Finding Home Read Free

father had vacated and put the plate down in front of him. He didn’t bother with a fork.
    Somewhere between the first and second bite, his lips dusted with a fine layer of powdered sugar, Jim nodded in the general direction from which he’d just come. “Upstairs sink is clogged again.”
    Stacey sighed as she placed a fresh piece of French toast on what was now her son’s plate. So what else was new? Itseemed that something was always going wrong with the sinks and toilets in the house. There were four of the first and three of the second. And that didn’t take into account the house’s two showers and tub.
    And lately, the wiring was giving her trouble. The power would go out on certain lines. A month ago, half the house was down until the electrician came to the rescue. Brad had been furious over the bill. Rescues did not come cheaply.
    Stacey dearly loved the house they lived in. She’d fallen in love with it the very first time she saw it, over twenty years ago. But she was the first one to admit that it was at a point in its life where it needed loving care and renovating. A great deal of renovating.
    Her problem was, she couldn’t seem to convince Brad of that. Practical to a maddening fault, her husband would only nod in response to her entreaties, then, when pressed for a verbal answer, would point out that they could make do by calling in a plumber.
    â€œWhich is a hell of a lot cheaper than getting renovations.” He’d give her that look that said he knew so much better than she did what was needed. And then he’d laugh, the sound calling an official halt to the discussion. “If I let you, you’d wind up spending your way into the poorhouse.”
    She knew as well as he did what they had in the bank. What they had in all the different IRA and Keogh funds Brad kept opening or feeding. There was no way renovating the house would send them packing and residing in debtors’ prison. Or even strolling by it. But telling him that she had no intentions of using solid-gold fixtures or going overboard made no impression on Brad. Neither did saying that mostof their friends had already updated their homes and added on years ago. Some had done it twice.
    That kind of an argument held no meaning for Brad. He had no interest in keeping up with anything except for the latest advances in his field.
    The only other thing that meant anything to him was making sure his children had the best. He wanted them to have every opportunity to make something of themselves—he being the one who defined what “something” was.
    Julie had been canny enough to hit the target square on the head. Ever since she’d first opened her eyes to this world twenty-four years ago, Julie had been the apple of her father’s eye. Julie could do no wrong—and she didn’t. Their daughter was presently in medical school. Her goal was to become a pediatrician.
    Jim, who had taught himself how to read at four because he’d been too impatient to wait for anyone to read to him, had been Brad’s genius. He’d begun making plans for their son the second he’d detected that spark in his eyes, been privy to the innate intelligence their son possessed. But rebellion had taken root early in their son, as well. Once he got into college, Jim deliberately slacked off. There’d been a few times he’d been in jeopardy of being “asked” to leave the university. Whenever that happened, he’d study enough to get his grades back up. And then backed off again.
    Somehow, he had managed to graduate this June. But he still seemed destined to infuriate his father at every turn and raise his blood pressure by ten points with no effort at all.
    The problem was, his inherent aptitude for science notwithstanding, Jim had the soul of a poet. A poet who wantednothing more—and nothing less—than to make music. Brilliant to a fault, with an IQ that was almost