Published: 2 Dec 2019

The next day just wasn’t as rough as the day before. It was bad, but not “falling apart” bad. I had myself under control and I owed it all to Mike. He kept me grounded and focused on what was going on around me. We made it through the funeral mass at the church and then we all went to the cemetery for the internment of the urn. Have you ever seen those pictures of the gravesites in New Orleans? Well, the Key West Cemetery is like those, what looks like a small multi-story concrete motel, or a concrete mausoleum, that is what prevails there and that is what the Key West Cemetery was like.

We were guided to the Strauss family mausoleum. The funeral director led me to the little concrete building where inside were niches where my fore-bearers were ensconced in either single or double niches. The brass plates that sealed the containers of ashes served to seal each niche from the elements. An open niche held an urn engraved with my Grandmother’s name and dates, just as Grandfather’s was I noted when it was handed to me to place next to my Grandmother’s. I held my hands on the tops of their urns and said a prayer that they had found each other already and were watching over me and Mike and that they would always be able to do so. I told Grandfather how much I was going to miss him in my life and told Grandma that I wished we had been able to meet, but that I felt that I knew her too, from grandpa’s stories. Mike came in and reverenced my grandparents with his own prayers and we held hands as the newly finished Brass plaque was screwed into place. The funeral director guided us out to our family and two by two they also went in and paid their respects.

Once everyone had a chance to pray in the mausoleum, we left for the house and a chance to relax a bit with a bite to eat before meeting with the lawyer. By the time we had eaten and cleaned up we were ready to learn the details of Grandpa’s legacies to us all, but I think that Jan had some idea of what was to come but he didn’t feel it was his place to say anything to us. The lawyer arrived within the hour and he was a surprise to all of us, well, those of us that didn’t live here in town. He was a very attractive man in his thirties. Mr. Harris told those of us that didn’t know him that his father had been, and his father before him had been, the lawyers for the Strauss family for many generations; and upon his father’s death, he had become Grandfather’s lawyer and legal consultant. He had some general things to go through with us, but then he wanted to meet with each couple after to explain their individual bequests.

He started out by telling us all that with the exception of Mike and myself everyone’s stock holdings were now doubled. This included the stock in the lumber yard and the hardware store here in town. He told Mike and me that the residue of stock in the two companies was now ours, our shares had tripled, making us now the majority stockholders just as my Grandfather was in his time. We then split up. Jan whispering to me that he knew what was coming, and he knew that we could handle it, reminding me that we had Matt and himself to help us.

Since we were the first to sit privately with him he asked us to call him Ryan. He felt we all might have a long working relationship. I told him that I was Jason and my husband was Mike. He then passed over one of those accounting sheets that showed my grandfather’s personal stocks and bonds that were now being turned over to Mike and me. There were some of the same stocks and bonds listed that he had already put into our names, but these amounts were nowhere near the amounts we had already been gifted. These were hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of times what we already owned in our names. The bottom line total worth was over two hundred million. But Ryan was not finished. He explained that not only was the Key West house in my name, but that the Granby property was now in my name also with Mike listed as the co-owner of that property as well. But again there was more. The furniture company that the furnishings for the Granby property came from, the one in Lagootee, Indiana, was ours now as were the big hotel here in town and a forty percent ownership in that chain’s other hotels across the country, a total of a hundred and thirty hotels. Mike said that must explain how he got hotels to loan him shuttle buses when we all went places together.

Ryan told us that for the most part we were considered equals in Grandfather’s eyes, but there was some fifteen million in each of our separate accounts for what Grandfather had called an emergency, or rainy day fund, in case one or the both of us decided to split up. Ryan explained though that since these huge amounts of stocks, bonds, real estate and cash had come to us after our marriage it would all be looked on by the courts as community property, and would most likely be split between us in the case of a divorce or legal separation that resulted in divorce.

There were stipulations attached to the houses though. The current occupants of both homes had a lifetime of residency rights to their currently occupied spaces. In other words, we couldn’t sell them unless our tenants vacated the properties and gave up their rights to occupy them in the future. The jet would now come to us as well, the salaries of the pilots for the next ten years included. He said there wasn’t a provision for a flight attendant, but Grandfather said that we happened to know two and if we needed a third, we’d have to fill that position ourselves.

