less than I would have made if I was back at home attending to my business. Since I'd been gone though, I hadn't once looked at where any of the grain market was moving. It had taken me many months to feel comfortable with the rhythm of those markets, and by ignoring them for all these months, I might have lost that sense of comfort and familiarity that had made my trading decisions almost automatic for me.

I decided that I'd just ease myself slowly back into it. There was no hurry, no urgency for me to make new money to support the group home program. I started regretting the fact that my going off like I had, would necessitate a delay in opening up the two new extensions I'd been planning on building by the coming summer. Again, instead of feeling upset or stressed about it, I reminded myself that it was simply a delay. The homes would get built, the children would have a better place to live.

Joyce came out of the bedroom at a little past nine in the morning. She found me working in the office. I was trying to balance my personal checkbook. While I'd been gone, Frank had continued depositing funds into my personal account. This was the interest and earnings from the trust accounts that Uncle Bunny had left me. I was concerned about this, because I hadn't bothered keeping track of the funds I'd removed from the trusts with several large cash advances I'd taken on my Visa cards. I'd have to ask Frank how to replace those funds, plus, I'd need to get all of my earnings together to give to the accounting people in Frank's office to file my various tax returns. I usually had everything together for them by the first of the year.

"What are you doing, Kenny? Didn't you go to sleep yet?"

"I was just going over some of these statements. I don't know how to reconcile my checkbook, because none of the money I took out on my trip is showing up on my personal account statements. I need to get things together for my taxes too."

"Frank's doing all that for you, Kenny. He has duplicates sent to his office, on all your accounts. That's one of the few good things that came out of you being gone. Frank's installed a new system for the whole family now. Mama says it's saving us a lot of time too. We check over the monthly statements, and if we don't see any problems, we can just ignore them. Frank's people handle all the rest of it. Even mine is being taken care of now. It makes it a lot better too, having everything in one place, in case they need to cross check something."

"How are you feeling this morning? I was worried that long drive would tire you out."

"I feel good. While I was asleep, I thought of a way we could both go to college together, even with the babies. Brenda. She told me she wasn't going to go to college. She could come with us, to cook, and to watch the children for us, while we were in our classes."

"That's a terrible idea. First, it's not fair to Brenda, even if she would agree to do it. Second, have you forgotten how worried you were about Brenda taking me away from you? Third, we still have other responsibilities here, ones that we have to be here to deal with. Your job, and all the group home business things. We're already half a year behind on opening the two new extensions for this year."

"Kenny, before you get all excited about the problems having Brenda with us would cause, or about how it wouldn't be fair to her, let's just talk to her, and find out what she thinks. I've been thinking about that other thing too, about me worrying about you leaving me for one of those other girls. Now that you told me you're going to marry me, I'm not so worried about that happening. We both know Brenda. I'd trust her to watch the babies for us. We're going to be pretty busy, so it would be nice to come home to a good home cooked meal. As far as your third thing, about my job, tell me why I need to be here to do it, or why either of us needs to be here to keep the group homes running? Another thing, we're not behind at all with opening the three new extensions."

"Why do you say we're not behind? We were going to open them this summer. Did you say three?"

"Mama and I decided we're going to open an extension for little kids, boys and girls both. Mama's already bought the land for all three of them, and she and Hans are working with three contractors. I've got Sandy interviewing candidates for the three executive director positions, but she says we should find a fourth one to replace her, so she could spend her time supervising all the group home directors."

"Joyce, I think it would be a big mistake doing this thing with Brenda. You know the effect she has on me. It's bound to cause us some problems. You know how she is too. We all might say we wouldn't do anything, but, something would eventually happen."

"If I was right there, I wouldn't mind if we all did things together. What I don't want to happen is you deciding you love her more than me, or you and her doing things behind my back."

"I still don't think we can do everything we need to do, and still have time to go to college. College is a full time job, all by itself."

"Mama says you need to go to school. She says the longer you wait, the less likely it is that you'll go. Your father feels the same way. I'd go with you, to make sure you didn't meet someone else. Your father wants me to get a better education too."

"Mama and I have a deal. I need to do certain things first."

