Vengeance, 5

The huge, hulking dark house is empty but for the middle aged Filipina and the elderly Caucasian man seated in the small reception room.  This is a house of many rooms, how many, the old man cannot guess.  He knows that doctors are well paid but it still surprises him that his son could afford such a home.  Tom turned out so different from his sister, a modestly paid shelter worker who just happened to be on duty during his intake.  An awkward reunion and she struggled to call him "Dad" while hearing from him his sad, depressing and tragic story: a retired shoe repair man living on a modest pension in a small West End apartment.  A victim of renovictions, he was evicted with nowhere to go when the landlord decided to upgrade the building and triple the rent.

Tom and Abby were both teenagers when their mother kicked him out of the house.  His drinking and womanizing had pushed her past her limit.  He lost contact with everyone, remarried, then after twenty years was a widower.  It was Abby who told him about her brother.  She said she would phone him to see if he would take in their dear long lost dad.  When he arrived on the doorstep and first sat in this same reception room it was very clear that she had forgotten to call her brother.

Esperanza is on the phone.  She is talking to her parish priest.  She gets off the phone and says to the old man, "Father Joseph should be here in fifteen minutes to take us away from here."  Despite the suspense of the moment he finds her unusually composed and self-possessed, even beautiful as the soft afternoon light of early June filters into the dark wood panelled room.  The doorbell chimes and in comes a tall, stately looking priest, with thick greying hair and craggy features.

"What about the boy?" the old man asks of his grandson, not troubling to acknowledge the priest. "Won't he need someone to pick him up?"

"The police have already phoned the school.  They will keep him there until his mother picks him up later."

"The police are involved?"

"They've been planning this with me for months, Mr. Douglas.  Your son, I'm afraid is going to be in big trouble."

"When is my daughter-in-law coming home?"

"Not for another couple of hours."

He wants to see his grandson.  He has never met him, never held him in his lap, never played with him.  He almost chokes on a sob, but staunches the emotion.  His six months in a Nazi prison seventy years ago taught him a lot.