OH MAN, I’D REALLY PUT my foot in it. What had I been thinking? I hadn’t been thinking, that was my problem. Why did I tell Lacey I knew it was over between her and Rob? Of course she’d be upset with me for stepping into her life like that. I hadn’t meant to. I’d gone to Rob’s apartment to teach him a lesson, but not because he was Lacey’s fiancé. It was because he was using her to try and get himself out of debt. He was trying to steal from her. What kind of a guy would I be if I didn’t step in to protect her from that? He wasn’t really her fiancé. He was a con artist. If it hadn’t been for those circumstances, I wouldn’t have sabotaged any relationship of hers, no matter how strongly I felt about it.
I’d royally screwed up. She thought I’d pushed Rob out of the picture so that I could move in. Of course she was mad. She had every right to be. I should have gone straight to her with the information about Rob. The truth was, I had treated her like a child. But I’d done so out of love. I’d wanted to protect her. I didn’t want her to know that she’d chosen another cheating, lying son of a bitch. I wanted her to know that she was better than that, that she deserved more.
Why were women so complicated? Why was life so complicated?
But there was nothing I could do about all that right now. I had work to do. A lot of work.
First, I went to my bank and deposited the money I’d stolen the night before into a numbered account. Then I went back to the neighborhood Lacey and I had driven through on our way to the flower market. I’d found out the address of the house where we’d stopped to talk to those boys and I headed straight for it. When I got there, I even saw the boys, sitting outside the house on the front porch. They waved to me.
“Shouldn’t you boys be in school?” I said.
“Who’s going to make us go? You?”
I shook my head. “You’ll see,” I said to them, and drove off.
The realtor was located just a few blocks away, in a small office in a strip mall. A bell clinked over my head as I entered. I was upset about the call from Lacey but I couldn’t focus on that for now. I had important things to take care of.
“Can I help you, sir?” a realtor in a short skirt with blonde hair said to me.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I want to buy a house for my new wife. It’s a surprise.”
“How nice. And do you have a particular house in mind?”
I told her the address of the house that was currently occupied by the teenage boys.
“That house is available at a good price, but I must warn you, sir, it’s currently occupied by some local youths. It might be a bit of a hassle getting rid of them.”
“I don’t want to get rid of them,” I said.
“What do you mean, sir?”
“I mean, they’re welcome to stay. I’m not kicking them out.”
“Well, that’s weird.”
“I’m a weird guy,” I said with a grin.
“It’s actually pretty kind of you.”
“My wife’s the one who’s kind,” I said. “This is all for her.”
“Do you have any idea how much you’d like to offer.”
“What are they asking?”
“It’s on the market for five hundred, but I’m sure we could bargain them down.”
“No, five hundred is fine. Just get all the paperwork drawn up for me. I want this to go through as soon as possible.”
“And will you be financing the transaction with a loan?”
“Cash.”
I signed some documents, left a ten thousand dollar deposit, and went back to the house. The boys were still all there, sitting on the porch as if they didn’t have a care in the world. They looked like they were having fun, but I could tell from the looks on their faces that there was some tension and worry under the surface. They were concerned about their futures, and why wouldn’t they be? They had as much right as anyone to look forward to their future lives.
“Hey,” I said to them, “who lives in this house?”
The boy who looked like he was the oldest spoke up.
“We all do. There’s eight of us.”
I looked around at them and counted. They were all between the ages of about sixteen and eighteen.
“Are you all enrolled in school?”
“The local high school,” the oldest boy said.
“And you don’t want to be taken in by child services?”
“That would be a disaster,” the boy said. “I mean, foster homes would be one thing, but they don’t have foster homes for boys like us. We’d all go straight into the system. We’d be institutionalized. It would be the first step on a route that would end us all up in prison.”
“I know that route,” I said. “I almost travelled it myself. If it wasn’t for a very good man, I’d be in prison right now.”
The boys nodded.
“So, I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen,” I said. “You remember the lady that came by a while back in the car?”
“We remember her,” one of the boys said.