From Despair Grows Order: The Broken Billionaire Series Book 3

by Nancy Adams

  “It was a well-timed cough,” Kay put back, before turning back to the rest of us.

  “I think we should wind back little Kay for the moment,” I advised.

  “I wasn’t angry,” Kay said in a calmer tone. “I was just trying to defend myself.”

  “That’s one hell of a defense you got,” Josh remarked. “Looked more like offense!”

  Again we all giggled, and Kay narrowed her laser eyes at Josh.

  “A-n-y-w-a-y,” Josh let out slowly, ducking his own eyes away from Kay’s, “we were talking about my readiness for employment. And no, Kay, I’m not looking forward to it, if that was what you wanted to know.”

  “At least you're truthful,” Lucy remarked. “I wouldn’t look forward to it either. In fact, I’d be a little frightened. Plus, it’s real hard to find a job nowadays. I left college nearly a year ago and still haven’t found anything in teaching yet. I’m hoping to find something soon when all the schools begin hiring.”

  “What is it you teach?” Josh asked.

  “English. I was thinking of taking my masters, but I want to teach high school for a few years before that. Except I find it almost impossible to find anything at the schools in the city. Everyone wants science teachers or math teachers.”

  Just then the conversation was broken up by Dad sliding between us with a tray of hamburgers, hotdogs and BBQ chicken kebabs.

  “Dig in, people,” he announced as he placed it on the table.

  The center of the table became a swarm of grabbing hands, and once we were all eating heartily, light conversation flowed like a cool breeze. Josh and Dad were striking up a cheery conversation and joking with one another. As I’ve already stated, Josh managed to show me a certain side to my father I had only previously witnessed in glimpses as a child. It was a more light-hearted version, and the two of them appeared to share a similar razor-edged sense of humor. Currently they were swapping boarding school stories.

  “We had this teacher, Mr. Kimble,” my father was saying. “He used to be real short, almost a dwarf, and the guy was a complete a-hole, real little man’s syndrome, constantly shouting and threatening us, pulling us up for the smallest things. Anyway, me and some of the other guys decided to teach him a lesson.”

  “It wasn't anything cruel, Daddy?” Lucy asked, her face suffusing with an uncomfortable look.

  “Not at all,” my father said, turning to her. Then, turning back to Josh, he added in a hushed voice only for him, “Well, only a little.”

  The two broke into light, clandestine chuckling, before my father continued:

  “You see, he had this big old chair that he’d brought in especially. It was carved from wood with red leather cushions on it, and long, spindly legs. We used to call it Kimble’s throne. Anyway, we got this idea to make Kimble think he was shrinking by making the chair bigger. It was a simple design and one that could easily be remade by any workshop joiner. So one weekend while Kimble was away, we broke into his classroom and stole the chair. We took it to a local joiner and asked him to make us ten new versions, each a little larger in dimensions than the original and looking absolutely the same.”

  “You terrible person,” I jokingly exclaimed, tapping him on the arm.

  My father shone a mischievous smile at me, before returning to his tale of schoolboy high-jinks.

  “We paid the guy several thousand dollars to have it done by Sunday night. When we returned the following evening, we were amazed at the brilliant job he’d done, even going so far as to forge the original stamp on the chair’s bottom and repeat a few small marks on the arms. We had ten new chairs ranging from medium size to one that we were worried wouldn't fit through the door. So the trap was set to replace each chair every three days. We didn’t want to do it all too quickly, because…”

  “The guy would notice if it happened too quickly,” Josh finished for him.

  “Exactly so,” my father nodded with a glittering grin. “The first few times, the change was hardly noticeable and Kimble paid only the slightest attention, all us boys giving him furtive peeks from behind our books to see if he’d react in any way. It wasn’t until the forth chair that he sat down before suddenly getting back up again and looking down at his chair with a suspicious glare, as though the actual chair was playing the trick. But, not wanting to lose his cool, he simply sat himself down and attempted to ignore the growing furniture.”

  “What was his reaction by the tenth chair?” Kay was eager to know.