He told us he knew that this was a lot to take in, especially at our ages, but he was always available to us for consultations either by phone or when we were down here at our Key West home. We learned later that each couple had been bequeathed something like two hundred thousand dollars, plus additional stocks in various companies. Of course Grandpa’s “sons” were also well taken care of with each of the three (Matt, Jan, and James) being left a million dollars and free lodging.

It was a somber group of us that left on Saturday. Lots of tears and hugs all around as Jan and Matt saw us off, Jan insisting we talk once a week to keep in touch. The pilots had been notified, probably by Ryan, of the current arrangements and they of course expressed their condolences to us before we took off for home. Their current apartment, just outside the perimeter fence of Barnes Airport in Westfield, was a three-bedroom townhouse and since it was a condo currently owned by Mike and me; we decided that once we had landed, we’d make sure that all the arrangements were OK with them. It was, and they were happy with the way things stood. Someone, either Matt or Jan, or Mike or me would call them to set up a flight, hopefully, 24 hours ahead of time. They could make additional income by taking private assignments to fly other aircraft, but no big lengthy turnarounds. They were single, but we picked up no vibes that they were a couple, but neither did they have any problems working for Mike and me or the fact that our friends were men married to other men. It was just a non-issue with them.

Once settled back in at home we students began getting ready again for the new semester to start in a week. James was a bit nervous, starting his junior year at a new college, but during our book and supply runs to the campus we helped him figure where he was supposed to be and when, and most importantly, when and where to meet us and Tim for snacks or lunch.

Our first semester went really well and by the time it came to decide what we were going to do for our holidays, Mom suggested we all bite the bullet and go spend Christmas and New Years in Key West. We talked that week of Thanksgiving and asked Jan and Matt if they wanted to come up, we could always send the plane for them, and they accepted. The plane was able to pick them up the next day and they spent about ten days with us, even though us students only had five days off of classes. Mike and I did make time to discuss several things they wanted our input on and one of those wasn’t a trivial thing at all.

The small house to the right of Grandfather’s house was going on the market. It had three bedrooms, a big living/dining room, and a large eat-in kitchen. There was also a two bedroom newer addition that Jan said was called an in-law suite down there, but most people rented them out to have a caretaker on the property. The asking price Mike and I figured we could afford, it might take a couple of weeks to get the funds from the sale of miscellaneous stocks or bonds, but once we talked to Ryan Harris, he told us we should have the asking price in our individual expense accounts just sitting there. He said our yearly income from our holdings was about four times the asking price of the house and he would handle the sale for us if that is what we wanted. Jan thought it was a good idea. We’d end up with more space for visitors, we’d be able to rent out the in-law apartment to defray the cost of owning the house, and we’d have someone on site should a problem arise and Jan and Matt would be right next door. So it was decided that Ryan would make an all-cash offer on our behalf with a closing to take place just before the first of the year. Ryan was to use his initiative and try for a slightly lower price that would save us some money and he did that, saving us thirty-five thousand dollars on the final sale price.

We now had extra space for guests, or maybe for those who wanted a slightly more private time down there than what they found in the bigger house with all of us around all the time. During our talks with Jan every week he reported, about a week after they went home to get ready for our invasion for the Christmas and New Year holidays, that Matt had learned that a gay couple that worked across the street at the library in the Florida History room were looking for an apartment in the neighborhood. I asked if they liked the apartment and Jan laughed and told me that I was the boss now and they wanted my input before even offering to let them see the currently unoccupied space. I teased right back that those guys could be their neighbors, not ours, and I thought that if they did a simple credit check on them and they, both he and Matt, thought they would be good neighbors and they wouldn’t destroy the in-law-suite, then they should go ahead and rent the space to them so the guys could get moved in before the end of the year. Jan told me he’d get right on it, Boss. He asked what I wanted to charge for rent and I told him that as long as the taxes and some of the utilities were covered I’d be happy, and Mike agreed. Matt and Jan agreed too, so that is how we left it.