"She said that was before you ran off like you did. Kenny, we were all so worried about you. Mama was the most worried. When you get like you do, someone needs to be there with you, to make sure you'll be taken care of."

"I managed fine this last time, Joyce. I ate, I slept, I took care of myself. I'm starting to understand this better now. I can shut things down when they get too much for me to handle. After I rest for awhile, I can start opening up again. That's how I can deal with this."

"If you keep having to do this, and it takes you five or six months to get better, who's going to run the company when you take over for your dad?"

"I guess he either needs to find someone else to do it, or else find someone to be my understudy, in case it happens to me again."

"That's me, Kenny, I'm going to be your understudy. That's another reason why we both have to go to college. I wouldn't know how to run a company now."

"You can go, and I'll stay home and watch the babies. I don't feel like going to school yet."

I remembered what I'd been thinking earlier, about my decision to let Joyce run the day to day details. This was more than that though. This wasn't deciding where to go for dinner, this was deciding the whole direction of my life. If I'd been managing to do it better myself, I'd have a stronger argument to make against these decisions she was announcing.

"You have to give Brenda her money, before we ask her to go with us. That's the only fair thing to do, to make sure she's doing it because she really wants to."

"I don't have three million dollars that I can just get at, not without tapping out most of the trust money in the little trusts that Uncle Bunny left me. If I did that, we wouldn't have any money to live on for ourselves."

"I talked to your father. He has discretionary powers over making distributions to you. He said he'd let you have that money."

"You talked to my Dad about me giving Brenda three million dollars?"

"I talked to him about everything, college, Brenda, you needing me there with you. He agrees with me about most of it."

"Did you tell him that you plan on the three of us sharing the same bed?"

"I didn't come out and tell him that, but I think he knows already, because of that time we did it at the office, and because of you talking about your group with him. He doesn't have any problems with us taking Brenda with us, or with me being gone from the business. I told him I'd continue doing whatever I could from school. We'd still have the summer to work."

"Do you have plans for Emily and Shirley too?"

"I do, but not what you're hoping for. Emily is going away to college, and Shirley is going to college over in Bolling in the fall. Both of them work for the girl's extension, as big sisters now. They help out the group home parents in the evenings. Sometimes, they take the girls out to do fun things, like you used to do with the boys."

"So, you've got this all figured out now? You're going to be running my life from now on?"

"I'm going to be helping you, so you can take care of the things you do best. Are you going to give Brenda her money?"

"Are you talking about me giving it to her, right away? She didn't even finish high school yet. She'd probably quit school, and go on a three month shopping trip. How about if I just put the money in an account for her, and she can have it later, when she's all grown up?"

"Kenny, Mama thinks you should give her the money too. She'd give it to her herself, but she thinks it would be better if you gave it to her. It would be like you were setting Brenda free. If she wants to stay with us after that, it wouldn't just be so she could stay close to your money. We'd find out if she really does love you like she says."

"Let me tell you what I'd be worried about with Brenda, before you go making all these plans. I like fucking her. I like it a lot. I don't think I'd ever want to marry her, but I might want to make her pregnant too. Maybe not now, because you're already having twins, but I might change my mind later. I don't think you'd be happy if I decided to do that."

"I don't want to talk about her getting pregnant. If that happens, it would have to wait until after we both finished our schooling. We don't even know if Brenda would be willing to do this to her body." Joyce moved her hands over her swollen belly, indicating all the changes taking place with her.

"If we did go to college, where could we go? It would have to be someplace where we could both get in. Did you have good enough grades to get into a four year university? It isn't like some little community college, where they let anyone in."

"I was second in my class, Kenny. I scored over fourteen hundred on my SAT's. What did you score on yours?"

"I don't remember exactly. I know it was pretty high though."

"Twelve thirty, Kenny. Mama showed me your scores. If they'll let you in, I'm sure I'll have no problems either. Does this mean you'll go?"