  “Ah! Well, we never got that far. By five he was getting real suspicious when his feet hardly touched the ground and by six he was on his knees checking the underneath, checking if it was the same chair.”

  “Didn’t he say anything to you all? Accuse you of some trick?” I asked.

  “He would swing his head around, squint his beady little eyes at us from his scarlet face, but never openly accuse us. Not yet, anyway. We would joke that he’d probably been to the doctors, was measuring himself every night, wondering what was going on, asking his wife to see if he was really shrinking, unable to sleep at the thought he’d one day wake up the size of a thumb!”

  “Did he figure out the ruse?” Josh asked.

  “Oh, yeah! It all came out by chair number eight. That one he’d had to jump to get up on! That day he exploded and pointed at us all. ‘Who’s been messing with my chair?’ he boomed. ‘Which of you little punks has been messing with it, making it bigger?’”

  “And you admitted to it?” Lucy innocently inquired.

  “Not exactly. The problem was that all these weeks we’d been watching him struggle to comprehend his growing chair, we’d held in so much suppressed laughter. When he finally looked at us with that deranged face, the whole class broke into snickering, trying our best to suppress it, but unable to. That’s when Kimble really lost it. He began marching from desk to desk asking how we’d done it, what had happened. That’s when one of the guys stood up and said, ‘It’s because you’re shrinking, sir.’ That was when the whole class began falling back in their chairs, the room reverberating with laughter, the poor little teacher going so red I thought he'd explode!”

  My father fell into tears of laughter at this point, his recollection having brought back the sensations of the time, the grown man sitting back at his desk watching the poor Mr. Kimble run around accusing boy after boy of the crime. Josh was obviously laughing along, as were me and Kay, but Lucy only allowed herself the faintest of smiles. She always hated it when someone was teased, no matter how deserving they were of it.

  “Did you get in trouble?” Lucy asked.

  “Of course. We all took the rap for it and got several weeks’ worth of detention, even though the headmaster was laughing about it when he heard, and actually congratulated us on our ingenuity.”

  When the food was finished, we continued to chat away as the sun drifted down below the horizon. As the sky shone crimson in the background, my sisters and I left the men outside and went indoors to watch some TV together, all three of us cuddled up on the couch like old times. It was nice to feel this comfort once again; just me, my two sisters and America’s Got Talent, which it evidently didn’t! But it was still fun to watch, so we did.

  JOSH

  When the girls left me and Roy out back, the stars were just beginning to shine at the purple edge of the twilight and the white ghost of the moon was appearing in the stratosphere. As the air above us became more solemn, so too did our conversation. We’d both had several beers by this point and, although not drunk, a certain comfort had passed between us and our chat moved away from anecdotes and to more serious subjects.

  “So,” Roy was saying, “Sarah tells me your father pulled your college funding.”

  “Yeah,” was my only answer to this.

  “That’s shitty. It really is. A low move.”

  Whenever his three golden girls weren’t around, Roy often drifted into the occasional curse, which made him more human to me.

  “It is,” I agreed.


  “What’re you gonna do about it?”

  “I spoke to the college the other day and they say that they can suspend my studies for up to three years, so the only option I got is to keep working and earning money till I got enough saved up and can go back.”

  “At least that’s something.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I wish I could loan you the money, but I don’t really have that type of capital.”

  “Hey, Roy, don’t spoil things. I gotta learn to make my own way in this life.”

  “You had much luck finding work?”

  “Not hugely. Everything’s online now and I don’t even know if they’ll get back to me. All the places I gave my resume to just took it and said that they weren’t looking to hire at the moment but would file it to one side for future reference.”

  “You know that usually means they throw it in the trash,” Roy commented.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Well, keep looking. There’ll be something out there. It won’t be pretty, but if you keep your head down and think about the future rather than the present, you’ll eventually get yourself enough capital together to go back. And I’ll tell you what—it’ll feel ten-times better from having earned it yourself.”

  “Yeah, Sarah keeps saying.”