Now we were once again coming to the end of a semester and our study group forged ahead again since that strategy had worked for us before. To his credit, James, in his finance courses, used contacts in banking and investment houses as his research go to people. That’s not to say he never used Ken and his knack for research on his computer. Ken began tutoring us all in our computer skills before too long and soon if we were stumped we often could find what we needed on the internet. Again we had our grades for the semester before we left for our Winter vacation. Mom and Dad were really proud of us all when we achieved Dean’s List grades again.

This trip was going to be a kind of a sad one for me and from what I heard from the others, for them too, but we all had a little ray of sunshine with us, Kate. She was almost a year old and during the day while her parents were working Mom took care of her so she was around us guys a lot, but we had our homework assignments and studying to do, and she couldn’t ride a horse yet and so we didn’t have a whole lot of time to spend with our niece. But this would change for this trip as we were not consumed with class work, we’d all have chances to spend time with her. We were her uncles, and she didn’t play favorites. Frankly, I thought that none of us couples would ever get the chance to father a little girl who obviously doted on each of us, not unless we paid a surrogate to carry for us, but we all knew of kids of many ages going without a family, lingering in foster care facilities and we had all agreed that once out of school we might just try to foster and then adopt. There wasn’t a one of us that had enjoyed changing one of Kate’s dirty diapers.

We arrived in the early afternoon and Jan and Matt had set up a cookout lunch for us out on the patio by the pool. Hot dogs and cheeseburgers with a couple of sides certainly filled our stomachs while we all got caught up. This trip the sleeping arrangements were to be slightly different. Sam, Carole and Kate were to be our first guests in the new home next door and just as Matt was explaining why they might find this good for Kate, through the new gate that adjoined the next door property came our new tenants from the in-law apartment, with their one-year-old-daughter. The historians from the library, Jeremiah (Jerry) and his husband John had been guardians named by John’s sister who had been a single mother who had died in a bad car crash two months after little Brianna’s birth. They had subsequently filed to adopt her and now she attended a local daycare just around the next corner while her dads worked and the three of them now occupied the in-law suite at the new property. The two little girls were thrilled to see each other, and we knew they’d have a great time together for the ten or so days we were there.

So our vacation ended up being much the same as when Grandpa was alive. We spent mornings at the many beaches around the island, and afternoons either shopping or spending time playing with the girls out on one of the patios once Jerry and John had picked up Brianna from daycare. The three of them often joining us in our evening meal, often contributing to the fare we ate. The guys turned out to be just as nice as they had first appeared, plus they knew so much about Key West and its history, it was fascinating to hear them discourse about the various historical buildings on the island, as well as many of the older homes in the downtown area, like Grandfather’s house (it was still difficult to think of it as mine and Mike’s).

James was keen to learn more of the history of the lumber yard and the hardware store that Grandpa’s family had owned for generations and the three of them were often seen with notebooks and pens in hand. James had indicated he wanted to use the information for a term paper he would have to submit near the end of the Spring semester. Our newest student had learned to think ahead.

Tim sat nearby, but he wasn’t being idle, or jealous of James spending time with the tenants next door, no, he was thinking ahead also for a paper he would be expected to produce next term, and he was going to focus on a family-owned business and it’s effect on a community, and he had chosen to use the hardware store and the lumber yard my ancestors had started. So he sat and made his own notes, asked his own questions, and when James and he went to the library, a few days later, it was so both of them could get copies of historical photos on file in the history room’s archives. That certainly got Mike and me thinking and we each chose a building and did some research on it and we did pump John and Jerry for information on them and we also got copies of old archived photos to accompany our papers.

Well, James certainly started something because before too many days had gone by Ben had started to do what Mike and I were doing and he had Ken helping him. Our vacation had turned into a lot of history explorations and research, but we could do a lot of it out in the sun on the patios. Yes, we had all invested some of our new money on good laptops. Ken had helped us select ones that were miles above our old ones in both performance and the unit’s memory. We had all been using reconditioned units that sometimes didn’t hold a charge and had to be plugged in no matter where we were which made them awkward to use in class, but these new ones were fantastic and we just found them so much more reliable.

No, it wasn’t all work; we did play, all together at the beaches and privately with our own husbands. Watching Jerry and John with their daughter was so cute and we all often joined Kate in playing with her new friend on the patios and sometimes in the pool, not the big in-ground pool, but the little blow up kiddie pool we had picked up the second day we were there at the hardware store where we were greeted warmly by the staff on duty that day.

