Published: 16 Dec 2019

Well, that sealed Doug’s fate. We found out later that there were written communications between Doug and Logan’s aunt, devising a plan to kidnap him and try to hold him for ransom. They didn’t know any specifics of our finances, but the idiots just figured if we lived in that big house, we must be worth something.

It stands to reason that after we explained everything that had happened at the gate, which still operated properly, that Dad insisted that our security be somewhat upgraded. That would include adding a gate at the main entrance to the property at the main road and definitely some dogs as a kind of early warning system. The back gate would be beefed up a bit just to be sure and he would check the perimeter fencing to make sure it would be difficult for anyone to gain easy access that way.

We didn’t have much of a say with all this, because Mom agreed totally with him, and you don’t challenge Mom. The work on the added security started that week, most of the work taking place while we were at school and Ken was at work. Mom and Dad took a day trip near the end of the week and arrived back home with three dogs, or should I say ponies. These were without doubt some of the biggest dogs I’d ever seen, and the same went for the other guys. They were Newfoundland’s, a Canadian breed going back centuries. These were only two years old and they were as tall as me when they were on their hind legs. Think of a hairy Great Dane. They looked like cuddly bears and Logan went nuts for the three sisters Mom and Dad had found at a farm in Vermont, just over the state line.

The dogs would grow to about one hundred to one hundred fifty pounds over time, and they certainly adored Logan right from the start. They had him on the floor of the family room playing with them, and soon had him in convulsions of laughter as they all tried at the same time to give him a tongue bath. Mom said she had already talked to a dog groomer in town that would come out once a month to keep their hair this long, otherwise they would look like bears roaming the property. Dora, Donna, and Darcy soon became Logan’s shadows whenever he was near them, and he loved it, indoors or out they were his companions.

Life went on and soon it was time for our term papers to be turned in and our professors were very pleased with our papers on Key West, all done from a different perspective. It made for a great beginning to our semester finals and again we all got on the Dean’s list. Before classes were released for the summer vacation we were informed by our faculty advisers that the University was going to be offering the beginning of our Master’s Degrees courses this summer if we wanted to take part in this program, and they would continue through our Junior year and through our senior year as well, this way we could graduate at the end of our Senior year and a month later receive our Master’s. We all signed up for this program. It would be like adding two classes a week to our schedules, but we felt that in the long run we would benefit from the extra work we put in.

Mike had a great idea while we were in Key west for the first two weeks of our summer vacation. Our Summer school classes needed for our masters didn’t start until after the 4^th of July. Mike thought as a way to thank Jeremiah (Jerry) and John for their help on our term papers we should get them bound into a book and give it and some copies to the Florida History room at the library. I thought that was a nice thing to do so we asked Ben and Tim and James if they wanted to participate and they all agreed it would be a cool thing to do. We had copies of our finished papers on our laptops so we downloaded them onto memory sticks and took them to a self-publisher in town and had them printed out and bound nicely and a couple of dozen copies produced which ten days later we were able to present to Jerry and John at the library. They were so pleased that right on the title page we had given them the credit for checking all of our historical references. The book proved to be a great help to them, and the additional copies had been split up between the five branches of the library up and down the Keys.

We were taken to the old steam plant to see the progress there and we were impressed with the work already done to clear out the old machinery and unneeded walls of the old outdated power plant. Work had already begun on the new entry portal which led to the new lobby and elevator bank. Most of the windows that were going to be retained were now larger openings and all enclosed with hurricane strength high impact glass. We were introduced to the architect and then we went over the plans for the various apartments being created inside the building. The project was in good hands.

One of the subjects that came up during our meeting was should the complex be a blend of low-income and high-income or should it be a moderate-income and low-income mix. Mike and I liked that concept, but we did have other investors to consider, and we had to think about what would gain the most profits for the city and our investors, not to mention that the higher end finishings could extend our completion time, which in our proposal we had estimated at a year and a half, this could push it out to a two year occupancy date. We weren’t in any hurry, so we gave the go-ahead for the mix of the units in the ocean side building to be high-end and the units in the building closer to the street, which had views over the neighborhood, being designated the low-income units.

