Excerpt: VIRTUALLY LONDON, Neighborlee, Ohio, Book 3

 That summer, I spent a lot of time with Doni. Not just because I realized early what a smart, quietly fun kid she was. And not because I felt sorry for her. Bethany left town. It wasn't any fun working at Miller’s Diner without her. We had always asked for the night shift because first, the tips were better with the evening menu and second, we liked to have our mornings free. We liked sleeping in. Exploring what new treasures had arrived at Divine's Emporium. Or just sitting somewhere quiet in the park and reading or daydreaming about our futures.

Well, Bethany's future not only arrived, it snatched her up and dragged her off to Hollywood. So I was pretty much alone. Yeah, I had friends, but nobody I really liked to hang with, day in and day out. I kept my night job at the diner, because I was still saving for my dream computer.

Mornings were for Doni and me. She was quite happy to spend her afternoons and evenings hanging with Gram and Granddad, talking about books, working in Gram's garden, making a place for herself. Roots.

She needed those roots when the Hallidays fought back.

They got pretty offensive because they had to get defensive. Mr. Carr went after them with everything he could think of, to protect Doni from them in the future. We would have preferred to let sleeping dogs lie, meaning doing everything possible to avoid reminding the Hallidays we existed and Doni was with us. However, the smart thing was to look for landmines now. We had been dealing with the Grandstones for generations, here in Neighborlee. So we knew to anticipate the Hallidays pulling the same kind of dirty tricks, and worse, once they learned just how rich Doni would be when she reached twenty-one.

For example, the Grandstones had bought up a bunch of old buildings, intending to get rich off urban renewal. Kurt Hanson worked for a garage they bought. He quit when that jerk-face Reggie Grandstone marched into the garage and boasted that he was now Kurt’s boss. A year later, when Kurt sold a security alarm system he had been working on at the garage, the Grandstones claimed that anything invented by their employees was automatically their property. Even when they didn't sign any agreement regarding intellectual property and work-for-hire.

The Grandstones sued, and lost. Kurt had proof he had been inventing and tinkering with the system for years before that tiny window of time between them buying the garage and when he quit. So he didn’t "invent" the system while he was still working for the garage. Mr. Carr got involved, and proved the single paycheck Kurt received after the Grandstones bought the garage came from the previous garage owner. Technically he never worked for them. They outsmarted themselves, making the former owner pay for any accounts payable generated before they took over.