As J.T. thought about all of this, he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, relishing the salty ocean air mixed with the delicious smelling food that was waiting on the table in the dining room. He'd had a local restaurant deliver a meal of ackee and codfish, which was one of his favorite local dishes. He was looking forward to tasting it and catching up with James and Laura.
As he opened his eyes, he saw James' car pulling up in the driveway with Laura in the passenger's seat. He turned and went back inside the house, crossing the spacious great room as he made his way towards the front door - which was actually positioned on the side of the house. He made it there just in time to hear James rapping his knuckles on the door.
J.T. opened the door and James crossed the threshold to give J.T. a big bear hug.
"Hey J.T., it's good to see you.
Although J.T. was officially known as Sam Walters - the new identity that Nick had provided for him, the trio often slipped back into using their real names when they were alone on occasions such as this.
"Hey James, good to see you."
He saw Laura standing behind James, holding something in a plastic container. He gave her a hug too, being careful not to dislodge what was likely a wonderfully tasty dessert from her grasp.
"Hey Laura."
"Hi J.T.," she said as she returned his embrace.
They all made their way over to the dining area and sat down at the table. James started serving his plate immediately, failing to notice that J.T. was patiently waiting for him to stop.
"James, J.T. usually prays, remember?" Laura said.
"Oh yeah, right," James said, feeling slightly embarrassed, putting down the serving spoon and sitting back in his chair. J.T. had started saying a prayer at the monthly meals about six months ago. He had modeled it on the original serenity prayer written by Reinhold Niebuhr. Praying wasn't something James was used to doing before meals, and he still frequently forgot about it whenever they ate together. J.T. laughed at James as he sat back, looking ashamed.
"There's nothing to be embarrassed about. It's not like God is going to strike you down or anything."
"That's a good thing," James replied jokingly.
Laura rolled her eyes at James.
"Can we pray now? I'm starving," Laura pleaded.
"Sure, here we go," J.T. said as he began. "God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace. Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it. Trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with You forever in the next. And thank You for this food. Amen."
The meal progressed from there with vigor. J.T. opened a bottle of wine and poured everyone a generous portion. The conversation was lively as the three caught each other up on the previous month's activities.
"I just broke one thousand dollars in sales for the first time this month!" Laura exclaimed.
"Hey, good for you!" J.T. replied, raising his glass. "A toast to Laura's stained glass business."
"Here, here," James enjoined, raising his own glass and taking a generous swig of wine along with the other two.
"What about you, James, anything new and exciting to report?" J.T. asked.
"Well? actually there is?" James replied, looking across the table at Laura. She turned beet red and started looking down at her plate.
"Oh, do tell," J.T. encouraged, seeing Laura blush.
"Laura and I are dating," James continued.
"Oh, so you each found someone to date within the last month? Who are these two other people?" J.T. asked jokingly, looking at Laura and enjoying her embarrassment. She took a carrot off of her salad and threw it at him.
"Stop it! You know what he means; we're dating each other."
"Oh, o.k. I get it now," he said, pretending not to have understood what James was getting at. "Well, that's good news," he continued with genuine affection. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months," Laura replied. "We agreed not to tell you in case it didn't work out. We didn't want it to be awkward between us all."
"Well, shoot fire," replied J.T. "I'm happy for you two."
"What about you, J.T.? Do you have anything new going on?" James queried.
"Well, as a matter of fact, I do. You both know that as part of making amends for my past, that I track down former employees of the companies I helped shut down and help them out. Well, there were a few that were hit particularly hard. Some of them had heart attacks, some of them committed suicide?." J.T. stopped speaking, having begun to choke up. Laura could see tears welling up in his eyes. He paused for a moment to collect himself before continuing. "Over the years I've been doing this, I have made a list of those people and vowed that if I ever got the chance, that I would visit them personally and apologize."
"Wait a minute, J.T.," James interrupted, "you can't be serious about returning to the States. What if you get caught?"
"Now, just hold your horses," J.T. replied, putting both hands up in a gesture of surrender. "I'm not going back to the U.S."
Laura and James both sat back in their chairs, visibly relieved.
"I've arranged for each of these people to be invited on a cruise, supposedly at the expense of their former employer. One of the stops is in Nassau. I'm planning to fly out there and meet with each of them individually at a pre-arranged time in a rental office in one of the hotels there. It's already all been arranged. I'll even be in a disguise so they won't be able to recognize me."
He stared between Laura and James, looking for any indication of alarm.
"If you can think of anything that might set off the alarm bells, let me know within the next week. I can still have one of my lawyers do the meet in my place, but I would rather do it myself if I can. I feel this is something I really need to do."
Laura and James both looked somber, considering what J.T. had just said, wracking their brains in an attempt to see any possible flaws.
"If you get caught, it will lead them right back to us," Laura stated. "Then we're all going back to jail."
