In spite of Maria now being settled in at the Parker’s Corners store, Royce didn’t make any more visits to the site than normal. While he liked the woman, he liked a lot of his employees, and he mostly got a warm feeling when he thought of her because he had been able to make a difference in her life. Steve, the store manager, had told him that she was really doing well, and that maybe after a few years she would have potential to be a store manager.

Whenever Royce happened to run into her at Parker’s Corners, which wasn’t on every trip he made there, he always stopped to have a brief discussion, sometimes just to ask how she was getting along, which was what he had done one day along toward the end of March. Since they were back in the office, they didn’t have to worry about customers coming along, which had been the case on the couple of days they’d worked together back in the holiday season.

After they’d exchanged a polite “How are you getting along?” he found himself reaching for something to say, mostly because he enjoyed talking with her. “I was wondering how Ramona was doing, what with moving and the hours you’re having to keep.”

“Pretty well,” she replied. “She really likes her new school and she’s doing well there, a lot better than she did at the old place. The hours I have to work really make it a pain in the neck for us, though. She’s old enough that I can leave her home some of the time but not all of the time.”

“How are you handling that?”

“There’s an older woman, Naomi, in a nearby apartment who’s been helping us out,” she replied. “Sometimes Ramona stays with her, and that’s good because Naomi has some problems that Ramona can help out with. Sometimes Naomi just looks in on Ramona a couple of times an evening. When I have to work on weekends, Ramona sometimes goes to stay with my father or my brother, and she’s made a friend she stays with after school sometimes. We make it work, but things like that happen when you’re a single mom.”

“Well, I wish it didn’t have to be that way, but that’s one of the things that happens with being open as many hours as we are.”

“I keep telling myself that it’s going to get better. As she gets older I’ll be able to let her stay home by herself more, not that it’s always a good thing.”

“Don’t you worry about her getting into things?”

“No, not really. She’s a little young for some of the trouble kids can get into, although it’s not as bad here as it was at our last place. There were kids there that just ran wild, although she did her best to stay away from them. She’s a good kid and it’s harder for her to get into that kind of trouble around here.” Maria stopped, shook her head, and went on, “Of course, that will change as she gets older. I mean, I was older before I started messing around with guys.”

“Did you ever get into trouble with that?”

“No, not really. My father and mother kept a pretty close eye on me, and that probably helped. I was in college before I met my husband, and by then things were quite a bit different. I do worry about not being able to watch over Ramona as much as my folks did me.”

Royce wanted to suggest that things might be easier if she were to find herself a husband, but knew that was getting a little personal. In the past she had mentioned that she had been looking around but hadn’t liked what she had found, Hector leading that list. She had intimated that she was still looking for the right guy, not just a guy, and back at New Year’s she had said she’d do without before she put up with someone like Hector again.

“Yeah, it can be tough when they’re that age,” he replied, at least partly to not talk about her romantic life, which he took to be pretty nonexistent anyway. “I never had much to do with my daughter when she was that age, but that was because her mother did her best to keep her away from me by playing games with visitation. Now I hardly ever see her.”

“That has to be heartbreaking.”

“Yeah, it is, but I guess that’s the way it has to be. You take care of her and hope for the best.”

“Oh, I will. She’s my pride and joy, after all, and she’s the only thing I have left from my husband. She often asks about you and wants to know if we can have you over for dinner again.”

“I might have to take her up on that when things slow down for me a little. I’ve been pretty busy lately, but that won’t last forever. When you see her, tell her I’ve thought about her.”

“I’ll be sure to do that.”

They didn’t get to talk much longer, since there was a problem with a customer that Maria had to deal with, but after she left Royce found himself thinking about her a little more. She was a nice woman and fun to be around, and he’d thoroughly enjoyed his dinner with her and Ramona a couple of months before. However, he was reluctant to get any more involved with her than he had been.

As far as that went, he wasn’t very sure how badly he wanted to get involved with anyone ever again. Although he wasn’t happy with living alone, his time with Maxine had ended badly enough that he wasn’t sure he wanted to open himself up to the risk of having something blow up in his face again. Once was enough as far as he was concerned.