In our bedroom at night, Mike and I talked about our day and we soon realized that the most fun times were those we had spent with the little girls (and the nights we spent alone in our own bedroom). That just affirmed our choices to be teachers, our hopes to be able to influence students, hopefully setting good examples for them, instilling good study habits in them and being able to make their learning experiences with us last them a lifetime.

Of course, our vacation in Key West had to come to an end, there was a new semester to prepare for back home. When we did arrive back home, there was a message on the answering machine for the house phone in the kitchen. The message was from Mr. Wagner, the farmer Dad had asked to watch over the house and the horses while we were gone. He was one of the farmers who leased some of our fields. He had taken care of the drives and walks for us as there had been two snowfalls while we were gone. But what he wanted to let us know was that the first morning after the first snowfall he had been to feed the horses and muck out their stalls when he noticed footprints in the snow around the stable. He knew we were all away, otherwise whoever stayed home would be doing the chores. But his curiosity was aroused by the footprints and he tried to trace them and what he found was someone had been camping out in one of the sheds between a couple of the fields closest to the acreage the barn and stable were on. He never caught anyone, nor could he determine who it was, but someone, just after we had left, had made a little nest for themselves in that shed. He thought we should know.

We didn’t start classes for two more days, so the next day Mike and I went with Dad to check out this shed with a nest in it. Dad was saying that we should get a couple of dogs to live in the stable with the horses, and he himself thought we should even have a cat or two there as well to help keep the field mice population under control, now we were using the barn as a storage place for the horse feed. I asked if he could handle that as I had absolutely no experience with either dogs or cats, but I was sure that I’d like them to be friendly, at least to those of us that were supposed to be on the property. He told me not to fret about it, if Mike and I agreed we should have them, then he and Mom would go to the local animal shelter tomorrow to see what they had available.

The latch on the shed was intact, there really wasn’t much kept in there, it was mostly for whoever rented the nearby fields to store whatever they wanted in it. There were several on the property, I think we had once counted seven of them scattered out in the fields. The three of us looked around and we could see that there had been something or someone using the shed. There was a freshly cleared corner where an old tarp was laid out and an old blanket and some feed bags, which had been stuffed with straw. If the weather had been better, it certainly would have made a nice hideaway.

Dad was closing the shed door after Mike and I exited. Mike was looking around and he asked me if Mr. Wagner had said if he had checked behind the shed and I told him he hadn’t mentioned it. We walked around the back and there we could see a set of footprints leading toward the next shed, about a quarter of a mile across the fields. We showed these to Dad so the three of us went to follow the footprints in the snow. We did notice that whoever had left their prints in the snow wasn’t an adult, or at least not as large as Mike, who was the smallest of the three of us. Dad cautioned us to be as quiet as we could but that turned out to be not necessary, as when we reached the other shed and saw the footprints in the snow leading to the shed door, we just followed them inside.

What we saw was a child in a snowsuit, snuggled under a pile of old feed bags and another old blanket and more feed bags made into pillows stuffed with straw. You couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl at first, the snowsuit was one of those with attached pants and jacket with a hood, all padded and usually used by riders of snowmobiles. When Mike bent down to feel the child’s forehead we heard some grunts and groans and Mike told dad and me that the forehead felt kind of cool to him and he was afraid the child was going into hypothermia. He said we should get the child up to the house but I said I thought the stable should be our first stop. Dad agreed with me.

So I bent over and picked up the kid in my arms as Dad reminded Mike that people suffering from hypothermia had to be warmed up gently, not all at once, it could send them into shock. Growing up in Colorado we had learned this early on and Mike had just forgotten the proper steps. Dad went ahead to turn off the alarm in the stable and turned up the heat just a bit. Mike went to the house to get some hot chocolate and biscuits and I snagged two of the horse blankets and I sat on one as Dad wrapped the other around me and the child in my arms.

