The day usually started early for Royce; he was an “early to bed, early to rise” type of person, so he was already awake when the alarm went off at five on Monday morning, long before the light of day. In only minutes he was out of the bathroom, reflecting on how much quicker that went when there wasn’t a woman to get in the way and slow things down. Like most mornings, he pulled on workout clothes and packed a small suitcase with the clothes he would want for the day.

In no more than fifteen minutes he was out of the house. It was only a short distance to the Pafco Supermarkets headquarters, where he parked his car and walked up the street to Josie’s Fitness Gym, where Nancy, the normal morning attendant and trainer, was waiting for him, yawning and desperately clutching a plastic coffee mug. At one time the place hadn’t opened until seven, but he paid extra to have Nancy come in at five-thirty. It was never terribly busy at that hour, but as time had gone by a few others started to come in for their morning workout.

“So how are you this morning, Royce?” Nancy yawned as he set down his suitcase near the front desk.

“Not bad,” he smiled. “A couple of things went my way for once.”

“That’s good to hear,” she said. “Are you planning on your normal routine this morning?”

“Might as well,” he said, heading into the gym proper to the first machine of his normal rotation. He had realized long before that his job was pretty sedentary, and he had sloppy eating habits, not unusual for someone who lived alone. He had noticed his weight start to balloon and his clothes starting to get tight, so forty-five minutes of regular workout each morning along with Nancy keeping on his back about his weight had turned that around long before. By the time he was back into something approaching the shape he had been in as a high school athlete, the morning workout had become as much of a hobby as he had. He mostly trained himself, with the occasional comment from Nancy, whose main job as far as he was concerned was to show up in the morning with the key to the place.

This morning went about like most of them did, with him minding his own business while Nancy used caffeine to try to lever her eyes open. However, it went more quickly than normal for him, mostly because he had things to think about. He had a little over six months to pull things together, and for some of the items that might be barely enough time – but right now, it seemed like it would be time enough.

Once he was done with his workout, he showered in the locker room, which had a much more powerful and satisfying shower than the one at home, then got dressed for work. At six-thirty he was ready to go for the day. “See you tomorrow,” he said as he headed toward the door within a couple of minutes of his usual time.

Still a creature of habit, he walked across the street to a fast-food place that was just beginning to get settled into the day. A few minutes later he walked out carrying a large orange juice and a bag with a sausage, egg, and biscuit sandwich.

It was still well before opening time in his office, so he unlocked the place and turned on the lights. After getting the coffeepot going, he headed back to his desk. He had learned many years before that, as the president and chief operating officer of Pafco Supermarkets, he could get a lot done before most of the staff showed up for work, and he had work to do. He’d chipped away at some of it yesterday, as well as doing some scouting and laying some groundwork for his special project.

Royce was well aware that he was a workaholic. A lot of that had begun when his father got sick, back before things went bad with Maxine. For a long time he’d had to juggle his management of the Willow Street Market as well as the whole Pafco Supermarkets Corporation while trying to help out his ailing father the best he could. He had to admit to himself that he hadn’t been able to give Maxine and Petra all of the time they needed, and that was the root cause of the problems that had led to the divorce and all of the unpleasantness that went with it. The divorce and what followed had not helped things – they just stole time that he needed to throw at the business.

By the time the business demands had eased a little he’d realized that he had little else to do in his life except for the business, so he just stayed at it. Sitting in the office working on something was much more pleasurable than sitting around his new home staring at the wall, so a day as short as eight hours behind his desk or visiting one of the supermarkets was a rare one. Twelve hours or more was the rule and not the exception.

He spent a few minutes eating his breakfast. By the time he was done he could hear that the coffee was ready, so he poured himself a mug, and settled down to work. There was a lot to do today, and he figured he might as well get as much done as he could before things got interesting.

A productive hour passed before he heard the door open, and looked up to see Hazel come in. Hazel was his secretary, office manager, and all-around go-to person, much like she’d been for his father before his health went bad. He owed her a great deal, for it was she, more than anyone else, who had kept things on track while he was trying to learn his father’s job while doing his own. She was in her late fifties, and once in a while he got the impression that she was looking forward to retirement in another few years. She was going to be hard to replace, and it was something he needed to think about.

