The Trouble Way

Jake Forest is a man who thought he'd experienced all of those rites of passage moments -- some incredibly good, others not -- now that he had nearly used up all of his numbers.

He experienced the usual rites: graduation from grade school, high school, eloping to Idaho, military service, college, and work at Big Richards.

During his years at Big Richards, he'd seen others struggling to exist in a society that held people in place by greed and lust for power. He watched the little people fight for what was their due.

There were loves and loves lost and, of course, the lusts. He searched his entire life and discovers the romance and happiness he's been looking for with two unlikely people.

"First you are one, then two, then three, and when you use up all the numbers, you die." Bella said when she was three. She said they couldn't be "best friends," because he was too old. But, he could be "the best grandfather in the whole wide world.

He'd come to the conclusion with the accident with Bella in the Raccoon River it would be the last of those damnable rites.