Free W: The Planner, The Chosen by Alexandra Swann, Joyce Swann Page B

in the Phoenix area.
    George Mitchell was a much better businessman than he was a human being. He was rude, heavy-handed and cold with his five children and cold with his wife—so cold that after forty years of marriage she decided that she would prefer to finish her golden years alone than to spend them with her irritable, demanding husband.
    George had three daughters and two sons. Jim was the baby of the family. His older brother David was actually the heir apparent to Mitchell’s estate, but that ended after a ninety mile an hour drunken joy ride in the wee hours of a Saturday morning left David’s convertible wrapped around a tree and his neck broken. He lived three days in a coma before he died. That just left the girls, none of whom had any interest in the mobile home communities, and Jim, who had a strained relationship with his prickly father and no ambitions of his own.
    Jim had gone to work for his dad, but he hated the mobile home community almost as much as he hated working for his father. He was a good artist, however, and he had his own great ideas for housing. In his mid-twenties, he enrolled in classes at night to study architecture, and after several years of hard work he became an architect. One evening on campus he met Janine Morris, a shy, quiet, but beautiful freshman who was paying her own way through school by working at the night registrar’s office. Five years older than she, Jim was smitten, and he asked her out every time he saw her for the next month. Eventually, she agreed to go, and three months later they were married. They set up housekeeping, and for the first five years of their marriage they lived in the management mobile home of the largest Mitchell mobile home community. Believing that Jim had more earning potential than she, Janine quit school and took on most of the management responsibilities so that Jim could pursue his studies and finish his degree. When Kris was born, Janine continued to work full time while taking Kris with her to the office—Kris could still remember toddling around playing with her toys and old magazines while her mother signed up tenants.
    After graduation, Jim left the mobile home community and set up his own custom home construction company. The independence came at a price—mainly in the form of a shouting match between him and George who pronounced Jim ungrateful and told him that he was a loser who was destined to fail at life. Jim had never gotten over his father’s harshness or the hateful, condescending attitude that he exuded—particularly towards his family. Unfortunately, George had taught Jim the only parenting style that either of them would ever know, and Jim imitated many of his father’s traits toward his own children. In fact, as Jim aged, he behaved so much like George that even his own sisters commented that he had turned into his father. By then, however, Jim no longer cared—he had convinced himself that George was tough and respected and that his own hardness would also earn him a place of respect.
    Janine, on the other hand, had stored away enough warmth and love to fill up several cities. As a young bride she was not merely in love with her husband—she idolized him.  When she left school, she had never questioned whether it was the right decision; what was best for Jim was best for the family—period. Now, after her own forty-five years of marriage to her own difficult, demanding husband, Janine knew that Jim was certainly fallible, but she still loved him. If she had doubts about her life, she did not express them very often. Instead she did her best to buffer the often embattled relationship between Jim and their three children—Kris, the oldest, Keith, their only son, and Karyn.
    Kris had never known her mother when she was not hard at work—in the businesses or at home taking care of the family, cooking, and caring for the house. After Jim set up his construction company, Janine began to pursue her interest in interior