The fact that he was already at work was not the slightest bit surprising to Hazel; she would probably have been shocked if he hadn’t beaten her to work by a wide margin. “Good morning, Mr. Palmer,” she said as she walked by the door.

Royce preferred to be on a first-name basis with people he worked with closely, but Hazel was old-fashioned in a way and preferred to be more formal; he’d quit fighting it years before. “Good morning, Hazel,” he replied. “How are you today?”

“A little sorry to be back at work after four days off,” she smiled. “So did you have a good Thanksgiving?”

“No worse than normal,” he shrugged. “Maybe a little better than normal. I had one of the new top-end tray meals, rather than the usual stuff.”

“Oh, Mr. Palmer,” Hazel sighed. “Not again?”

“There’s nobody to enjoy it with,” he replied neutrally. “I went over to the Millerton store and bagged for a while just to have something to do.”

“Darn it, I should have thought about that,” she shook her head. “None of the kids were able to come home for Thanksgiving, so it was just Floyd and me. I could have had you join us so you could have had a decent dinner.”

“No big deal. I’m used to it.”

“I’m sorry. I should have been thinking. Look, if we weren’t going to be going to Mike and Judy’s for Christmas I could have you over, but I guess it wouldn’t work.”

“Maybe another time. Like I said, I’m used to it.” He turned to business. “Do you know if Jeremy is going to be in this morning?”

“Unless something has changed, no. The last I knew he was going to be at the Jasper Street store to go over the punch list. He’ll probably be in this afternoon, though.”

“It’ll be good to have that project finally under control. It’s taken long enough, even though none of the problems were his fault. Would you tell him I need to see him when he gets in?”

“Sure enough. I’ll give a call over there and make sure he knows it.”

“All right, good. I’m not sure yet, but I may have to do some running this morning. I’ll know for sure in a while.”

In the back room of the Wilson’s Sub Shop near the corner of River and Drexel several miles away Milt Wilson was busy baking buns. Although he now had a chain of several stores, he liked to schedule himself for half shifts at one or another of them regularly, just so he could keep a finger on what was going on, to try and catch little problems before they became big ones.

Milt enjoyed baking the buns. Although he used a prepackaged mix that came in fifty-pound bags, mixing and forming the dough and getting the buns into the oven was something he enjoyed a lot. The smell of the fresh bread was intoxicating, as far as he was concerned.

This morning he was working with Mary Ann Hartley, the assistant manager at that location. She was a good worker, and as far as he was concerned she was in line to be a manager the next time a position or a new location opened up. Although she was on the far side of thirty, she’d maintained her youth well, and still looked good to him. She had a pretty good chest, a cute butt, and was friendly and perky, which always went over well with customers and with him. He knew that she was single – divorced – and had two kids. If he hadn’t decided long before to make a point of not messing with the help, long before Maxine came on the scene, in fact, he might have been willing to try to get something going with her.

That rule didn’t quite extend to the customers, which had something to do with how he’d gotten mixed up with Maxine in the first place years before. Since he had been single and enjoying it, he figured he would have been a fool to pass up opportunities when they happened, and they had happened often enough to keep life interesting. But things had unexpectedly gotten out of control when she came along, and the next thing he knew he was married with a preteen kid to care for.

Things had been tough and tense for a long time after that, but somehow, in spite of the tensions aroused by having Petra around, he and Maxine had built a pretty good relationship, and he’d managed to build up the business in the process.

He’d only had two locations when Maxine came along, although he was working on plans for a third one. She’d been of some help getting the third one going, mostly from the settlement on the house, so that eased things a little between them once the new location was running well. He’d tacked on a fourth location about the time Petra left for college. Although Maxine hadn’t been a great deal of help with it, he’d learned a lesson from what had happened between her and Royce, so he tried to give her as much attention as he could. That had probably kept him from being able to grow the business as quickly as he might have otherwise.

