He’d worried then, he worried now. Jack earned his living, at least as far as Tom could tell, as an appliance repairman. In the few times during the past fifteen years that he’d seen his son—times he could number on the fingers of one hand—and had a chance to ask him about it, he’d always seemed evasive. Maybe because he sensed his father’s disappointment. Nothing wrong in being a repairman in and of itself; the world needed people who could fix the mechanical and electronic conveniences of modern life. Fine. But he wanted more for his son. Jack had three and a half years of college behind him that he wasn’t using. What was he going to do when his eyes got bad and his fingers got arthritic? Did he think he was going to get by on that Ponzi scheme called Social Security? Tom hoped not.

But what bothered him more was that Jack seemed rootless, disconnected, adrift. Not exactly a ne’er-do-well, but…

But what? Why was he so secretive about his life? Tom was a believer in everyone’s right to privacy, but really…it was almost as if Jack were hiding something.

Earlier this year Tom had gathered the courage to ask if he was gay. Jack had denied it, and his easy laugh as he’d assured him that he was attracted only to women had convinced him he was telling the truth. Tom wouldn’t deny that that had been a relief. But if Jack had said yes, well, Tom would have tried to find a way to accept it. He was glad that wouldn’t be necessary.

So if it wasn’t that, what? Was he using drugs? Or worse, dealing them? He prayed not. And for some reason, thought not.

He supposed Jack’s unused education rankled him the most. Education wasn’t something Tom took lightly. He’d fought and killed to get his.

He slid back along the lines of his life to his childhood. He’d been born during the Great Depression, the son of a truck farmer outside Camden who’d been scraping by before the economy crashed, and continued to scrape by after. At least they always had food on the table, even if it was only vegetables they picked or pulled from the ground themselves.

Tom’s father had been just old enough to see a little action in the First World War, and just a little bit too old to fight in the Second, although that hadn’t stopped him from trying to enlist after hearing news of what the Japs did to Pearl Harbor. Tom remembered being afraid that they’d soon see hordes of yellow men running wild through the streets of America. He’d read numerous scenarios describing just that during the late thirties in the pages of the Operator 5 magazines he borrowed from a kid in school.