" Who? Oh, you mean Jackson. Yes, he's doing better, the brute; in fact, if you don't expect anything from him, he seems to be doing wonders!" Is Marg... home?" Abby queried, coming around him to sit on the long, heavily overstuffed sofa that curled away to one side of the great fireplace."Yes, I'm right here," came the sultry voice from behind her, and Abby turned to greet the voluptuous Mrs. Lessing."Marge, how are you?" Oh, all right I guess. Nothing that an Alka-Seltzer won't cure. Why the. “Good to see you Nico. We have a surprise for you,” he said.“Hush, Papa,” Mama Alvarez admonished her husband. The surprise can wait. Nico, would you like a beer?” she asked.“Yes ... that would be nice, thank you,” I said, wondering what the mysterious surprise was as I sat at one end of the living room sofa.“All is well at the store, Nico?” Papa asked.“All is very well at the store. We’ll never get rich, but it is a good business and the changes we’ve made are working out very well. I’m even. While it was on, we ate our food, and washed it down with a couple of bottles of diet Pepsi from the room fridge.“What now?” Cal asked as I came back from pushing the dinner trolley out into the corridor.“I’m going to ring Charlie and let you talk to her,” I replied.“Can’t you ask her?” she asked.“I can,” I replied, “but I think it’s important that you’re the one to do it.”“Okay,” she agreed, not sounding at all enthusiastic.I pulled my phone out of my pocket and punched in Charlie’s mobile. She was afraid of me? I took one deep calming breath after the other and let go of my anger. I didn’t want her to be frightened of me. She sighed softly once more and started talking again. ‘I kept coming here for two reasons, the first one pretty obvious and in line with what I’ve been telling you just now, because of your very quiet, almost unreadable personality. I suppose curiosity is still what it is though. The other reason is something that’s more in line with what you’d expect from a.