"It's only for one day, right?" James asked. "Are you using your real name or your alias for anything?"
"I only used my alias to book the flight to Nassau. Everything tied with the cruise and renting the office will be in the name of my law firm - protected information that they can't legally be forced to disclose under U.S. law. I'm planning on introducing myself as Jack Smith, one of the people responsible for shutting down the business - no more detail than that."
"You can't seriously be in agreement with this?" Laura said to James, obviously upset. "If he gets caught, we all get caught. Our lives would be over, James."
James looked directly at Laura.
"My mom died because somebody ran her company into the ground and she lost her insurance and couldn't get the right treatment for her cancer. It would have meant a lot to me if someone responsible for that would have looked me in the eye and said they were sorry for what they did." He turned to look at J.T. "I think you should go, but only if Laura is o.k. with it. Like she said, we're all in this together."
J.T. looked at Laura, who was shaking her head from side to side.
"Look, Laura," J.T. continued, "you don't have to decide tonight. Think about it. I'm not scheduled to fly out until next Saturday."
Laura stood up and began walking out the door. "I'm going down to the beach. I need to be alone," she said.
James turned to look at J.T. "Let's just give her some space? and eat some of that cake she brought," he said with a smile.
"Darn straight." J.T. replied as they both got up from the table and went to the kitchen counter to open the dessert.
/> When she arrived at the beach, Laura sat down on the sand and looked out over the beautiful tropical ocean view before her. She was full of conflicting emotions. She was mad that J.T. was planning to do something that could destroy the life they had all worked to build for themselves over the past year. She was also scared that he might actually get caught and get them all thrown back into prison. As she looked out at the waves, she thought about the prayer that J.T. had said before dinner and about her own journey of recovery in the program at Utopia.
"Give me the courage to change the things which should be changed," she said out loud.
She thought about what James had said, about how it would have made a difference for someone to apologize for their role in his mom's loss of insurance and the resulting damage that had been caused. She thought about how it would have helped her heal if any of her former abusers had had the guts to accept responsibility for what they had done and say so to her face. After staring at the ocean for a few more minutes, she stood up and walked back to the house.
Back in the house, Laura found J.T. and James playing pool. James was losing badly, as usual, but he was having fun. She smiled as she walked up to the two. They stopped the game and looked at her, waiting for her to say something.
"I think you should do it. I have one condition, though," she said.
"Name it," J.T. replied.
"You call us once you are in the air on your way back to let us know you didn't get busted."
J.T. nodded soberly, "Will do? and thanks for understanding."
"I think it's great what you're doing, J.T.," Laura said.
"I just hope it can help them move on somehow," he replied.
J.T. went to bed that night looking forward to the upcoming trip, wondering what it would be like. He was both scared and excited at the same time.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Nick Bartonovich sat in the chair across from the doctor as he was given the results of the battery of tests that had been run over the past few weeks. It was never a good sign when you were called back in to the doctor's office to get the results - they never liked to give bad news over the phone, it seemed. All the same, he hadn't been prepared to hear the 'C' word. Appendicitis, an ulcer, anything but cancer.
There had never been anything that Nick couldn't handle, even since he was a kid. When his parents had died within weeks of each other, he had cried, sure, but he never let anyone else see. He was only ten, but he determined then that he would never let anyone hurt him that badly again. He decided that he would be the one calling the shots, making the plans, bending events to his own will and desire. When his uncle tried to get him to take off more time from school to grieve, Nick snuck out of the house and went to school anyway, hitting the books harder than ever. His hard work paid off and he eventually earned a scholarship into college. Once he was there, he started dabbling in running numbers for the college games, found he was good at it, and started the path he was still on today.
But this was different. This wasn't some external enemy he could defeat with the force of his will. He couldn't write a check and make it go away or send Mia out to persuade cancer to change its mind and leave. And for the first time since he'd been that little boy who had just lost his parents, Nick Bartonovich was afraid.
He sat in a daze as the doctor talked about possible therapies for stage two stomach cancer. Surgery would be mandatory, possibly followed by chemotherapy and radiation therapy. All of it coming at him so fast that he felt like a mosquito caught in a rainstorm, having to dodge every word like it was a drop of water, threatening to envelope him if he came too close to it. He came out of his daze at the end of the conversation to hear that he had an appointment the following week with an oncologist.
The doctor slid a card across the desk towards him with the particulars of the appointment before asking if Nick had any questions. Nick could barely breathe. It was as if all of the oxygen had been sucked out of the room and he didn't have enough air in his lungs to speak. So he simply stared at the card and nodded his head from side to side.
He almost had a head-on collision while driving home because he wasn't paying attention to driving - still attempting to process the news he had just been given. He parked the car in the garage and made his way to the den, where he poured himself a scotch and sat down in his favorite chair, looking out the front window. That was where Mia found him when she came in the front door.