Just last summer he’d opened this store, his fifth. It was coming along nicely, and he figured that as soon as he got Petra married off and the bills for the wedding paid, it would be time for Maxine and him to go do something. It would probably be next winter, but maybe they could go to the Bahamas, or maybe even to Hawaii for a couple of weeks. Although Maxine was forty-three now, she still looked good in a bikini, and he still liked taking it off her.

Money was going to be tight for the next few months, though. This location was still not getting the business it ought to, and had only started to break even operationally. On top of that, there were all the setup costs that would have to be paid for somehow, but the profits from the other stores would help him pull even with the bank.

If it weren’t for the cost of the wedding coming up, Milt felt like he ought to be sitting pretty, but Maxine was going whole hog on it, and it was clear that it was going to cost him a ton. The prospective bill was already somewhere on the far side of fifteen grand, and it was clear that there was more to come – much more. The price tags on the wedding dresses Maxine and Petra had been talking about were unbelievable! Three grand for a dress that would only get worn once! He could see the wedding going to thirty grand easily, and he could open another location for that – maybe two if he was careful with his money.

The thing that really yanked his chain was Maxine’s insistence that Royce have nothing to do with the wedding, or at least as little as possible. It all went back to the hassles that followed the divorce, but if she’d at least been a little bit nice, perhaps Petra’s real father might be willing to pick up part of the cost of this huge shindig. From what little Milt knew – and he didn’t know much – Royce really wasn’t hurting for money. If he was he wouldn’t have coughed up on the far side of fifty grand over four years for Petra’s tuition, plus at least ten big ones for her car and who knew what all for her college expenses. If Royce had been treated at all nicely, he might be willing to pick up at least some of the wedding expense.

But Maxine wasn’t going to have any of that, no way. The discussion Maxine and Petra had on Saturday night about Royce giving her away at the wedding was not the first one they’d had, and it had been one of the less pointed ones. Maxine usually was a reasonable woman, and they could work things out on most things – but not where Petra was concerned, and especially not if it involved Royce.

Petra was all right, even if she wasn’t really his daughter. They usually got along just fine, even if they never had been very close. Part of that came from the fact that Maxine had kept Petra very busy with after-school activities, at least partly to limit her contact with Royce, and partly so she could have one-on-one time with him without her daughter around. If school sports hadn’t been enough, there had been equestrian lessons, piano lessons, guitar lessons, and summer-long resident camps when school was out. All that meant was that he hadn’t had a great deal of contact with her, and he was busy enough that it might have been just as well.

Mostly he saw getting Petra married off was getting rid on an unwelcome encumbrance in his life. For himself, he didn’t much care if he walked Petra down the aisle at the wedding or if Royce did it. In fact, he felt Royce had a pretty good claim on it, but he knew better than to tell Maxine that even before they got talking about money.

All he could do was try to make it work, and hope that he could manage to get his wife’s daughter married off without having to get a second mortgage on the house. At least with Petra gone, maybe he could get his life, his wife, and his bank account back on an even keel.

Over three hundred miles away, Petra was settling back into school. This was the home stretch for the semester; one more and she would be done with it. She had spent an awful lot of time over the years sitting in classrooms, and she looked forward to it being over with, not the least because a little over a month after she graduated she would be married to Barry. That would be the end of a lot of problems.

There were sure to be some new ones, but at least the ones that had dogged her with her parents – all two or three of them, depending on how she looked at it – would be gone.

Since she had gone to bed early on Saturday night, she woke up very early on Sunday morning. Rather than wake her mother and Milt up to tell them goodbye and possibly get into another squabble, she got out of the house quietly. She made a quick stop at a drive-through for breakfast and coffee to get her awake enough to keep her mind on the road, and just kept moving on toward college after that.

She was still not very happy with the whole thing on Saturday night. She’d been afraid to pass the news along to her father, since she knew he wouldn’t be very happy about it, and wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d taken her head off. But no, he just seemed hurt by the news, as hurt as he usually seemed to be on the rare occasions they’d spoken.

Once, before the divorce, her father had been a lot of fun. They played together, did things together, and had fun together even when her mother hadn’t seemed to want to take part. Her father had been her favorite person in the world, her best friend.