I felt kind of weird about this decision, I knew we owed it to the investors to get them the maximum in profit, but I felt we were somehow skimping on the low-income subsidized units. Mike and I pondered this for what seemed like a long time, but the answer came to me when a notice appeared in the local paper just two days later about a foreclosure auction to be held for a complex of warehouses on the fringe of the low-income neighborhood. These were warehouses once used by a freighter company and later by the military at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. These structures had withstood hurricanes for close to a hundred years and were in an area that didn’t flood in bad weather. I was willing to bet money that they could be converted to low income housing, and I’d prefer that the rent paid was treated like a mortgage payment and the unit would become the property of the renter. It would be a rent-to-own condo community.

Mike agreed that this would benefit the community and the city, so we invited the architect we had met with the other day and he agreed to do some townhouse designs utilizing the existing buildings as a basis for his designs. There would be a variety of 2,3,and 4 bedroom styles and all we had to do now was to be the winning bidder at the auction. Ryan Harris, the local lawyer who handled all the local legal stuff for us, agreed to do the bidding for us. We got the property for less than we thought we’d have to pay, but we ended up spending a lot more for the water and sewage hookups to the city’s utilities, a lot of upgrading to the systems in the area were needed to accommodate the added two hundred residential units.

We were kept informed on the progress of both Key West projects, and by the end of the Summer we were again spending a week relaxing before classes started again. This gave us a chance to ride a lot more often and to spend more time with our little brother. A lot of that one on one time was spent on horseback or shopping. Logan was growing like a weed and he needed almost a whole new wardrobe before school started. He was about to have his tenth birthday in September, and he was entering the fourth grade. He asked why we were studying, our classes hadn’t even started yet, and we told him the same thing we had told him before when we were studying a chapter or two ahead, the previous school year and he asked if he could do that too. We told him that as long as he didn’t act like a big know it all, we didn’t think being ahead a chapter would hurt anything, it might just help him understand the previous chapter better. I was pleased we could set a good example for him.

We all had a good Fall semester and by Thanksgiving we were already thinking of spending some of our Winter vacation in Key West. But those plans were put on hold once Jan and Matt told us they wondered what a holiday in New England would be like, so we went all out with decorating for Christmas and our shopping for gifts was not restricted by what could be packed into suitcases or sent through the post. Jan and Matt arrived a week before Christmas and we picked them up at the airport. It was cold out, so we had brought them winter coats to wear but they seemed to enjoy the brisk air for now.

We had them on horseback right after they had settled in their room. The horses needed some exercise and the visitors said they had been looking forward to riding after being cooped up in the plane for hours. Christmas was a festive day for us. We had all gone to midnight mass the night before, so we got to sleep in a bit later in the morning and except for Logan and Mike, we were all content to have breakfast before the mountain of presents were opened. During the clean up after breakfast Logan had gone out with Dad to take care of the horses, but came running back to announce that it was finally snowing. With all the windows and French doors along the back of the house you’d think we’d have noticed, but we hadn’t, and that just lent a bit more holiday cheer to our group.

Jan and Matt flew back the day after New Year’s Eve and we all stayed around the house and in town except for our trips to the campus to get our supplies for the upcoming semester. The new semester went well, even with the added courses for our Master’s Degrees. Logan was having a great semester as well, bringing friends home with him after school to ride horses with or just to play with the dogs, which by now were approaching a hundred pounds each. There were some things going on this semester though. There was talk of us not exactly practice teaching yet, but being involved somehow with a classroom, maybe as a teacher’s aide. Since this was a pilot program we five college students were involved with, blending the last two tears of a college education with a Master’s Program, the college wondered if one semester of practice teaching could be fit into our senior year, so they wanted us involved with a classroom in our chosen grade level in our Junior year as well as three weeks of practice teaching in our Senior year. Mike and I wanted middle school classrooms, and Tim and Ben wanted high school American History classes. James was taking Finance and Economics so he would be interning at our local bank.

Mike and I had chosen English and English Literature as our areas of study and Tim and Ben were leaning toward American History, but lately Ben had also added a course of study that with two additional Summer school classes for each of the two Summer school sessions would earn him an added degree in Library Science; if an opening came up he and his husband Ken could work together at the University’s main library, he was learning to love research as much as Ken did.

Our local school system seemed receptive to having four “class monitors” for three weeks that Spring as long as we would commit to being practice teachers at their schools next year. We all had a fun three weeks, well, four days at our assigned schools and the fifth on campus at the University taking the classes we needed to qualify for our masters the following year. We had a lot of fun that Spring semester. We didn’t just sit there and watch, we all had noticed kids in our classrooms that needed a bit more help, so we began tutoring them quietly in the back of the classroom and we soon had them functioning with the rest of the class.

