Page 69 of Unwanted Vows

Maddy doesn’t say anything. She just strokes her son’s hair.

I sigh. “I just hope I won’t scare the two of you, and that you will both respect me when this is all done.”

Maddy bops me lightly on the shoulder with one small fist. “Do what you gotta do,” she says. “Paul, you are to be seen and not heard. If you have questions, your father and I will explain later when we don’t have to pretend to act tough.”

“I get it,” Paul says. “Deaf, dumb, and blind until we get back home. Too bad no one packed a pinball machine.”

Maddy snickers, and hugs him. It takes me a minute to get the reference to the Who’s rock opera. “Hopefully, it won’t be that bad,” I say. “Just look stoic, and hold the questions until we are away from here.”

“Even with a million foxes gnawing at my guts,” Paul says.

Maddy sighs. “I knew I shouldn’t have read those old Greek and Roman stories to him. But he didn’t like most of the regular children’s books.”

“No foxes, either,” I say, praying that I really can keep my family safe under these circumstances.

The van pulls out, and we ride in silence. The people who have boarded with us are all security, and on high alert. None of us are feeling chatty.

The hospice is only a few blocks from the Bunker. I wonder for a moment why it wasn’t part of it, but then I realize there would be all sorts of people in the hospice, not just VIPs who required security.

Austin must be clairvoyant, or else he is very good at reading expressions glimpsed in a rearview mirror, for he says, “The hospice has a high-security wing and better medical facilities than the Bunker. We’ll be pulling into the parking garage.”

I remember how it used to be when I was in high school, and then in college. The undercover private security people who took all the same classes I did, the armored vehicles that picked me up and dropped me off wherever I wanted to go. I’d hated it, even before I understood why it was necessary.

Now, I am headed back into it. I’ve already said yes. All that remains is to take up the reins. Grandfather compared it to having a tiger by the tail. My hope is that it will be more like taking charge of a runaway team when the driver has been shot by angry natives.

The parking garage is amazingly clean. No ugly graffiti, no nasty odors, just pale gray concrete, discrete neon signs, and metal doors. Austin seems to know where we are going.

We get out of the car, and he shepherds us to one of the doors. We are met by an attendant dressed in immaculate scrubs and a close-fitting hat that hides her hair. “This way,” she says, turning and leading us down a pale green corridor. “He’s been asking for you.”

Grandfather Aims is ensconced in a luxurious hospital bed positioned by a picture window. The window looks out over a walled courtyard containing a fountain, a bird feeder and colorful flower beds. “A pleasant prospect isn’t it?” he asks. “It is almost as if it is designed to presage heaven. For some of us, I fear this may be as close as we will get. Come in, Grandson. We need to talk.”

Austin and the dogs take up a position just inside the door. Maddy, Paul, and I walk over to the three chairs set up facing the bed.

“Sit, sit,” the old man says.

We sit, and for a few minutes we all just stare at him while he stares back. “I do not envy you the work before you,” Grandfather says. “I have done my best, and I’ve attended to some things. But no one can change the world in a minute.”

“Have you?” I say bitterly. “What about the young women who are considered so cheap that when they are beaten and abused, those around them say that they got what they deserved? What about the youth whose future is claimed by addiction, and those sucked into less savory occupations?”

The old man in the bed looks out the window where little birds in jewel colors splash in basins that catch water from the fountain. “When the sun shines on a tree, it casts a shadow,” he said. “A gardener might curse the shade, but a family planning a picnic might bless it. All things are relative.”

I look at him for a minute or two before I say, “I worked in your big city clinic for a week. The director there gouged prices, treated bullet wounds without reporting them, and was absolutely indifferent to the plight of a young woman who was so beaten that she seemed unlikely to recover. The way he put it was , ‘She got what she asked for.’”

Grandfather nodded. “I remember. I replaced that director only weeks after you left. His successor was a little better, but he was also a number counter. But the one after that, she was much better, and today the clinic is a model facility that helps turn lives around.”

“How progressive of you,” I say. “I suppose you think that compensates for contributing to the crime in the area.”

“Oh, Andrew,” Grandfather Aims says, “are you still clinging to the worldview where everyone is a moral, hardworking drone? Have you so completely turned against the oaths you took when you were fifteen? I placed you in that clinic, hoping you would see how things were and what you would need to do to change them. Instead, you took the moral high road and left in a flutter of disdainful superiority.”

“Is that how you think I see things?” I ask.

He smiles, a tired bitter smile, “I wanted you to see how that clinic operated. I never dreamed it would send you halfway around the world to get away from that life. You do not understand the shades of gray that are involved in the world of business.”

“I’m not buying it,” I say. “But go on. What spin are you going to put on your life that will justify what you have done?”

The old man closes his eyes, then opens them again. “Oh, Grandson. I have done many things that I regret. Sometimes, I’ve even been sorry that I connected the Aims family with the Lanes. But I had only one daughter, and I knew I needed a strong descendant who could move in the political morass that was and is North American government. Perhaps if I’d had a better crystal ball, I might have seen the changes in the ethnic balance in our ruling houses.”

“I suppose this explains why you engineered my mother’s marriage to Albert Lane, and his divorce of Amari,” I say.

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