I thought he cared about his people. He may be a terrible man—he killed my betrothed’s family, save for Kora, just to annul our union, and now wan...ted me for himself; he wanted to marry his own daughter, to violate all the rules of society—but I still thought he cared about being a good ruler.It was a horrible thing to hate my own father, to plot against him, but the man who carried me on his shoulders when I was a child, who built me little toys he controlled to bring me such joy, was gone. Now. I had come home early just to make sure the house was all set. Not that I was really worried. Even though we looked over the outer harbor, we were high enough that even the infamous Blizzard of ’78 with its 20-foot surge was more than fifty feet below us. In addition, the heating was gas switchable to gravity feed hot water. The stove, actually, all cooking places were natural gas too. Even the hot water heater was gas. We had plenty of candles and lanterns. So if we lost electricity, we would. She had no k**s and now suddenly she had two. With all the help from the City and the State she started to get enough money to enroll them both in the High School and feed them properly along with their other expenses. By now all the boys and girls had paired up, so Roger was on his own.Soon the graduation day came and he had nobody to attend because aunty had to go to work. Irene; his younger sister wanted to go and Roger took her with him. After he came back home, the gown and cap came off. If he didn’t like her price, he was welcome to purchase them elsewhere. They both knew the likelihood of that happening.He bitched moaned and tried to haggle, but Glenda just looked at him until he gave up. Finally, he handed the money over. When Glenda placed the scales on the table and poured the money into them, he got very distraught.She removed the smaller denominations, but the scales indicated he was still about twenty dollars short. She simply sat there until he topped up the pile on.