Nick had told her to come in around 2:00 p.m. because he had a doctor's appointment and wouldn't be back before then. He had planned on following their usual routine at that time. He would review his various business activities for the day and assign to her any tasks he needed taken care of.
Mia wasn't anything like a secretary. He had a half-dozen of those that worked at his corporate office downtown. He could video conference, call, or email the corporate office administrator from his office here at home should he need something done. Mia was more of a specialized personal assistant. She would handle the coordination of delivery and pickup of funds that were made or lost from the gambling enterprises. If some of the high rollers were having a bad spell and refusing to pay up, she would persuade them to change their minds and come back with the cash. If a business associate needed help deciding to do what Nick was suggesting, Mia was the one he sent to work it out. She was very good at what she did and he had complete faith in her abilities. But today, there would be no such assignments.
Mia could tell that Nick was not in a good mood, so she did what she normally did when she found him in a foul mood - she waited. Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes passed and Nick didn't move. He was just staring out the window, holding the half-consumed glass of scotch in his hand as his arm lay on the armrest of the chair.
Mia could only recall one other time that she had seen him like this. It had been in college when the girl he had been dating had dumped him. He had tried to win her back with gifts and flowers, but she had finally told him that there was nothing he could do to win her back, that she just didn't love him and never would. He had sat in a chair and stared out of the window for the rest of the afternoon just like he was doing now. It wasn't something he could fix. He couldn't force her to love him like he could force someone to pay a debt. He knew that and he was undone by the fact.
At the end of the day, he'd snapped out of his stupor, told Mia to get dressed to party, and they had gone out together. It was the first time Nick had ever asked her to go anywhere with him socially. Before, it had always been business. They had gone to a few bars and Nick was beginning to get drunk. When they entered the next bar, Nick caught sight of his former girlfriend sitting at a table with her new football player boyfriend and a couple of his teammates. Nick began hurling insults at his former flame and her new beau. After the second or third comment, the big football player had stood up, red-faced, and begun coming towards Nick, intent on a fight. He was followed closely by his two teammates.
Mia did what she did best. She protected Nick and looked out for his interests. Before the first would-be assailant had come within striking distance of Nick, Mia had already covered the distance between them, delivering a side-kick to his knee that sent him crashing down to the floor in agony - an injury that would leave him out of commission for the rest of the season. Without skipping a beat, she took another step and leapt into the air to deliver a well-placed knee to the second man's diaphragm. At the same time, she used the palms of her hands to strike his ears violently, leaving him breathless and in considerable pain in the process. The third man was at her side by this time. Seeing what he was up against, he decided not to take any chances. Lady or not, he was going to punch Mia - or so he thought. Mia easily deflected his clumsily delivered haymaker and delivered an open-hand strike to his trachea. He instantly put both hands to his throat and began gagging and gasping for air.
Nick had been watching the whole time with great amusement. Mia quietly
walked over and said to him, "Let's leave before the cops get here." They left the bar and Mia took Nick home, making sure he made it inside to his bed before he passed out. That was what had happened the last time she had seen him look this way.
She went to the kitchen to make some tea and brought it back in on a tray with two cups and some sugar, setting it down on the coffee table in front of the couch. She poured herself a cup and began drinking it as she waited. After another fifteen minutes or so, Nick spoke.
"Mia?."
She waited for a few seconds, expecting him to finish his sentence. When he didn't, she replied.
"Yes?"
"Mia?I?I have cancer?."
The next six months were very difficult. The treatment plan the oncologist suggested for Nick involved a surgery to remove a mass of cancer, followed by chemotherapy. Mia's role began to change. She was still protecting Nick's interests, but now that included driving him to and from doctor's appointments. Helping walk him to the car when he was dizzy, and helping him make some of the common business decisions that he had trouble making because he couldn't think clearly due to the drugs he was taking.
Nick had asked Mia to arrange for a nurse to be around during the day to help him through the recovery process. The nurse was to help bring him pain medication, help him up and down the stairs when he was dizzy, or help clean up when he vomited. One day, Nick called her on the phone.
"Mia?."
Nick's voice was strained.
"Yes, what is it?" Mia asked.
"I've fallen down the stairs and I need your help."
"I'll be right there," she replied.
She depressed the accelerator and sped towards the house. When she came inside, she found Nick sitting in a chair, with his leg propped up on a foot stool with a pillow under it. Marcus, the security man whom Nick usually kept at the house, was bringing a glass of water over to Nick when Mia arrived.
"Are you o.k.?" she asked Nick.
"I'm not sure," Nick replied.
"What happened?"
"The nurse didn't show up today. I thought I could make it downstairs to get myself some breakfast before starting to work, but I began feeling dizzy towards the bottom, and fell down the last four steps. Marcus helped me up and over here to the chair."