Chapter 10

Randy and Nicole probably hung around Myleigh's house with their friends longer than they should, but it was hard to tear away, knowing that the rest of the day and probably the next few days were going to be a lot more somber. "It's just too darn bad this had to happen when Crystal and Preach are here," Nicole said as Randy drove the Chrysler across town to his father's house.

"Yeah, but this stuff happens," Randy sighed. "I just wonder how the rest of this day is going to go."

It had been a little over four years since Randy had lived at his parents' house on Point Drive. It was still familiar to him, and little had changed in the time he had been gone. They walked into the kitchen just like always, to find Ryan and Linda sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. "Would you like a cup?" his mother asked.

"No, I've had about all the coffee I need for this morning," Randy said. "Nicole and I went through quite a bit and then we wound up going through more at Myleigh and Trey's. But thanks for the offer."

"I know," his mother agreed. "I feel like I should be doing something useful but thinking it wouldn't be proper to do it."

"Besides, I don't know what we would do, anyway," his father shrugged. "Now that Dad is gone there are things that have to be done, and some of them need to be done pretty soon, but it's just not right to do them until after the funeral. So, about all we can do is put in the time."

"Company stuff?" Nicole asked.

"Yeah, of course," Ryan nodded. "But there's good reason to not get into some of it now. Look, you two, I don't know how to say this, but don't say much of anything about company stuff between now and that meeting with the lawyer on Wednesday. What's going to happen is going to happen, but I wouldn't be surprised if somebody got pissy about it, so there's no point in touching something off before it happens."

"We haven't said anything to anybody," Randy said. "I mean, except to each other."

"That's good," his father told him. "Keep it that way. I might as well tell you that your grandfather and I were keeping you a little in the dark about some of this stuff, but it's to your benefit, and there were reasons for keeping it under the table a little. But I don't want to get into it now, especially with Ruth and Dave due here at any minute and Rachel and Joel coming. I do have to ask, though: is there anything at Clark Construction that absolutely has to get done before Wednesday morning?"

"No, not really," Randy told him. "Really, it's kind of a slow week. There's some stuff that has to be done, but it can be put off."

"Put it off until after we get done with the lawyer," Ryan said. "If it's something legal like a bid or a contract, I'd have to be involved until then since I'm Dad's successor trustee. But we ought to be able to sign the paperwork then and be able to avoid that complication."

"I was thinking about calling in the crew and telling them that we're going to carry on," Randy told him. "They need to have that reassurance."

"Probably a good idea," Ryan nodded. "Set it for along toward the end of Wednesday afternoon, and we ought to have the worst of the paperwork done by then."

"I'll tell Regina three o'clock Wednesday," Randy said. "Will that be all right?"

"Fine with me, it's your company, or at least it will be then," Ryan replied. "Randy, I'm sorry we didn't have a few more years to pull this all together but we're about as ready as we can be, I think. Now, let's shut up about this so it isn't on our minds when Ruth and Dave get here."

"Fine with me," Randy said, but with a relief in his mind that he tried to conceal. Even with the brief word he'd had with his father last night, he still hadn't been sure that Clark Construction would be coming to him. There had never been anything on paper about it, just a handshake agreement. Randy knew as well as anyone else that those kinds of agreements sometimes fall apart when they're supposed to be honored. While he hadn't been expecting a knife in the back, circumstances changed, and, as his father had said, he'd been a bit in the dark about the whole thing beyond the knowledge that he would be taking over Clark Construction. And really, he'd pretty much already done so except for the ultimate responsibility that had rested with his grandfather. There was no doubt that things were going to change, and he suspected from the tone of what his father had been saying that they might change more than he had been expecting.

"So, Rachel is coming after all?" Nicole asked into the awkwardness that was filled with the inaudible sound of the grinding of the gears in Randy's head.

"Yeah, and surprisingly enough, Joel and Jared," Linda replied. "They won't be getting in until tonight. Randy, that means that at least one of your sisters is going to have to stay with you. We don't have enough room for both families with the kids, since Ruth and Dave are bringing Mike and Abby."

"Sure, we'll be glad to put Ruth and Dave and the kids up," Randy replied. Since it was clear that it was Rachel and Joel that his father was being sensitive about, that seemed like a good idea. Besides, he got along much better with Ruth and actively liked Dave, who was the kind of guy hwo didn't mind getting his hands dirty if he had to.