That Spring Mike and I had almost the most rewarding, the most encouraging, the most fun time. Those students were amazing, and they made us feel needed and wanted in their classroom. The teacher, in writing our evaluations, wrote that she wished we had been in her classroom the whole year, and she would pay to have us in her school next year. We also had a big disagreement. I don’t know where it came from, or why it happened. It just didn’t feel like a big deal at the time, but……. well, we were just lazing about our room after class one day and I mentioned that when we were older I thought we should think about fostering, and maybe even adopting.

Mike looked at me like I had three heads, his mouth agape and he was getting red in the face and I guess I must have said something wrong and I began to back pedal and said that “or maybe we won’t, we don’t have to, it’s just that I’ve always thought about those kids I grew up with and I think that in the future we should do something to help them, maybe start off with one and see how that goes….”

Well, I still was making him mad for some reason and I felt I was digging a bigger hole for myself somehow. It was then that Dad called up and asked for me to come down and give him a hand with something. I called down that I was on my way, and that also seemed to tick off Mike. I helped Dad move some bags of feed for the horses that had been delivered that afternoon, but instead of them being dropped off in the racks as usual they had been, Dad explained that their fork lift wasn’t working and they had just left the bags on the floor of the barn. They couldn’t stay there, dampness could get to the burlap bags and ruin the feed inside, they had to be stored off the floor. So, while we manually hefted the bags up onto the metal storage racks Dad tried to get out of me what Mike and I had been talking about upstairs, I seemed kind of upset to him. I tried to repeat everything we had talked about, well, not both of us, mostly me talking, and not knowing what I had said that ticked Mike off so much he couldn’t even talk to me.

Dad had me sit next to him on a bench and he put his arm around my shoulders and told me he knew, he just was surprised that I didn’t; but then he said that maybe I was too close to the situation to see it for myself, even though it was me that had changed, in some part of my mind I was still that kid in the state run orphanage who had to stand tough because I had no known family. No one to call my own. And look what happened when I opened my heart to Mike. First, I had not only my first true friend, but look at the family I created. I had opened my heart to Carole and Sam, then Mike and then Mom and him. Then I had brought my grandfather into the fold, and through him Jan and Matt. When we had started college, we took Tim in and made him a part of this new family and then Ben and through Ben we gathered Ken in as well. He said that Mike and I together had done that, but we had to find that special someone for Tim, who was totally alone without us. We introduced him to James, and look at what happened, look at the family you and Mike have made, Dad said to me and I think I was starting to see what he was driving at. Mike and I were old enough to become fathers, we had built a family around us already, an older family, and now it was time to help out someone not so old.

Apparently, Mom was having a discussion with Mike while Dad and I had been having our own out in the barn. As dad and I walked back up to the house, Dad still reinforcing the fact that we had him and Mom to fall back on if we needed help with a little one, Mike came running out of the house and right up to me, clutching me to him, and started to tell me he was sorry for not speaking up before. I told him as he was talking that I was sorry for not seeing that he was right, that now would be the perfect time to be starting our own family; that yes, we had another year of grueling studying to do and that our Summer before our Senior year would be tied up for a month with those Masters classes, but we should start, as soon as we could, to begin the online courses Carole had Mom and Dad do when they took in Logan.

We were still hugging and a tad teary when Dad patted us on our backs and told us to always communicate before going silent on each other. He told us this as he passed us to go in and clean up. Mike kept sniffing me like he did when we worked out and I could soon feel Little Mike poking me in the groin as we held each other, and we soon found ourselves in bed having our first “make up” sex. It was a lot like our regular sex, but a lot earlier in the day, maybe if he feels up to it again tonight, I could tick him off again later?

Our schedule was pretty full up to the end of the semester, but making Dean’s List made up for all the revisions and studying we had done to achieve that again. We all flew down to Key West for our usual Summer visit at the beginning of June and Carole, Sam and Kate joined us. We knew little Brianna would love Kate’s company as much as Kate was looking forward to seeing her friend again. Mike and I got to see the progress on our two projects there and we were amazed at the progress both properties showed. Of course, we got weekly updates from Jan or Matt, but seeing it with our own eyes was something else entirely. Matt was standing with Mike and me in the lobby of the Steamplant Condos, the high-end part of the development, when a couple and their Realtor came down from the penthouse floor, gushing about the unit they had just been looking at. They were a typical well heeled, couple that looked like you would expect a couple to look like that could afford two million to spend on a condo that they would only use about three times a year.

