Don’t Look Behind You

them when they came of age at eighteen. They needed it to pay for their educations, to find housing where they didn’t have to bend to their father’s will, and/or to start businesses.
    But Bob Hansen met with lawyers who cleverly prevented the release of those trust funds. Kandy Kay might have received some property—but his sons got nothing. Somehow Joann’s share of the estate came back to Bob. His first attorney, James Gooding, was later shot to death in his Kent office by an angry tenant in one of
his
properties.
    At that time Bob had already regained possession of the barn on the Green River and the Valley Apartments, built with the same plans as the Willows. The units sat next to the new freeway in Kent and ended up amongBob’s assets along with the other properties. They were literally a stone’s throw from the river.
    In his fifties now, Bob Hansen had a lot of money—some estimated his wealth at more than $5 million. As far as anyone knew for sure, he hadn’t remarried after Joann went out of his life, but that may be inaccurate. In the late seventies and early eighties, he was extremely interested in dating. He joined Parents Without Partners and met a number of women there. Of course, they didn’t suit him because he didn’t want any woman with an independent streak. He was annoyed to find that even the loneliest and least attractive of the single women in PWP seemed to be buying into equal rights for women.
    Bob Hansen’s hair was still thick, and it was gray only at the temples. He was in shape. His three kids were out of his house and he felt free; he was ready to begin to enjoy life. He joined a number of social clubs in addition to Parents Without Partners, including the San Juan Club. Good-looking men were exceptionally popular at PWP; there were far more single women than men.
    But Bob’s reputation preceded him. As handsome, tall, and rich as he was, most women still didn’t care for him after a date or two.
    Bob Hansen did, however, meet other middle-aged to elderly men, his “wingmen” at PWP, who told him that there were countries where pretty women—
young
women—were looking for well-to-do American men to marry. And they weren’t bossy or demanding.
    Bob was intrigued by the possibilities.
    He had done a great deal of traveling in the continental United States: hunting, fishing, backpacking on horses and mules, and visiting many of the top tourist attractions.
    In January 1980, he was fifty-six when he signed on for a seventeen-day luxury sailing trip on the barkentine
Polynesia
. The ship was 248 feet long and traveled to the Leeward Islands in the West Indies: St. Maarten, Anguilla, Saba, St. Barts, St. Kitts, and Statia. Bob was even allowed to steer the craft on a calm day and received a huge, flowery certificate memorializing his prowess.
    From the West Indies, Bob went to Cancún, Mexico. As always, he took dozens of photographs, and posed for as many, filling still more scrapbooks. He felt comfortable in tropical climates, and he thoroughly enjoyed the many trips he embarked upon. The staff of the
Polynesia
served food, hors d’oeuvres, canapes, and liquor—anything he wanted—all free.
    To the surprise of his children, Bob also began to organize Hansen family reunions, planning all the details, sending out invitations to even distant relatives. He even dug the roasting pit and oversaw the slow baking of large hogs.
    He had never been a particularly social man but he now seemed to be trying to surround himself with people. Maybe he was softening, although Ty, particularly, doubted it.
    “I think he realized that he didn’t have many friends and that his kids were pulling away from him,” Ty tried to explain. “But all of a sudden, he was into finding all of ourrelatives—not my mother’s family, of course, but Hansens. Our immediate family was so dysfunctional—maybe he was looking for a family.”
    In their early twenties, Nick, Kandy, and Ty sometimes accompanied their father to the Hansen and Danish reunions in eastern Washington. Bob posed for photos with everyone there and took pictures of people who may or may not have been related to him.
    The picnic tables were groaning boards filled with both picnic and Danish food: whole roasted pigs, fried chicken livers, little Danish open-faced sandwiches (
smorrebrod
), chicken and dumplings, pies, cakes, pastries, and peaches and grapes.
    One of Bob’s favorite parts of these reunions was the magnificent