"I used to do it alone, but with increased responsibilities, I had to hire someone reliable to do it. The cheques still come on time, so?" he answered, shrugging.
He wanted to crack that puzzle, but he thought he needed a drink for it.
Eric was the eldest child in his family. At 35, he was married and had two kids.
The wife, Serena, helped him run the business, and he had kept that a secret from his parents.
His two kids, Betty and Katrina, were in the lower grades in the primary.
"I don't know how he might react to this. We just need to keep it under wraps for a while," Eric had told Serena after giving her the job offer.
"There isn't really a problem. I am helping you out like any other spouse would do to their partners," Serena said.
"I don't deny that. The difference, in this case, is that I am also employed by my parents. An employee can't employ another employee," Eric went on.
Serena thought about it for a while, and even though she didn't agree with him, she agreed to work under wraps.
The truth of the matter is—Eric was afraid of his father telling him that the fact that he ran the family business didn't imply that he owned it.
Jim had been born into a middle-class family. He had seen his parents work two or three jobs to cater to the needs of their three children.
He had been brought up in the spirit of sharing. If an older sibling outgrew a cloth or shoe, it would be passed down to the next child as long as the cloth or shoe was in good condition.
His brothers and he had stopped complaining about when they would get new purchases like their classmates in school.
They appreciated what they had and knew that to get more, the parents had to struggle.
Jael was also brought up in a strict family setup. She knew the value of things because her mom kept on telling them to take care of things because they weren't being picked on the streets.
Despite being wealthy and trying to give a very comfortable life to their kids, the Bargers knew that they would have to do that with discipline.
The children running the restaurants had to know that the restaurants weren't legally theirs and had to sweat to earn money.
After Sam and Karen's meeting at the supermarket, they had randomly met three more times.
"I told you to give me an honest answer. I wouldn't be near you if you had done your part of the bargain," Sam would tell her every time they met.
"I don't care about you and your bargains. Honestly, if you were thoughtful enough, you would have left me alone," Karen would answer back.
She felt that it was emotionally draining for her to be talking about the same thing every time she met Sam.
"Let's do this. Have dinner sometime? You will say whatever you want to say then get done with it? No more meet-ups after that? Random or planned. Is that a deal?" Karen asked.
"Deal," Sam said smiling.
One evening in the hospital, the doctor checked on Evans then called Angie, Peter, and Calvin into his office.
The office seemed depressing to Angie, just like the other parts of the hospital, and it was quite obvious there was something very sensitive to be said.
There were anatomy charts on the wall, a shelf full of sterilizers and syringes, and files upon files of patients.
"Is everything okay?" Calvin had asked.
"No," the doctor answered and waited for the impact of his words.
The three each felt faint, and their heartbeats increased.
"What do you mean by no? I saw him a few hours ago. He was okay, talking and laughing with me, so how can you say everything isn't fine?" Angie asked in anger.
"Please calm down and let me finish," the doctor said calmly.
"Calm down! No! I can't," Angie said, "How am I supposed to calm down when he has been in this hospital for weeks? He woke up, you said he's okay, and now he isn't. Is this a sick joke to you?"
"Well, Evans can be discharged from the hospital. However, there is a slight problem we have noticed. He has lost the use of one of…" the doctor started to explain but was interrupted by an intern nurse who brought in her notes on some patient.
"What were you saying?" Peter asked once the nurse had left the office.
The doctor turned the desktop machine before him and pushed it towards the three. On the screen, there was a soft copy X-ray of Evans' legs, and one leg seemed fractured.
"I don't understand," Angie asked, confused.
"That's an X-ray of his leg. The leg got fractured from being hit by a blunt object. Am assuming that the teens might have rammed into Evans' car," the doctor answered.