Mike, Matt and I were dressed in sandals, cutoffs, and tank tops that day and the Realtor made some comment to us about the rental units being in the next building. The couple tittered and said that we probably couldn’t even afford to rent one of those units. Jan was walking toward us from the office and heard all that and he walked up behind them and asked the Realtor his name. Jan at least had shoes, a pair of dress slacks, and a dress shirt on. The Realtor gave Jan his name and a business card and Jan pointed his card at us and told him that if an offer came through from him for this, or any other buyer, he doubted the owners of the entire property would entertain that offer, at any price. He then walked over to the three of us and introduced us to them as the owners of the property. They couldn’t get out of there any faster if they tried.

We all shared a good laugh about the snobs as we walked around the block and entered the big hardware store Grandpa had left us. The reception we received there was like we were rock stars or something. Even the cashiers who were checking out customers started clapping while they continued to work. It was really cool to be so appreciated. We did need to pick up a few things and Mike went to pay for our items, and someone started to open up a vacant register for us, but we waived them off and we all got in line for one of the already opened registers.

One of the other customers in front of us in line asked Mike if we were a band appearing in one of the clubs locally and Mike told him that we weren’t, we were the male strippers at the Bourbon Street Pub this week. The customer said that he’d get some friends together and come to see us, as the cashier broke into laughter as soon as he had walked out the door, and soon she had told the other cashiers what Mike had said, they too began laughing. As she rang up our purchases, she told us she couldn’t wait to see the next year’s company calendar.

All in all, it was a good visit. Jan related that he had gotten a call from the General Manager at the hardware store and said he had told Jan that the ladies, and half the men employees there and at the lumberyard had asked him when the new company calendar, that was usually given out with each purchase in the month of December, was due out, for some reason they all wanted one this year! Logan piped up and asked why when we all broke out in laughter. Kate and Brianna had a great time together during our stay and their fathers were full of praise for the book of our term papers we had had bound and donated to the library. Ken and Ben spent a lot of time with Jerry and Tom discussing library stuff and how it was working together.

Our other project was moving along great now that running water and a sewage system had all been upgraded from the bare minimum to a system that would handle the needs of the two-hundred-unit project. It would take another year to complete. Just before we were to leave for home Jan received a phone call from the sales office manager at the Steamplant condos. The manager told Jan that an offer had arrived in their office for one of the penthouse floor units in the afternoon for the asking price and it was from the Realtor and his clients that had been so derogatory toward us in the lobby a week earlier. The manager of the sales office had, by a return email, sent a clip from the security camera, that included audio, of their interaction with us that fateful day, and reminded the Realtor that the city’s motto was ONE HUMAN FAMILY and that bigots in any form were not welcomed by the owners on the property.

We had discussed it and we had decided that should push come to shove, we would withhold that unit and mark it SOLD, we could afford to actually purchase it and use it for more guest housing if need be, but what actually did happen was that that morning two competitive offers had been taken by one of the sales people in the sales office and she was in the middle of a bidding war between the two buyers she was working with and she had accepted an offer for three hundred thousand over the asking price of nine hundred thousand, nine hundred dollars, just before the other Realtor’s offer had come in on the fax machine, so if and when a question should arise, there was proof the unit had an accepted offer on it before the offer from the offensive people had come in.

Our flight home was uneventful, other than Dad finally beat Logan on a video game. Logan was proud of Dad for taking the time to play with him, and also that he had spent time practicing to be able to really challenge Logan, but before they could set it up for another game Mom suggested a movie instead, it would make for a much quieter remainder of the flight.

Once our neighbor had given us a run-down of our horses when we returned, he went home, everything at home had made it through two weeks without us. Our summer classes that would count toward our Master’s Degrees started three days later, and then we had another four weeks until our Senior year of courses started, with the added courses to complete our Masters by or near our graduation at the end of the Spring semester.

With a few weeks to prepare for all this I asked Carole when the next online classes would start for prospective foster parents. She was thrilled that Mike and I were doing this, and she acted like the proud sister she always was, just more excited for us than usual. She told us the online course could be taken any time; it was set up like that so the ones who passed the test could get applications in and their backgrounds checked before they were introduced to any prospective clients of the DCFS.

