Authors: Alex Ames
Five for Forever
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2016
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The Troubleshooter Series:
Troubleshooter (Book 1)
Accountant Paul Trouble needs his former soldier and spy skills to find a missing $100 million, flying bullets and all.
Troublemaker (Book 2)
Paul Trouble finds himself in the middle of the kidnapping of his boss, overachieving animal activists, and the pressure of the Strom Industries owner family.
Pieces of Trouble
—Four Troubleshooter Novellas (Book 3)
Paul Trouble and his adventures in these four collected short stories.
The Calendar Moonstone Brilliant Series:
A Brilliant Plan (Book 1)
Calendar Moonstone, maker of fine jewelry and part-time diamond thief, expects an in-and-out safecracking job but stumbles onto a two hundred-year-old mystery. And a dead body.
Brilliant Actors (Book 2)
What could be more exciting than attending the Academy Awards, joining the hottest after-show party, and having an A-list movie star wearing your jewelry? All of the above, plus spending the rest of the night in jail! Calendar finds out firsthand what intrigues are playing out in Hollywood.
This one is especially for the Princess.
eighteen Under the Great Wide Open
nineteen The Wear and the Tear
twenty-two Lost in the Supermarket
twenty-four The House of Waiting
twenty-seven The Order of Affairs
twenty-nine Breaking Hearts, Heard on the Moon
one
The Morning
The dream of Bella haunted him again. A slow-motion version of everyday tasks performed by her, watching her moving through the living room, making an Italian salad, driving the car, fastening distracted hair, feeding one of the babies . . . Then morphing into the Paris visit, usually the most antagonizing dream sequence, so real, so close, the sound, the smells, the light spring breeze, Bella’s laugh. Then the kiss, Rick holding her in her white summer dress, the world under them, high up on the Eiffel Tower. A lifetime together in front of them, a year before Agnes had been born . . .
The alarm killed his sleep and the dream. And like the dreams that would not stop invading his mind every other night, the alarm did not stop until Rick rolled out of bed and reached over to the nightstand to hit the off button. 5:30. The house was silent again; outside, the dark gave way to gray on this March morning. Rick both hated and longed for the dream. Bella was so real and lively in them, like she had been in life. But Rick’s heart tore in half each time he had it, reliving all those wonderful moments once more, or scenes, or single glimpses like rapid-fire sequences. All showing a past that no longer was and would never come again. Bella was dead, and that made him sad and angry at the same time, each time.
Rick had about half an hour to himself before all hell would break loose. While shaving he had the luxury of enjoying the task at hand, concentrating on routine gestures, avoiding killing himself accidentally. His angular, straight face with a sailor’s weathered skin reappeared from underneath the foam, his brown hair still unkempt, pointing in all directions.
Time for a haircut, Mr. Flint!
As he washed off the rest of the soap, his blue eyes stopped at his face’s reflection in the mirror. Forty-four years looked back at him. “Ready to go another day?” he asked loudly. As usual, the mirror image refused to answer.
At a quarter to six he entered the kitchen, heated water, defrosted bread, and set cereal, milk, jam, and cheese on the table. Retrieved the paper from the front porch—a relic, as the Flint household had three iPads and three laptops at its disposal. But Rick was old-school and enjoyed browsing the paper. It was made of wood after all, and wood was his profession. While he prepared the various lunches for the kids, he scanned the headlines and took sips from his black coffee.
Six o’clock came and went, and after a few minutes of grace, Rick made the rounds on the first floor, knocking on doors. “Agnes, time to get up. Charles, time. Britta, time.” Only little Dana had until six forty-five, but usually the noises of her siblings woke her up earlier, anyway.
Charles came down first. As the only boy, he had the privilege to start the day in his dad’s bathroom. The bath-cave, as he had named it.
“Dad, do you know we never landed on the moon?” Charles said, holding up his ubiquitous book as he sat down at the breakfast counter. He was a thin kid, ten years old, with a whitish complexion, as he preferred reading over physical activities, even though he had indicated interest in picking up fencing recently.
Fencing?
“It was all—”
“Staged in a film studio to impress the Russians,” Rick completed.
“Exactly! How did you know?”
“I am your father, and I have more than thirty years on you.”
“Think it’s true?”
“See this smooth pan that holds your breakfast pancake? Teflon is NASA technology, a side product of the space program. If this is real and tangible, the rest must be, too, don’t you think?”
Charles’s brows furrowed, and he massaged his nose, thinking. “That does not prove anything, Dad. The astronauts did not eat pancakes. They only had spinach paste from a toothpaste tube. So there is no causal relationship between a new pan and the fake moon landing.”
“What I mean is, when they were able to invent such a great thing as Teflon, why do you think they stopped trying for the moon and filmed the landing in a studio? Satellites are circling the earth; if you need proof, look at Google Earth.”
That shut up Charles as he processed the new information.
Britta slouched into the kitchen, mumbling, “Cereal, lactose-free milk, banana.” Her wild black, curly hair was a mess, not yet tamed; that would come after the first calories of the day. “And don’t magic-word me, Dad.” Britta had recently turned thirteen and was . . . well, thirteen!
“I didn’t say anything. I gave up on that, remember?” Rick said as he pushed over the requested ingredients. “As long as you eat healthy stuff, I am okay with a little less magic.”
“Dad, your compulsive behavior is written all over your face,” Charles said over his book.
“Nothing wrong with being civil and nice, even if we see each other every day,” Rick tried to argue, but he knew he was on losing ground with both of his kids.
“Britta is in a phase called puberty,” Charles said with a serious face, not looking over at his older sister. “That is accompanied with erratic behavior, often aggressive, usually passive aggressive, mostly directed against the parents. Apart from many physical changes that may include . . .”
“No details necessary. Been there, done that,” Rick assured his wise-ass son and tried to shut him up with another pancake. He turned to Britta. “Afternoon soccer practice. Don’t forget your shoes and protectors like last week. I have clients coming in the afternoon, so I can’t do emergency services.” He placed the ordered cereal in front of Britta and finished the lunches.
“La-di-da, Dad,” Britta mumbled and almost put her chin into the bowl.
“Bri, are you not at your best today?” a new voice asked. Agnes, who would turn eighteen later in the summer, entered the kitchen, and as usual, Rick’s heart skipped a beat. Agnes was a dead ringer for her late mother, and the same age Bella had been when Rick first met her. She wore her straight, black hair bound in a ponytail and wore jeans and a fashionable shirt. Fourteen when her mother died, she had grown up fast and to everyone’s amazement had become the ultimate authority figure for her siblings. With their father, there was always bickering or words against whatever proposal was under discussion. But when Agnes cut the issue short, that was that.
And as usual, Rick thought, I am so sorry that you didn’t finish your childhood. May you look kindly on me when you find out what you missed. But you are the strongest of us all.
He was brought back to reality when Charles spilled his milk because he preferred reading over table navigation. Everyone instinctively glanced at the twenty-four-hour countdown clock on the kitchen wall that showed the remaining time until the school bus was scheduled to appear at 7:25. Spilled milk meant cleanup, which meant lost time, because all three kids were aware that their dad was not the best organizer of a daily morning routine. Agnes saved the schedule. “I’ll get it, Dad. Go grab Dieter.” Dieter had been Charles’s nickname for his little sister since she was born. Because he wanted to have a little brother so badly, he thought that renaming her might alter reality. Reality stuck around, but the name did, too.