"That will work just fine," Linda said. "Randy, I really appreciate your friends helping out last night, but I think we'd better think in terms of family dinners tonight and tomorrow night. Perhaps you could host a little bigger gathering on Tuesday evening."

"No big funeral dinner, then?" Randy said.

"No big church to put one on," Ryan said. "Ursula may have designed the First United Methodist Church, but the only time Dad was in there after she died was when you two got married. I suppose I could twist an arm about it, but I really don't want to."

"Well, if we want to keep it to family and close friends like Alma, I don't see why not," Nicole said. "I wouldn't be surprised if Myleigh and Debbie and the rest of the gang would be willing to put something together."

"It would help a lot," Linda said.

"Right, we don't have to do a formal announcement, just ask people informally to drop by, sort of like we did last night," Ryan agreed. "I thought that worked out pretty well for the spur of the moment. But, let's not get crazy about planning something right now. With Rachel and Joel being here, along with the kids, we may decide we want to do things a little differently."

When we see how big a pain in the ass Joel is going to be, Randy thought without saying anything, but realizing that he was just about reading his mother's thoughts. He's really capable of pissing people off, and there's no point in letting him do it unnecessarily. "Well, this isn't the big city, and there's no reason we can't be flexible," Randy said, getting in a sly dig in passing at his brother-in-law.

"They're not going to be here until very late," Linda announced, not missing Randy's comment. "We offered to go down to the airport and pick them up, but Rachel said they'd rent a car in Camden. I'm actually grateful she made the offer, considering the hour when they'll be getting in."

They talked about various plans and arrangements for no more than five minutes when they heard car doors slamming outside. "Well, looks like they're here," Linda said, getting up and going to the door.

It was good to see Ruth and Dave and the kids again. It hadn't been all that long, just since Thanksgiving, but the two were a lot of fun. Ruth was small, with a lot of family resemblance to Randy; Dave was rather rough-cut, with the air of a man who knew what it was like to work outside. He looked big, bigger than he actually was.

Ruth Clark had been an animal lover clear back to small childhood, and had a tendency to collect animals, especially ones that needed tender treatment. As a result, there had been several cats and dogs running around the house for years, all of them Ruth's, until finally Ryan and Linda had to draw the "no more" line. It seemed appropriate that Ruth would gravitate toward being a veterinarian or a veterinary technician, and as it happened the latter finally won out. She'd missed her pets in her first years of college downstate, and got an off-campus apartment as soon as she could, just so she could have some of them with her. That reduced the pet population around the Clark household markedly – she left a couple of the older and less social cats behind, and the last of them had died only recently.

While she was in college, Ruth was looking for a guy, of course. While she had the usual sort of things she wanted in a guy, one of the absolute had-to things was for him to have an affinity for animals. She got that in spades when she latched up with Dave, who was planning to go back and work in the family dairy farm near Arvada Center, several hundred miles to the south. That sounded pretty good to Ruth, and the two of them started to get along famously.

Ruth admitted some time afterwards she had visions of some sort of an Old McDonald family farm, and even though Dave told her that the family had lots of cows, she had the general idea that it was perhaps fifty or a hundred. It wasn't until Dave took her home for a weekend visit that she learned the truth – there were more like five thousand cows all in a huge confined feeding operation that was more of a milk factory than a farm! It was all pretty impressive in a way, if on a much bigger scale than Ruth had ever imagined, but after that weekend she changed her classes around to emphasize larger animals along with cats and dogs.

After she and Dave graduated and got married, they moved back down to Arvada Center, bought a house near the farm – no one lived on the property proper – and settled in to working at the dairy. Their house still had a number of cats and dogs, along with Mike and Abby, the former now in kindergarten and the latter still a preschooler. Ruth carried her weight around the place as a veterinary and lab technician, as well as doing administrative record keeping. It wasn't exactly what she had planned on doing, but she was happier with it than she could have imagined.

With the two small kids things were pretty much mass confusion for a while. They were pretty wound up from the long car ride, and didn't settle down for much of the evening. Randy was pretty sure he was looking into the future pretty clearly with that one. It was clear that his life was going to be changing with the arrival of their own child in April, and it still scared him a little.

After dinner the Griswolds headed over to Randy and Nicole's house. The kids were starting to wind down a little by then, and soon were off falling asleep in one of the bedrooms. Once again there was a group sitting by the fire in the living room, trying to be quiet to not disturb the kids.