Maybe when Maxine and Milt had been put in the places they deserved, he might feel a little more open to the idea. He still felt bitter about it and only the prospect of being able to drop the hammer on them once and for all gave him something to look forward to. But major changes in his life seemed unlikely; he’d become set in his ways over the course of over ten years, and he knew it.

In any case, the long-overdue revenge would be sweet; he could taste it already.

Petra was now in the last term of her college classes, and she was looking forward to having them over with. She’d been in school for a long time, perhaps too long. She was looking forward to getting on to the next thing, which was marrying Barry and building a life with him.

While she still had classes and tests, they were starting to mean less; perhaps a little “senioritis” was starting to set in, and she looked forward to leaving the place.

At one time she’d been open to the idea of a reasonably large wedding, although she didn’t want to overdo it, but her mother had kept tacking on this and that until it was becoming what seemed to be the extravaganza of the century. It was much more than Petra wanted, but she’d been totally unable to stop her mother trying to go overboard with her plans.

Even though she still wanted to do the best she could in what was left of her college career, it wasn’t going well. Mostly that was because she got at least five calls a day from her mother, dithering about this or that to do with the wedding, or trying to push her into doing something she really didn’t want to do. She had experienced only limited success with controlling that, and God only knew how much money her mother had already spent and was planning on spending before it was all over with. She was sure the money could be put to good use elsewhere, but there was nothing she could say about it, mostly because she’d lost enough fights about it already.

Back when she and Barry had been in Florida, there had been some discussion about just ignoring all of her mother’s plans, and eloping to get away from them. It had never gone further than just talk, because both of them realized that even if they were married it wouldn’t stop any of her mother’s plans for a big “official” wedding extravaganza. The only way they could stop it, they agreed, was for neither of them to show up, and that would really set her mother off.

At least that wasn’t the issue today, although the one she faced today was probably going to set off another fight. She’d been putting off the confrontation for a couple of days, but had finally realized that she couldn’t put it off forever. She sat down in her room, took a few deep breaths, tried to calm herself as much as she could to steel herself for what was to come, and dialed her mother’s number.

Her mother was on the phone almost instantly; Petra thought that she was probably getting set to dial the phone to harass her, or to harass someone else about something to do with the wedding. Sure enough, as soon as her mother heard her voice, she started in, “Petra, have you done anything about those shoes? I know they’re high heels and they’re uncomfortable, but you can live with that. The color is wrong, all wrong, and it won’t go with your dress.”

“No, Mom, I haven’t. I’ve been really cracking the books for this test tomorrow, and it’s really important.”

“More important than your wedding? There can’t be any schoolwork that is that important! Your wedding is your big chance to shine, to be the center of attention. You need to learn how to deal with important things, Petra.”

“Mom, I don’t want to talk about it right now. I saw a pair of tenny-runners down at K-Mart that are the right color, and they’d be a whole lot more comfortable to wear standing around for as long as the ceremony is going to take than five-inch high heels I can’t stand to wear in the first place. Besides, I have something important to talk to you about.”

“Petra, there ought to be no way you could even consider wearing tennis shoes at your wedding. What are you thinking of? You have to plan on being the epitome of perfection. Everything has to be right!”

This wasn’t getting Petra anywhere and she knew it. Somehow she had to grab hold of this conversation and say what she wanted to say before her mother ran on so long that Petra’s cell phone battery went dead – which she could at least hope for. “There’s another ceremony coming up, Mom,” she broke into her mother’s rant about her inconsiderate daughter. “I just got the word on plans for graduation. They’re going to be having it in Mueller Auditorium, which is smaller than the one they normally use. It’s something to do with problems with the building, I don’t know what. The big thing is that they’re only going to allow us each two tickets.”

“Well, that’s no problem,” her mother replied. At least she wasn’t talking about the wedding for once. “Milt and I will be there for you, of course.”

“Mom, I hate to say this, and I don’t think you’re going to like it, but I think Dad ought to be there, not Milt.”