"I'll go to K.U., but I'm not going out of state. We'll get an apartment or something in Lawrence, then we'll come home on the weekends. I think we should let Gerta and Mama spend some time with the babies too. Not all the time, but maybe for a few hours, when we're home for weekends. If Brenda says yes, which I doubt she'll do, you and I are getting married before we leave for school. I don't want you ever doubting who it was I chose. I don't want anyone confused about that. If we get married soon, we'll just hire someone later, to take a whole second set of wedding pictures, after your braces come off. This is only in case Brenda decides she'd like to come with us."

We went to the bedroom right after that. Joyce was right about there being lots of ways to fuck a pregnant woman. I fell asleep after we got done, and slept until about three o'clock the next morning. I woke up feeling pretty good about things. I crawled out of bed, trying not to disturb Joyce when I did so. It was Wednesday, February eleventh. I spent three hours organizing all of my records and accounts. I went into a spare room off the entry way, trying to decide if it would be large enough to put in an office for Joyce. There wasn't enough room for both of us to share one office between us.

I called Gerta at seven o'clock, and told her that I wanted to convert some things over at my house. She was happy to hear from me, and we spoke for about thirty minutes. Very gently, she managed to scold me for not keeping in touch with anyone while I was gone. I tried to explain to her that I was operating on automatic pilot for most of that time, but she told me I could have called from time to time, at least. It was no good trying to give her any excuses. In her mind, there was never a good enough excuse for my not doing what she wanted. She treated Hans the same way. She told me she'd send some people over, in a few days, to look at what I needed done to my house.

At eight, I called my Dad. He and I talked for a long time. It was probably the longest conversation we'd ever had together. We talked about the problem I'd had with Darrin. Dad told me he'd investigated the whole thing, even going to Chicago, to see the trade slips that each pit trader had executed. He told me it was a legitimate out trade, and that in the haste and confusion that went on inside the trading area, things like that were bound to occur, especially when prices were really jumping around. He told me about all the volume of trading that had occurred in the fifteen minutes that surrounded the point of my first purchase, and the subsequent sale. I finally stopped him by telling him that I was over it.

"You should call Darrin and apologize, Kenny. He's been very bothered by what you said to him. He didn't mind you pulling your accounts, but he didn't want you thinking he'd ever deliberately stick you with a bad trade, so that he could avoid taking any loss he deserved."

"I'll call him and apologize, if you think that's what I should do. Did you tell Joyce that you'd give me three million dollars from my trust, so I could give it to Brenda?"

"I told her I could do that, if you requested it of me. Is this for the money that Bunny was going to leave her?"

"No, it's so Joyce can be sure that Brenda really wants to baby sit and cook for us. It's apparently all the rage now. You find someone, then you give them a few million dollars. Later, if you ask them to do something for you, you'll know if they really want to do it, or not, because they'll have enough money to just tell you to go to hell, if they don't want to."

"Kenny, you don't have to do it."

"I know I don't. In a way though, it would be better if I did go ahead and do it. Uncle Bunny really loved Brenda. He wouldn't want her needing to worry about money. Maybe having some of her own would change her. If you could transfer it over to Frank for me, I'll give it to her. Speaking of Frank, are you comfortable with him getting duplicate statements on all of our accounts?"

"I'm comfortable, but then, I always go over everything, whenever any of my statements come in. I know Frank carries some type of insurance policy that protects against employee theft or embezzlement. I think we have sufficient safeguards in place. Don't you trust Frank?"

"No, I do trust him. It just seemed like it needed us to be putting a lot of faith in him, and his people. Joyce said it made things a lot easier for them to be able to check everything though."

"I believe the main advantage to us is that it frees up a lot of our time. This is time we could put to use more profitably, attending to our other endeavors."

"Joyce mentioned that she ran her idea by you. The one she has of having Brenda go away with us when we start college. Do you have any questions, or any advice you want to give me about any of that?"

"I don't have any, no. I'm sure your mother would have some advice for you, if you were foolish enough to invite her to offer it."

"I think I'll let Joyce discuss those kinds of things with her. Between the two of them, they seem to have my life pretty well planned out for me already."

"I do have one thing I'd like to tell you, Kenny. I guess it would fall under the general heading of advice. If you ever decide that you need to choose one of them over the other one, you'd be better off, in almost every way, if you decided to choose Joyce."

"Better off how? Are you speaking about it being better for me personally, or for the company?"