She did tell us that as much as she loved us she couldn’t help us with the different modules of the DCFS course, or the tests at the end of each module, but it shouldn’t take us more than a week to do the whole course and she said the they usually wanted the parents to be employed, but we were businessmen, the proof of that was the two developments in Key West, and our monthly income was more than their other applicants usually made in a year, so she didn’t foresee any problems there as our income could be verified by our financial adviser at the bank. She told us to go on the DCFS Website and register under the Prospective Foster Parent section and then use the link for the State approved course, and at the final exam after the last module of the course there would be a pass code given to us that we could print out and give to our caseworker, who under the circumstances couldn’t be her, since we were so closely involved with each other’s lives. The only reason she had helped with Logan’s case was she was just starting out and had an experienced field agent who had worked with her on the case.

We nervously started the process that night after dinner and found that a couple could use two different machines as each person applying had to do their own tests which would then be reviewed by their caseworker. This way we each were reading and studying the material in each module of the course and if we had questions, we could then ask each other for help, but not on the tests. It only took us about four days, what with having to get our supplies for the next semester, helping to keep Logan occupied, exercising the horses and ourselves, and keeping in touch with Jan and Matt about our two projects.

Jan informed us that the rental units were completely rented out and only three of the high-priced condos were left on the market the same day Mike and I had passed the final test on the web site for the DCFS. The other project, the townhouses, were due now to be completed hopefully ahead of schedule around April or May. The next day, Carole called us from her office and informed us we had passed our tests and the final exam with flying colors and that she had found the perfect caseworker for us. He was a recent college graduate who had just passed his internship with the agency and he and his husband were fostering themselves and lived in our town, Carole thought they lived near the church, in one of the neighborhoods near the town common, about a mile from where we lived. She gave us his name and ID Number for use on the website and asked us to complete the formal application and return it on the web site to his name and ID Number, he would then process our application and arrange a meeting between us. His name was Lucas Bryant.

We struggled a bit with the application that evening, but with Mom and Dad having to go through the same process they were able to offer some advice to us about just how much information to give to “strangers”. We completed it, along with some of our financial situation, just enough to reveal that we had a strong financial base, a steady income, and enough to prove that that income would be coming to us for many, many, years to come. In the spots that asked for our jobs/positions we entered that we were currently property developers and we dubbed ourselves co-presidents of our corporation, with proper documentation supplied by our Key West attorney, Ryan, and our CFO (chief financial officer), Jan. Of course, both these men were much more to us and our company, but for the purposes of this application those titles would suffice.

We started the Fall semester with the rest of our college aged family the last week of August, which was also when Logan entered fifth grade. We all had a good first week of classes getting used to new teachers and classrooms. For the college students we also had extra courses because we would be missing about a full month in the Spring semester when we were practice teaching. It was a daunting experience for us, knowing that at the end of the school year we would be no longer students, but hopefully teachers.

After church on Sunday, as we were all, as a family, talking to the pastor out in the entry vestibule, Carole greeted two young men with a boy about Logan’s age as they walked past. The boy hugged Carole and the men shook her hand, greeting her warmly. Both men were attractive and appeared to have a relationship with the reverend. Carole introduced the men as Lucas Bryant and his husband Nate Herrick, and their foster son Blake, who it turned out shared the same classroom as Logan, and it seemed those two knew each other well as they moved a bit away from us all and shared a pre-teen conversation.

Lucas went red after Carole introduced Mike and me to him. The pastor told Mike and me to go talk with Lucas for a moment, he had to go get ready for the next service. We three walked to one of the doorways and Lucas looked around to make sure we were not overheard and he began to apologize to us, telling us he thought at first the application we had sent him was some sort of joke the others in the office were playing on him. And then when he and Nate were talking to the pastor the other day the pastor had set him straight about us, that we really were wealthy young men and the pastor also told him that he had talked many times to our grandfather and knew him to be even wealthier than us and that we had inherited his wealth upon Grandfather’s death.

Yesterday Lucas had processed our application, and he should have a positive response for us early in the week coming up. He did call us on Tuesday afternoon and said that the only thing that had to be done now was a home visit to determine if we could provide more than just a roof over a child’s head. Mike started laughing at that and we asked what he and his family were doing for dinner, as we’d love to have them come over tonight to see the house, and get to know our family better. He had us laughing again as he told us it was his turn to cook tonight, so yeah, they’d like to join us for a meal. I gave him directions and told them we usually ate about six thirty, but please come earlier if possible.