  “That’s because for the past fifteen years everything that girl has gotten, she’s earned. I felt hardest for her when I lost everything. She was nearly eleven then, hadn’t known anything other than luxury, and suddenly all four of us, her mother only just passed, were moving into a two-bedroom apartment and living off of food stamps. I’d lost every cent to the IRS. Every cent.”

  “I’m sorry for what my father did to you,” I felt the need to say.

  “Ach!” Roy let out, waving me away with a sweep of the hand. “You owe me nothing. He’s done worse to you and you don't even deserve it. I did something terrible to him; you merely fell in love.”

  Something stirred in me and I felt the need to ask, “But weren't you punished for falling in love?”

  This appeared to startle Roy, as he moved uncomfortably in his seat. His face went misty and his eyes shone out at the newly revealed blanket of stars.

  “I was a bastard back then,” he began, as though he were addressing the stars themselves. “Pure and simple. A real piece of shit. I can’t even tell you if I felt love back then. I’d gotten so desensitized to my own debauchery. I must’ve felt something for your mother because we continued for five years…” He stopped himself, glancing at me, and asking, “You don't mind me talking about this?”

  “Not at all. It makes a change for someone to actually talk about my mother.”

  “She was a good woman, Josh. I knew Julia for as long as your father. I was dating Moira at the time and your father was so head over heels with her that I left it well alone. But I always felt something between us.”

  “What was she like?” I had to ask.

  Roy returned his forlorn gaze back to the cosmos and said, “She was very beautiful. Almost perfection in the female form you could say. That’s what captivated your father, I guess. She was aesthetically a piece of art and he wanted to own her no matter the cost.”

  “What was she like as a person?”

  “As a person,” Roy mused out loud, his eyes narrowing. “I guess you could say she was a very charming woman. She had a sunshine about her. She’d had a life of being idolized by almost all who met her and, therefore, felt comfortable with anyone. I always admired that most in her; that she could settle into any conversation with anyone almost the second she met them. She put people at ease, which was such a contrast from your father. She was smart too. Even though she’d done modeling on the side since her early teens, she’d made her way through high school and gotten into Harvard to study anthropology. She always dreamed of going out into ancient cultures and studying them. Tribes in Papua New Guinea or somewhere deep in the Amazon. People in general interested her on every level.”

  “Did she ever go out to those places?”

  “I think your father took her there on vacation, but she never got to study people. You see, once your father owns something—and that’s how he saw marriage—he never lets it go, never gives it autonomy, always imposes his will on it and then…”

  He stopped himself and gave me another sidelong glance.

  “I don't mean to shit on your old man,” he added guiltily.

  “It’s okay. Really. He’s not exactly my best friend.”

  Roy’s eyes returned to the sea of stars.

  “Anyway, she never got to do any of that,” he went on in a low tone.

  “How did your thing start?” I asked.

  A crooked smile bent Roy’s lips and I could tell that he was looking for the right words.

  “I know this sounds dumb,” he began, “but it just started. Like I said before, I always felt something for your mother and eventually we began seeing each other behind everyone’s back.”

  “And you were seeing each other when she was murdered?”

  Roy let out a sigh here and his eyes misted up some more.

  “Yeah, I was. We were still together. Still playing games you could say.”

  There was another question I wanted to ask, one that was far darker than those I’d already asked, something that had bothered me lately, ever since I’d found out about the affair. Feeling overwhelmed by the need to inquire, I went ahead:

  “Do you think my father had anything to do with her death? Do you think he knew back then?”

  “Whoa!” Roy burst out and returned his eyes to me. “I’m not saying that at all. I’m almost a hundred percent sure that your father didn’t know a thing about us until Moira told him. His reaction that day and in the days and weeks that followed told me that he hadn’t known a thing until then. I mean, he went straight ahead and ruined me. Why wait seven years to do that? If he’d’ve had your mother killed over that, why not ruin me immediately afterwards?”

  “But did he have her killed for something else then maybe? Was she seeing anyone else that he could have found out about?”

