Thomas Stepforth Sr., husband, father, grandfather, and billionaire, watched with a smile as 16-year-old Thomas Stepforth III and nine-year-old Vertran Stepforth came and started putting their bags into the trunk of their grandfather's car. It was time for them, their grandmother Mrs. Velma Stepforth, and him to embark on a big adventure.
He had known the minute it had come out of his mouth that his billionaire group of friends would largely think it was madness; he had remarried his wife, and his daughter had remarried her husband, and the idea was that they would swap honeymoons in the properties Mr. Stepforth owned – he and his wife would go first, and Sgt. Vincent and Mrs. Melissa Trent would go second just because their little ones needed more time to settle around them both being at home again.
None of that was madness, except the idea that the Stepforths would swing in to take care of Velma (11), Milton (9), and Gracie Trent (8) while also bringing and caring for grandsons Tom and Vertran Stepforth.
Tom and Vertran had their own reasons for their parents to need some break time – a blown-up kitchen and a burgeoning business and nobody over the age of 18 among those two – but then while Velma had inherited the Trent calmness, Milton and Gracie were two more chips off the unique Stepforth block, the kind of block that was born Black and in poverty, but could see and make of the world what was necessary to become a billionaire three times over.
Yet with age and maturity, Mr. Stepforth had realized a key to his development … he was a surprise late-born baby child, and his parents were the age of normal grandparents and had time and energy and wisdom to pour into him. He had clung in particular to his old father Theodore, to whom he was Tom, and working in all his father's enterprises had put down the foundation he would need.
So, as it happened, grandsons Tom and Vertran had settled down wonderfully with their grandparents that summer, because neither grandparent was thrown by the differences in how their grandsons viewed the world. That was what they had needed, and Mr. Stepforth thought that perhaps Milton and Gracie needed that space, too.
Of course, having Gracie, Milton, and Vertran in the same space and approximate age space was going to be a challenge, and Mr. Stepforth had heard that the Ludlow grandchildren next door had some live wires as well. One of them was waiting on them.
“Hey – our new brown grandparents are here to go with our brown bestie Gracie!” seven-year-old Amanda Ludlow yelled as soon as the Stepforths got out of the car.
So the Stepforth grandparents were bowled over by their own three grandchildren Gracie, Milton, and Velma, and then by the seven Ludlow grandchildren next door.
“Oh, we gotta get a picture!” nine-year-old Vertran the media mogul said.
“Sounds like it would make a good feature on interracial neighborly relationships,” Tom the budding newspaperman at the Lofton County Free Voice said.
Mr. Stepforth just smiled and greeted the Ludlow little ones and their big cousins and present guardians, Col. H.F. and Mrs. Maggie Lee, whom he knew – introductions all around, and great happiness.
“It's like my father Theodore Stepforth always said,” the billionaire often said to his frustrated “mere millionaire” friends. “You can't get anywhere sitting still worried about what could go wrong – you have to step out on faith and get moving on what can go right!”
