If he got his people to take a five percent pay cut, and if he did a significant portion of the work himself for no pay, Reggie Henedy could adjust the bid he was about to submit to the city council and the mayor by at least twenty-five percent. In the city’s favor.
Henedy Construction & Contracting could take the hit. It would be close, but he could do it. He didn’t feel right giving the city too big of a bill. Not after what had happened. The city had enough to worry about right now.
Reggie had the skills, he had the equipment, and he had the manpower to help Finley Creek recover. It was his ethical duty to do what he could.
He was adjusting more figures when his cell rang.
His mother’s ringtone.
Reggie didn’t like to think of himself as a mama’s boy—far from it. He’d had more struggles getting along with his fiery, passionate mother than he had his calmer, more collected, less reckless father.
But he valued his mother, especially considering how she had managed to make a successful life for herself, despite how his father had betrayed her time and time again.
He’d liked to think his moral code was as different from his father’s as it was possible for one to be.
The husband of his father’s mistress had shown up at one of Reggie’s little league games and told his mother in exact details—with Reggie listening—how his father had betrayed her, and it had made it clear the type of person Reggie wanted to be. Anything but like his father.
It had soured baseball for Reggie after that.
His mother had changed right before his eyes. Some of her passion was just gone. It took her a long while to bounce back from what his father had done.
She had sworn Reggie to secrecy, never to tell his father what had happened.
He’d worried for six months that his parents were going to divorce—but they never had.
He half thought his mother had stayed with his father for Reggie and his cousin Raymond’s sakes.
His relationship with his mother had shifted that day, too. He’d become more of a man, he thought. And she’d sheltered him from the harsh realities of the world less than she had before. Depended on him more.
When the time had come for him to build a life for himself as a man, she’d harshly told him to figure out a way to do it himself. She’d helped his father get to where he was, and he had betrayed her.
Reggie was going to learn how to stand on his own two feet.
No matter what.
That, she said, was going to be her greatest gift to him. He was going to be a man he could be proud of.
Those were lessons he had never forgotten.
“Hello, Mom. You doing ok?”
“Get to the hospital and stop him!”
“Mom?” She’d said hospital, and his mind had immediately shifted to his father. In spite of his father’s faults, Reggie still loved him. He was his father—and he loved Reggie in return. He had never doubted that. “Is Dad ok?”
“No, he’s not ok. He’s shot someone! Probably his latest whore. You need to get down there and tell me what they are saying. I can’t handle this. He’s going to ruin everything. Just get down there, Reggie, now!”
The phone went silent between them.
Reggie didn’t know what to do. So, for the first time in what seemed like his adult life, he did what his mother told him without questioning.