“Why not Milt?” Maxine replied, the volume of her voice rising and tone going up about half an octave. “He’s the next thing to being your father, and he’s taken good care of you all these years. You ought to have a little respect for him. After all, he’s done more for you than your father ever has. I mean, he probably won’t even show up for your wedding. He doesn’t think enough of you to even be willing to do that. I don’t even know why you insisted that he be sent an invitation, and that notion you had of him giving you away was just absolutely beyond comprehension. He doesn’t care for you, and Milt has been the one that’s been good to you all these years.”

“Dad has cared enough for me to spend a hell of a lot of money on my tuition and other college stuff,” Petra yelled as soon as her mother stopped to breathe long enough for her to get a word in edgewise. “Do you know he’s spent over fifty thousand dollars on my college? I can’t tell you how much you and Milt have spent on it, but I’ll bet it doesn’t come to a tenth of that.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. He’s just tried to buy your affection, Petra. That’s all it is. At least Milt and I care for you. Milt is spending a lot of money on this wedding, and your father hasn’t contributed a thing. I think you need to show a little consideration for Milt and what he’s given you. Milt and I will be going to your graduation, and your father won’t be, and that’s that. I don’t want to hear any more about it out of you. You’re an ungrateful child if you think it’s going to be any different . . .”

Her mother was still ranting when Petra shut off her cell phone. She’d lost that round and lost it badly, not that she had expected any differently. It really shouldn’t have been a big deal for her father to be invited to graduation. After all, it wasn’t as if he had to sit with her mother or even talk to her, but her mother had insisted on taking another opportunity to be rude to him and that was that.

It was a very poor way to treat her father, and she knew it. But what else was she going to do? There was a possibility that she could get a ticket for him from someone else if she asked around about it – she knew not everyone planned on going to graduation – but if her father showed up her mother was sure to pitch a fit about it. So that idea was out before she even gave it serious consideration.

Somehow, some way, she was going to have to come up with a way to apologize to her father. Maybe he didn’t care about her all that much but at least it had to be more than her mother had ranted for years, or he wouldn’t have spent the money on her car and her college career.

Maybe after she and Barry were married they could drop by his house informally and try to make things up with him, at least a little bit. It wouldn’t make up for all the hurt that had been dumped on him, but it was a gesture that needed to be made.

But if she and Barry did that, she sure hoped her mother wouldn’t hear about it . . .

While Royce viewed the development of Sandy’s Super Subs and the Hot Dog Hut as being the most important part of his campaign against Maxine and Milt, he didn’t forget about the other parts of his plans. From time to time he checked in with Charles Ashbury, the lawyer who was handling the main suit for damages, and Walt Benson, the lawyer who was going to handle the petty harassment part of his plans.

There wasn’t much happening yet on Ashbury’s development of the lawsuit to recover damages from Maxine’s blocking him from visitation with Petra. The attorney had found a few interesting applications of case law, and seemed to think there might even be a good chance to win the suit in the long run, although he warned that it was sure to be thrown out of family court. However, it stood a much better chance if he could get it appealed to circuit court. For the moment, though, he’d done just about what he could do, and all that was left was to wait on the right time to start the action.

The other part of the plan, the part that Benson was handling, was a little more complicated. Royce’s meetings with that attorney had not been frequent, but by now it had become clear that they couldn’t just wait until the last minute to get the ball rolling, and that was the topic of the meeting this afternoon. “From what we’re planning, we don’t have a lot of control over the reaction time we’re going to get,” he warned. “At this point, I don’t see the need for any lawsuits, unless something opportune happens to come up. But we need to lay some groundwork so I can start tickling the agencies that we want investigating him.”

“No lawsuits at all?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m just saying that we want to be careful if we’re going to avoid looking like I’ve had my fingers on it. I would like to get some incidents that will set the tone for what we’re looking for, but if they turned into lawsuits it’s possible we could be open to collusion charges.”