Then, the divorce came, and things had never been the same again. Oh, he’d been nice to her on the rare occasions that they got together. Between her activities and as busy as she knew he’d been in those years she didn’t get to spend much time with him, and those times became more rare as the years passed.

He’d been very nice to give her the car, and to pick up her college costs that weren’t covered by scholarships and grants. All she’d had to do was ask, and he had been willing to help. Of course she thanked him for his help, but somehow the thanks seemed weak and hollow to her, never adequate to make up for what he’d done for her. It seemed like a bad way to treat him.

Her mother had resented the help every bit of the way. If it had been left to her, Milt would have paid what he could toward college, but loans and such would have to cover most of the expense. Things had always been pretty bitter with her mother every time her father had offered to help her out; the comment, “He’s just trying to buy your affection” was not a new one by any means.

Was he trying to buy her affection if she asked him for the money in the first place?

As it was, she didn’t have a penny of student loan debt, which is more than Barry could say. Even though his folks had helped him a lot, he owed a lot of money, and one of the things they’d talked about was that she was going to have to get a job to help pay them down. Without much discussion they’d agreed to hold off on having kids for a while just to help deal with them. That was fine; she wasn’t real anxious to have kids in the first place, at least not right away – she and Barry needed to have some time by themselves first.

Even though she got back on campus in the middle of the day she was tired when she finally made it up to her dorm room. She had called over to Barry’s room to see if he was back yet, but he wasn’t, so she took a nap, tried him again, and then turned to studying. It turned out that he got back very late, so they only had a quick phone call where they agreed to meet in the morning.

It was good to see Barry again over breakfast in the cafeteria. “So how was your Thanksgiving?” she asked.

“Pretty good,” he said. “It was the same old stuff with the folks and the aunts and uncles on Thanksgiving, but I got together with some old friends from high school on Friday night, and we had a pretty good party. It, well, it got a little drunk before it was over with, and I had a head on me Saturday morning like you wouldn’t believe. I got it together in time to hang out with some other buddies Saturday afternoon. We sat around, had a few beers and watched Ohio State kick Michigan’s ass. What with everything, I wound up sleeping in yesterday, so I got a late start back.”

“It sounds like you had a good time,” she smiled. She wasn’t quite the party-hearty type that he was, but she’d had some good times at some of the wilder parties they’d attended.

“Well, yeah, better than I expected. So how was your Thanksgiving?”

“I wish I’d either stayed here or gone home with you,” she sighed. “As soon as I walked in the door Mom was starting in on wedding plans, and she didn’t shut up about them all weekend. I sure hope you like being a centerpiece of the whole thing, since she’s pulling out all the stops. To top it off, it looks like I got my dad thoroughly upset when I told him that Mom insisted that Milt give me away. I mean, close-the-door-in-my-face upset.”

“Wow, that’s pretty raw.”

“Yeah, it is, but I can’t say that I blame him. He is my father, after all, but my mom doesn’t want him to have anything to do with the wedding. She was even upset that I wanted to invite him to the wedding at all.”

“I’ve heard you say that they don’t get along very well.”

“Not get along a bit is more like it,” Petra sighed. “You’ve heard me talk about it before. It’s all tied in with the divorce. After all he’s given me, I think it’s a hell of a way to treat him. I mean, he mostly paid my way through college, and this is the thanks he gets.”

“I’ve heard you talk about that before, and it seems like he’s been pretty generous to you. Does he have a lot of money?”

“I’ll tell you the truth, Barry, I really don’t know. We’ve never talked about it very much. He manages a chain of supermarkets, but I get the impression that he had to dig pretty deep to pay my way through college. I know he works an awful lot of hours, but he doesn’t live like he has a lot of money. I mean, just a compact car, a fairly small house, and that kind of thing. But the last few years I haven’t been close enough to him to be able to tell any different.”

Barry got a thoughtful look on his face for a moment. “Maybe after we get married we’ll be able to get a little closer to him without your mother being on your butt all the time. I mean, he still might be willing to be a little generous toward his little girl when we’re looking to buy a house or something.”

“I don’t know about generous, but I wouldn’t mind being on better terms with him. That might be something we could work on.”

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