Free The Shelter: Book 1, The Beginning by Ira Tabankin

you, your dad’s crazy. He always thinks the world’s going to end. His name should be changed to Chicken Little. All I hear from him is prepare for this or that. A year ago he was on a tear that the New Madrid fault line was going to cause a massive earthquake. It hasn’t caused an earthquake has it? Then he was going on about a solar flare or EMP or something like that, I couldn’t understand what he was going on about. I don’t think there’s anyway some sort of flare on the sun can hurt our power. He’s always going on about some disaster or another. Can’t he ever live in the here and now and be happy? Christ, he just won $28 million, all he shared with us was $100,000. He’s buying a huge house he wants us to move in with him? Why would I give up my job to move to Nashville, we don’t even like Country music. Honey, I hate to suggest this, but I think your father needs professional help.”
     
    “Honey, he’s OK, he’s always liked to stock up on things. He’s always been worried about different disasters. He’s always liked to be prepared. When we were young, after the divorce, he used to visit us every other week. He would take us food shopping and stock us up with food, even then, he stocked us up on a couple of months worth of food. He was always worried we’d be hungry. He didn’t have to give us anything, but he gave us $100,000 plus any new car we wanted and don’t forget he’s paying for Linda’s college education.”
     
    “I think he should have given us more. You’re his oldest and we didn’t get enough to buy a new house. I bet he’s expanding the number of guns in his house too. I don’t want our daughter staying in his house since he has guns in his house.”
     
    “I’ll tell him we’re thinking about it, it’ll buy us time.”
     
    “You can tell him anything you want, I’m not moving and giving up everything we have here. He really needs some professional help. If I talked to Lacy do you think she will be able to guide him towards professional help?”
     
    “Don’t approach her about my dad. She will eat you up and spit you out. They’ve been together for 22 years, you didn’t know him before Lacy. He’s much calmer now. They love each other. If you go to Lacy, she’ll tell my dad, you’ll be driving a large divide between us. I love my father. He may be a little different, but he means well. He’s trying to protect us. He wants to protect us if something bad happens and he wants us to know we have a safe place to go.”
     
    “He’s so full of it, nothing’s going to happen. President Obama has reduced our military, the rest of the world no longer sees us as the threat Bush made us into. Our relations with the rest of the world are much better now. If I can’t talk to Lacy than I’m thinking of reporting your dad as an unbalanced person who owns guns.”
     
    “Ricky, please don’t do that. It’ll backfire. You don’t want to piss my dad off.”
     
    “OK, but if he does anything to introduce our daughter to guns, I’m going to report him.”
     
    “You know how much he loves Linda, she’s his princess, he would never do anything to put her in harm.”
     
    “He’s too radical for my tastes.”
     
    “Ricky, he thinks the same about you. One day the two of you should sit down and try to clear the air.”
     
    “Not going to happen. He’s everything I’m against. He thinks Obama is the worst President we’ve every had, I think he’s the best. We’re on opposite sides of every issue.
     
    “I’m asking you, just please don’t rock the boat between my dad and me.”
     
    “Okay, for now. As long as he doesn’t place our daughter in a dangerous situation.”
     
    “Okay, Ricky, please, just go slow and don’t piss my dad off.”
     
     
    Chapter 5
    Three weeks to the day after winning the lottery everything we own in Virginia is on an Atlas Van Lines moving truck on the way to Nashville. Fred has been great in helping us move in. He lined