“I can see your point on that,” Royce nodded. “Like I told you in the beginning, I don’t want to do anything illegal, although I’m less picky about it being ethical. So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that if we’re going to have investigators from different agencies getting interested around the first of June, especially the health department, we need to get started with a few incidents that will lay the groundwork, oh, not much more than a month ahead of time. They react to things on their own schedule, not on ours. Now, when the time comes, there are possibly some things I can do to speed up the process, but once the ball gets rolling there won’t be any stopping it, possibly for months. On top of that, there won’t be anything we can do to stop it. So are you still looking at the first of June?”

“Might as well,” Royce shrugged. “There are still a few things I need to work out the timing on, but since you tell me that we can’t be precise, that ought to be good enough.”

Maxine was going through yet another catalogue when Milt arrived home late that afternoon. He took one look at it and figured that she was trying to find a way to spend even more money on the wedding, but he knew there was no putting a stop to it. Once again he reflected that hooking up with her for a little quickie years ago had to have been one of the dumber things he’d ever done, but it had mostly worked out all right until this came along.

At least it would be over with in another few weeks, and with any kind of luck things would get back to normal; given time his bank account might even recover. “So how was your day?” he asked.

“Not bad,” she said casually. “I had a nice talk with Petra today. They’ve only got limited seating for graduation, but she’s sending us two tickets.”

There wasn’t going to be any getting out of this one, either, but at least it might not cost quite as much. “When is that going to be?”

“The end of the month. The graduation itself is Saturday afternoon. I figured that you could take off work on Friday so we can drive down there, go to the graduation on Saturday, then come back on Sunday.”

Milt shook his head; he could tell he was just about to lose another round, but he figured he might as well go through the motions. “I don’t know if I can take off for that long.”

“We really should be there,” she insisted. “After all, your daughter is only going to graduate from college once. We ought to be there to show our support.”

“Well, I guess,” he said, deciding to let this one go. After all, it would be good to be out of town for a long weekend, even if it was going to be as boring as this promised to be. “I sure wish it was closer, though. I hate to be gone for that long since there will be a lot of dead time.”

“You’re right on that. There are a lot of things I need to do, too. Going to her graduation is going to take time away from them, but it’s one of those things we really have to do.”

“I suppose,” he conceded, thinking that it would be three days that it would be hard for Maxine to spend money on the wedding. Not wanting to run the risk of saying anything that might get him in even more trouble now that he’d lost this round, he went on, “Any mail for me?”

“There are several letters on your desk,” she replied, turning her interest back to the catalogue. “Most of them look like junk.”

“I’ll get to them in a couple of minutes. Right now I need a beer to unwind with.”

It was a few minutes before he managed to sit down at his desk and deal with the mail. Maxine had been right about most of it: it was mostly junk that could be consigned to the wastebasket without opening. But there was one letter, from the county circuit court, in a rather official-looking envelope. Somehow it didn’t look like good news, but he had little choice but to open it.

“Oh, shit,” he said as soon as he glanced at the letter inside.

“What’s this, Milt?”

“I got nailed for jury duty,” he shook his head. “As if I needed that, on top of everything else. I mean, I’m not surprised it’s happening. I knew since last fall that I was in the jury pool, but I guess I’m stuck. Well, there’s at least a day in June down the tubes, and maybe more.”

“In June?” she said with alarm. “Is it going to cause trouble with the wedding?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, taking a closer look at the letter. “I have to report on the Monday morning after the wedding.” He read on a little further and noted, “At least if I get put on a jury, I’ll only be on one. That’s something.”

“How long will it take?”

“Who knows? It might take a day if it’s some simple little thing. On the other hand, it could be some big, complicated trial that could take all month. I could manage a day or two, but if I lose much more than that it’s going to hurt.”

“Yes, there will be a lot that will have to be done after the wedding. There’s a whole list of things that will have to be done in the next couple weeks after it. Are you sure you can’t get out of it?”

“I doubt it. From the stories I hear they don’t take much in the way of excuses.”

Maxine shook her head. “Well, look on the good side. At least it’s not going to be before the wedding when I’m really going to need your help.”

“I guess,” he replied, actually agreeing with her for once but for a different reason. A nice, long, dull trial would be a serious relief compared to the madhouse the days before the wedding were sure to be. But still, a lot would be happening at once around then and this would just make it worse.

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