By the time Mike had returned with a thermos of hot chocolate and a package of crackers, Mom hot on his heels, the child was making noises and squirming a bit and I thought I felt a hand gripping lightly my left hand, the child’s hand not as cold as it had been before I picked him up. Yes, Dad and I had removed the attached hood of the winter jacket and either it was a boy, or a girl with a very short buzzed haircut. Dad thought he could see bruising on the boy, but right now he was so pale that it was hard to tell, Dad told me to be careful, the child might be hurt in other places.

Of course Mom had to feel his forehead and neck and she asked Mike to repeat what he had done in the shed and Mike declared him much warmer, but still not as warm as we three that had been outside for about an hour and a half by now. Mom said that with him muttering in his sleep, and his body temperature rising somewhat, maybe we could take him up to the house and try warming him up slowly in a bathtub, that is unless we all thought he should be taken to the hospital. I unzipped the jacket and felt around inside and I could feel that his body temperature was higher than his head felt and Mom confirmed this and just as she was removing her hand the child’s eyes flew open and he began to struggle to get off my lap.

I rubbed his head and softly said that had been Mom checking his temperature, and that guy beside her was Dad, and the other guy, the handsome one, was Mike and Mike was my husband, The boy then calmed down and said, “Well , who are you and what are you going to do to me?”. I chuckled and said that right now I was going to pour him a cup of hot chocolate and maybe get him to eat a few of these nice crackers because he felt kind of skinny right now. He giggled at that and Mike poured him a cup of hot chocolate and Mom pulled out five graham crackers from the pack. In between bites of cracker and gulps of hot chocolate, he told us his name was Logan. He lived down the road at his aunt’s house, but she had company and she had told him to get lost. He asked what day this was, and I told him it was Saturday. He said she hit him a couple of times on Friday morning and then told him to get lost.

He was cold outside, but he thought if he could get in our barn the horses would keep him warm, but he saw the security system warning signs so he just took some straw and feed bags from outside and tried to make a bed in the shed, and then in the afternoon Friday some other old guy was here and so he took off for the other shed.

Once he had warmed up, he was much more free with information, I guess he felt more comfortable and he saw we were not being confrontational. Once we got the gist of his story Mom got all motherly and took him by the hand and said she thought he might want to use the bathroom and maybe take a nice shower or bath, she was telling him that he could borrow some of her son’s clothes for as long as it took to get his washed, and maybe she could find him more to eat while he was getting cleaned up.

There was nothing that any of us could do, when Mom was on a mission you didn’t interfere. Once Logan was using the bathroom in their suite, she had Dad calling a lawyer they had met at church, while Mike and I were sent to our room to gather some clothing Logan could borrow until she had a chance to wash his clothes. Under the snowsuit, he had jeans, underwear, a long sleeve T-shirt and a flannel shirt. His socks would also need to be washed and his little boots brushed, they were a bit grubby.

We gathered a set of sweat-pants and a sweatshirt, a pair of Mike’s sexy little bikini underwear (nothing else we had was small enough for Logan) and some thermal socks he could wear around the house. With some safety pins, we thought we could make the underwear and the waistband of the sweatpants fit for now. We gathered it all up and took the items to the bathroom Logan was using. I called out to him and asked if he was doing alright in there and he said yes so I told him I was leaving some clothes for him to use until his wash was finished. I gathered his stuff up and Mike and I went to begin his wash in one of the washers in the laundry room.

Meantime Dad was talking to the lawyer and Mom was talking to Carole at the kitchen table, she must have asked her to come over to discuss what we should do about Logan. Mike and I joined the ladies at the table and we were very adamant that Logan not be subjected to living with his aunt again, and I didn’t want him stuffed into a “shelter” either. Dad joined us and asked what we all felt about Logan joining us here. Before we could answer him Logan chose that moment to appear, trying to pin the underwear so it wouldn’t just fall off him. But when he saw Carole he squealed and ran back to Mom and Dad’s rooms. We all chuckled, but I ran off to follow him, Mike hot on my heels. We found him once again in the bathroom, tears running down his badly bruised cheeks. We could see, now he was washed and his temperature up to normal that Logan had fresh bruising and some remnants of older beatings on his back, thighs, buttocks, shoulders and upper arms.

