'I don't know how he does it! The improvising, I mean. But I intend to learn it in time. His mother does it too . . . so perhaps it is something the Castellan family has put to use for some time, maybe even from the beginning.'
'As I said, you're far too cerebral for me,' Anana told her, going into the picnic basket. 'My concerns run more to the basics.' She smirked, thinking.
'What?'
'Oh . . . I just had this mental image of your future Castellan children playing with mine. One of mine, a little girl, was admiring a flower for its beauty, while one of yours, a little boy, was giving her a lecture on the manner in which the petals are arranged. They both agreed, for reasons that were worlds apart, that it was a thing of beauty.'
Kara grimaced ruefully at this. 'Yes, well, they could certainly teach my brother and my father a thing or two. Why are you looking at me like that?'
'Oh, I was just wondering how it is that you turned out so differently.'
'For one thing, I was kept well out of it,' Kara told her. 'For another, I was raised mostly by my mother's poor relatives, and regardless was ten years younger than the youngest of my three brothers. To them, and to my father, I was invisible, and all but non-existent. Which as it turned out was probably the best way things could have turned out.
'I have no illusions but that I would have turned out much differently had I been included. By all accounts my mother was a gentle, sensible soul before she was corrupted by my father and his friends. You see, my father makes those around him cross moral lines within themselves. Even his worst enemies have to become a bit like him to withstand his business practices. If you're up against someone who provides the best-made commodity at the cheapest price by cheating and extorting his own employees, then you have but two choices- follow suit whether you like it or not, or go out of business.'
'Why don't his employees just go elsewhere?'
'Because his thugs will beat them up! People who work for my father are forced to borrow money from him, and then are charged such high interest that they can never pay off the debt! Besides, my father and his business associates have changed the way people do business, to the extent that it's the same wherever you go.
'The very prospect of looking for other work is near impossible for a man who works from dawn 'til dusk with a day off every two weeks. If that man has a family it's out of the question. The only escape available is for a single man to hide away enough money to flee to the New World, and that is easier said than done. My father's men watch the docks from the coast of Africa to Norway. Those that are caught are beaten within an inch of their lives.'