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“Frankly, Vesta, I don’t have the strength right now. After what happened with Michael, and then him dying, and the baby, I just feel…” Her voice broke, and as she stared into her cup of coffee, big tears rolled down her cheeks.

“This is just too much,” suddenly a voice growled from the door.

When we looked up, we saw that Tom was standing there. He had probably heard the entire conversation, and I could see that he was seeing red.

“Tom,” said Natalie, surprised to find her co-worker balling his hands into fists, his face working, and his eyes shooting sheets of flame to no one in particular. The kind, slightly nerdy young man had suddenly turned livid.

“This ends now,” Tom announced, and suddenly stomped out.

“What’s going on?” asked Gran. “Where is he going?”

“I don’t know,” said Natalie, a look of concern on her face.

Tom was a fast worker, for not even ten minutes had passed before Natalie got a call from her brother. By then we were all back at our desks—except Tom, who had disappeared.

Natalie came hurrying up to us, her phone pressed to her chest.“It’s Luke,” she said. “He says some maniac just walked in, and he’s threatening to kill him!”

“Uh-oh,” said Gran. “That’s not good.”

It was quite the understatement, and since Natalie seemed in a right state, we decided to accompany the young PA to her home, where her brother was apparently in danger of some grievous bodily harm!

Natalie wasn’t in a condition to drive, and so Gran did the honors, setting a world record for traversing from one side of town to the other. When we finally screeched to a halt in front of Natalie’s apartment complex, I think we were all a little white around the nostrils.

We staggered from the vehicle, and Natalie hurried up to the front door. But even before we got there, loud voices greeted us from the fifth-floor window.

And as Natalie gasped in shock, suddenly Tom appeared. He had grabbed her brother by the neck and was trying to shove him out the window!

“Tom, don’t!” Natalie screamed as Luke held on for dear life.

“Nat, help!” Luke cried. “This maniac wants to kill me!”

“I will kill you,” said Tom, “if you don’t clear out of your sister’s apartment right now. But not before you clean up your mess, and promise never to return!”

“I promise, I promise!” Luke yelled. “But don’t kill me, please!”

But Tom wasn’t so easily convinced. “If you don’t do as I say, I’m coming back, and I will shove you out of this window, and watch your no-good brain splatter on that pavement below. Is that understood, you pathetic waste of skin!”

“Yes, yes! I promise!”

“Good,” said Tom, and yanked the kid back inside.

“He’s not so meek now,” said Dooley.

“No, more like an avenging angel,” I said.

“Oh, God,” said Natalie, as she hurried to the door.

And as we arrived on the fifth floor, where the drama was unfolding, we were greeted by an apocalyptic scene: the apartment, which hadn’t looked all that clean and welcoming before, had been completely trashed! And I had the impression it wasn’t Tom who was responsible for the mess.

“He didn’t clean up,” was the first thing Natalie said when she witnessed the devastation. “I told him to clean up. He promised to clean up. He didn’t clean up.”

“All the more reason to kick him out,” said Gran.

Tom seemed to agree wholeheartedly, for he now greeted us in the hallway, dragging a terrified-looking Luke by the scruff of the neck.“Your brother has something to tell you, Natalie,” he announced.

“I’m leaving, Nat,” said Luke. “I’m leaving and I’m not coming back.”

“But…” Tom prompted.

“But first I’m going to clean up my mess.”

“And…”

“And I want to thank you for shopping for me, cooking for me, doing my laundry, and cleaning up after me. But I promise that you won’t have to do that anymore.”

“Because…”

“Because I’m going to be staying with a friend from now on.”

“And…”

“And I want to apologize to you for the trouble I caused.”

“And…”

“And I’m going to pay you for all the damages, the food—everything!”

“Good,” Tom grunted. “And now get started,” he said, and released the young wastrel. Luke produced a sort of yelp of fear, and scuttled into the living room, where he immediately started picking up his trash.

Natalie, who’d watched the scene with slack jaw, now turned eyes filled with gratitude and admiration to Tom, like the rest of us surprised by this sudden transformation the young man had gone through.

“Look, I can’t stand this anymore,” Tom announced now. “I’ve never told you this before, Natalie, but I love you. In fact I’ve loved you from the day you came into my life. The day I started working at Advantage. I’ve been too chicken to tell you, and to ask you out—until recently. I understand that you’re still mourning for Michael. But honestly, I hated the way he treated you. And I hated that he dumped you when you told him you were expecting his baby. The man was a louse. And he didn’t deserve you. Just like I don’t deserve you. But if I didn’t tell you this, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. So…” He shrugged. “I guess now I did.”