Remember When

lifestyle they could accept.
    From childhood he'd known what he wanted to do. To create or recreate buildings. He'd wanted to dig in his roots, as he'd never been able to do as a child, and provide places for others to do the same.
    He'd structured Whittier Construction from the ground up, through his own sweat and desire, his mother's unbending belief in him-then Pat's. In the thirty-three years since he'd begun with a three-man crew and a mobile office out of his own truck, he'd cemented his foundation and added story after story onto the building of his dream.
    Now, though he had managers and foremen and designers on his payroll, he still made it a habit to roll up his sleeves on every job site, to spend his day traveling from one to another or burrowing in to pick up his tools like any laborer.
    There was little that made him happier than the ring and the buzz of a building being created, or improved.
    His only disappointment was that Whittier had not yet become Whittier and Son. He still had hopes that it would, though Trevor had no interest in or talent for the hands-on of building.
    He wanted to believe-needed to believe-that Trevor would settle down soon, would come to see the value of honest work. He worried about the boy.
    They hadn't raised him to be shallow and lazy, or to expect the world handed to him on a platter.
    Even now, Trevor was required to report to the main offices four days a week, and to put in a day's work at his desk.
    Well, half a day, Steve amended. Somehow, it was never more than half a day.
    Not that he got anything done in that amount of time, Steve thought as he blew on his steaming tea. They would have to have another talk about it. The boy was paid a good salary, and a good day's work was expected. The problem, of course, or part of it, was the trust funds and glittery gifts from his mother's side of the family. The boy took the easy route no matter how often his parents had struggled to redirect him.
    Given too much, too easily, Steve thought as he looked around his cozy den. But some of the fault was his own, Steve admitted. He'd expected too much, pinned too many hopes on his son.
    Who knew better than he how terrifying and debilitating it could be for a boy to have his father's shadow looming everywhere?
    Pat was right, he thought. They should back off a bit, give Trevor more room. It might mean taking a clip out of the family strings and setting him loose. It was hard to think of doing so, of pushing Trevor out of the nest and watching him struggle to cross the wire of adulthood without the net they'd always provided. But if the business wasn't what he wanted for himself, then he should be nudged out of it. He couldn't continue to simply clock time and draw pay.
    Still, he hesitated to do so. Not only out of love, for God knew, he loved his son, but out of fear the boy would simply turn to his maternal grandparents and live, all too happily, off their largesse.
    Sipping his tea, he studied the room his wife laughingly called Steve's Cave. He had a desk there as he more often than not preferred to hunker down in that room rather than the big, airy office downtown or his own well-appointed, well-equipped office in the house. He liked the deep colors of this room, and the shelves filled with his boyhood toys-the trucks and machines and tools he'd routinely asked for at birthdays and Christmastime.
    He liked his photographs, not only of Pat and Trevor, of his mother, but of himself with his crews, with his buildings, with his trucks and machines and tools he'd worked with as an adult.
    And he liked the quiet. When the privacy screens were on the windows and the doors were shut, it might very well be a cave instead of one of the many rooms in a three-level house.
    He glanced up at the ceiling, knowing if he didn't go up to the bedroom shortly, his wife would roll over in bed, find him gone, then drag herself up to search him out.
    He should go up, spare her that. But he poured a second mug of tea and lingered in the soft light and quiet. And nearly dozed off.
    The buzzer on his security panel made him jolt. His first reaction was annoyance. But when he blinked his eyes clear and looked at the view screen, the image of his son brought him a quick rush of pleasure.
    He rose out of his wide leather chair, a man of slightly less than average height, with the bare beginnings of a potbelly. His arms and legs were well muscled, and hard as brick. His eyes were a faded blue with webs of