Of course we immediately called Mom and asked if three more for dinner would upset her plans, and she told us we were having lasagna and green beans with garlic bread on the side and all she would have to do was to put in another pan of lasagna, which she had already prepared and was going to freeze for another time, and add another garlic loaf, and maybe another two hands of lettuce to the salad she had already mixed and was in the fridge. When I told her who was coming and why she said that she should go out and get a roast. Mike explained to her that what she had planned was just perfect for what we wanted. We were not out to impress them with a fancy weekday dinner. We wanted Lucas to see we had ample room for another person, or two, to live with us comfortably, and the two fathers seemed nice and their foster son was in Logan’s class at school. I piped in and told her she had met them Sunday after mass out in the church vestibule before we left.

Then she remembered them and said that they were all nice boys, and did we know that Nate was the Pastor’s nephew? I didn’t but told her we had asked them for dinner at about six thirty, but we had told them to come a bit earlier if they could and we’d show them the available bedrooms on the second floor, so that Lucas could write his report to the powers that be at the DCFS that we indeed had adequate room at the house.

The evening and dinner both went well. Our visitors arrived around ten after six and Logan was just as anxious as Mike and I were. He admitted that he was a bit in awe of Blake, who it seems the other kids in his class thought as the Big Man on Campus in their school. He was friendly with a lot of the kids, he played sports, and he was really smart. I reminded Logan that it was Blake that began talking to him on Sunday, and it was Blake that steered the two of them off to the side to talk together. I thought a bit and then asked if Blake was a bully or something, and Logan blushed and said no, it wasn’t that, it was that Blake had said that he had always wanted to talk to him, but Logan himself had always shied away from Blake and had always seemed to have his friends around him, and well, Blake wanted to be friends with Logan. It was kind of funny, but the look of expectation mixed with anxiety told me that our outgoing brother was really hiding a boy crush on Blake.

Well as I said the evening went well. Almost as soon as everyone had been introduced again, as everyone was home that evening to share dinner, Carole and Sam had brought Kate over and Ben and Ken, James and Tim were all home that night too. The boys, Logan and Blake, were off in a flash so Logan could show Blake his horse, and Mike and I took Lucas and Nate on a tour of the house before we all sat down for dinner. The lasagna was a huge hit with our guests. Nate explained that the prep time alone would then have them eating at ten or eleven at night, as neither one of the guys was that good in the kitchen. Mom beamed at their compliments, but suggested that they make it together on the weekends, just doubling everything and putting one pan in the freezer like she did for a quick meal during the week.

In talking to them we realized that they actually lived with Pastor Harmon, but that they would have to find something suitable for their small family in a month or so because when Nate’s uncle had let them move in with him it was intended that they would save up and get their own place in six months, and that time was coming up. Mike looked at me and excused himself, he had to go ask his dad something. As soon as he started walking to his parent’s rooms, I knew just what was on his mind, nothing had been decided about the house up the road that Logan had inherited from his mother. I mean it had been cleared out and cleaned and repainted, but there had been some discussions about whether to rent or sell it and Logan had kept dithering and couldn’t make up his mind. Yet.

Mike came back with the keys to the house. Since it was dark out by now, we offered to go with them to look at a possible place they might like to live in for a while, since the owner wasn’t expected to be living there for another eight or more years. That was when we became aware of Logan rushing to his parent’s rooms and I called out to him what the big hurry was and he stopped in his tracks and excitedly told us that he wanted to ask Mom and Dad if Blake and his Dads could live in his house up the street because they had to move and this way Blake could remain in the same school. I held up the keys Mike had gotten from his dad and Logan smiled hugely. He asked when they were moving in and I told him that we had to go show it to them first to find out if it would work for them.

Logan then ran to the front hall, grabbing his coat and the one Blake had worn over here and rushed up the stairs with them. Lucas looked at Nate and said he guessed we were all going to look at Logan’s house. We did. Mike and I drove over first to get there to turn on some lights and Logan rode with our dinner guests. Logan actually showed Blake the house as we older guys wandered around. Dad had done a really good job of freshening the place up and even the good pieces of furniture had been cleaned up and the rugs cleaned. The boys came out of the second bedroom and Blake told his dads that he liked his room a lot. I guess that sealed the deal for the family and Nate asked what was the asking price and Logan turned into this miniature businessman and they soon had a purchase price worked out that sounded like a good deal to Mike and me. They had settled on a price that Dad had mentioned would make a good starting off price, but the prospective buyers knew from looking around that the deal they had struck with Logan was still a very fair price. Logan told Blake he could now ride with him every day after school, both boys were very pleased, as were Blake’s dads.

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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