But right now the poor kid was suffering from mortification, he had walked into a room with the intent of getting help from the four of us he had already come in contact with, but there was a young lady sitting at the table that he didn’t know or had ever seen before and he was totally embarrassed. Mike cuddled him to his chest as I pinned the back of the briefs tight enough they wouldn’t fall down his skinny hips, and then rolled up the pants legs of the sweat pants and had him step into them. I pulled them up to his waist and then rolled up the sleeves of the sweat shirt and soon had him covered. Mike got the socks on him and then we took him out of the bathroom to the bed. We sat him between us and apologized to him, telling him we didn’t even know our sister Carole was coming over.

He asked if that really was our sister and I felt I had to tell him a bit of my history so I briefly explained that I hadn’t ever had a family until a couple of years ago, until I was in high school. I told him that I lived in a big place for orphans and that Carole was my caseworker, that she and her boyfriend Sam treated me like a little brother and when they got married, I met Sam’s cousin, Mike. Mike and I went to the same high school, we first liked each other a lot and began studying together and I fell in love with him. Mike piped up and said he fell in love with me first, and I said no he didn’t, and then he said he did so, and Logan began laughing and said as long as we loved each other who cared who loved who first. So I told him that about that time I found my grandfather(or did he find me?) and he began to fly thousands of miles to get to know me and my friends. Then Mike and I graduated from high school and Grandfather made it possible for us to go to the big University over the mountain in Amherst. He paid our bills, and he even bought this house and the horses for us. Mom and Dad were really Mike’s parents and when Mike and I married they became my parents too. In fact, I told him that they were like parents for everyone who lived here. There was James and Tim who got married the same time we did, they had a room just down the hall upstairs from us, and Ben and Ken who were married too and they lived in the apartment over the garage.

I then told him that Carole and Sam lived in the little house next door, the one before the garage, and they had a little girl, almost a year old, called Kate. Logan let out a heavy breath at this point and said that he guessed they were used to seeing almost naked kids all the time, and Mike said that they were, that he had nothing to be embarrassed about, most of us guys wore little swimming suits when the pool was open in better weather. He seemed to take this all in, and then I told him that Mom might just have something for us all to eat, if we went back downstairs.

He walked between us and held our hands as we went downstairs. Mom had the table set for lunch and Carole was on her cell over in the corner, with Dad right next to her, interjecting once in a while into her phone conversation. Mom looked not only pleased, but determined as she went about portioning out soup into soup bowls and putting out the sandwich fixings on to a couple of big plates. We got Logan seated and then helped Mom by putting the food out on the table. Mom told us as we did that, that the others were out shopping and had called and told her they would grab something to eat at the mall but would be home soon after that.

Carole and Dad finished their call and joined us at the table where Dad introduced Carole to Logan. During lunch, Logan was given the third degree by Carole, but those two were getting along so good that Logan never realized just how much he had told her, or how important Carole would be to his future. Dad’s cell rang just before our lunch was over and he went farther into the family room to take that call and when he came back, he just nodded to Carole who then looked across the table to Logan and asked him if he would like to stay here with Mom and Dan and all these older guys. Logan looked back at her wide-eyed and asked for how long and Carole told him for as long as it took for him to get into college, and probably even after that. Logan looked down at himself and softly asked if he had to wear our clothes if he lived here, and everyone laughed at that, especially when Mom got up from the table and rushed down the back hall to the laundry room to move the washing into one of the dryers in there (there are two of each, 2 washers and 2 dryers in there, it really helps with a household as big as ours).

After that Logan was all smiles as he told Carole he thought it would be neat to have so many older brothers. As Mom and Logan went upstairs to let him pick a bedroom, Dad and Carole filled in Mike and me about what just transpired. Dad’s friend, the local lawyer, had contacted the police about Logan’s aunt shoving him out and beating him the other night. In court this afternoon the lawyer presented the case to the judge and her guardianship of Logan, the son of her deceased sister, had been revoked and Logan placed temporarily with Mom and Dad, who would file to be his permanent foster parents after passing the required background checks and the foster parent course that Carole would administer to them. Logan was to be Carole’s first client as a caseworker here in Massachusetts. After Logan was in their custody for ninety days, they could adopt him.

Art receives no payment for his efforts other than your emails. You may contact him by email: ArtWest at CastleRoland dot Net

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