  “No. Julia wasn’t the type. She wasn't like me. Our affair was purely an escape for her. She had no need for multiple men. She just had me. I’m certain that your mom cheated on your father only the one time. And as for your father killing her, I can tell you that it wasn't him. He was with me the night of her murder.”

  “But that wouldn’t stop him getting someone else to do it. He usually gets everyone else to do his dirty work.”

  Roy was silent for a moment, his eyes looking into me, and I sensed that he wanted to say something further on the subject, wanted to reveal a devastating thought. But in the end he let out another sigh and simply said:

  “I don’t think we should speculate where we have no real evidence, Josh. What happened to your mother, and with you present at her death, was an absolute tragedy. Whatever the reasons behind it—and in all probability it was a botched robbery—whatever the reasons, we can’t know until we do for definite. Do you get me?”

  “Yeah,” was my swift answer, a trickle of disappointment running through me.

  “Your father is many things, but I don't think he would have had your mother killed. For all his faults, Andrew really did love her, even if he was too cold to really show it.”

  The frosty touch of sadness stroked my heart in that moment and a glumness spread over me. Observing my darkened expression, Roy placed his arm around my shoulder. I almost recoiled from his touch, but eventually warmed to it, as one always does to a sudden moment of unexpected sympathy.

  “There’s just so much I don’t know,” I explained in a sad tone. “I feel that there’s so much more to her death. Dad never talks about it and I’ve lost count how many times I’ve been told to keep quiet when I’ve brought her up in conversation with him.”

  “He’s just real hurt is all. Finding out that she’d been sleeping with his best friend tore the last shreds of humanity out of your father. Sinc
e then I’ve observed him from afar and seen that he’s gotten even more ruthless than he was when I knew him. And, man, was he ruthless back then. I think your father didn’t want to talk about it because that would have meant recalling all the other stuff involving me. And for that, Josh, I apologize. Because I feel I’ve stolen a part of your mother away from you by making it too hard for your father to talk to you about her.”

  “I’m not sure he would have been too indulging anyway.”

  “Maybe not, but I’m still sorry for that.”

  We drifted into silence and his consoling arm remained around my shoulders while we both searched the stars with our sad eyes. Perhaps my mother was up there somewhere, in the heavens looking down at us. I hoped that if she was, she at least felt a little proud of me. I hadn’t done much to warrant her pride so far in my life. A lot to exasperate her, for sure. But to give her pride, probably not. I hoped that in the next years and decades of my life I could make up for all the stupid things I’d done to displease her as she looked down upon me from some far away star. I really did hope that.

  JOSH

  So, I got a job. A week after the barbecue, I was called by a freezer company situated at the harbor. It was simple work, unloading trucks of frozen goods by hand. Hand-balling, they called it. I was to be a hand-baller. I went down to the place, Sarah driving me and kissing me good luck when I got out the car, and found myself walking into a large yard with a huge warehouse at its back, a steady flow of trucks coming and going. Along the front of the warehouse was a loading bay where the trucks backed their trailers up, and all along it men scurried around unloading goods onto pallets, wrapping them in cellophane, before a forklift would take them off through large sliding doors that opened into colossal chillers filled with metal racking that went up at least thirty feet to the high ceiling.

  The guy who showed me around was called Dodds and he was the day foreman. He was a cheery guy and would often stop as we strolled about to banter with his workforce. As we went about, Dodds pointed things out to me, informed me of safety procedures, etc. When we passed them, the workers, clad in boots, big coats and overalls, would nod at me, their unhappy, sweat-smeared faces telling me all I needed to know about this place: it was hard and not the most fulfilling of employments. Dodds ended the tour and took me up to the office where he asked me a few things about myself, about my former experience in a warehouse, one of the many fabrications asserted by my resume, to which I replied that it had been very similar to this one, loading and unloading trucks. He asked why I left and I replied that I’d been laid off due to the loss of our biggest contract, a lie I thought up on the spot. He’d simply rocked in his chair and nodded. “It’s been a regular occurrence these past years,” he mused loudly, his expression melting into one of sympathy for my insincere woes.