Be careful what you wish for, or how you scheme; it may have consequences that you don't anticipate, but then again, maybe those consequences are something that you actually wanted, but simply didn't know.
I think you could say that my parents, Jonas and Monique Romley, were those sort of people who 'lived by their wits'. We moved frequently as I was growing up - sometimes rather quickly - so I suspect that they may have gotten involved in dodgy stuff on occasion.
They had three children, all boys: Hector, Sheridan and Jeremiah (good grief, what names!). Fortunately, normally known as Hec, Danny and Jerry. I'm the middle one, nearly two years younger than Hec and about eighteen months older than Jerry.
We were all in high school and mostly doing okay. Surprisingly our education had somehow survived the numerous school changes and periods of homeschooling.
At the time I start this narrative, it was not long past my sixteenth birthday and we were living on an avocado farm. I don't know if the folks were leasing it, managing it for the owner or maybe 'borrowing it' someway. Whatever, we'd been here for a year and we'd had a good season. For a change we were pretty flush with funds.
One morning, a man came to visit the farm. His name was Mr Innsen and he was a lawyer. I bet Mum and Dad were very wary of him at first, but by the time we boys got home from school later that day, the three of them had found that they were kindred spirits and had worked out a scheme.
Let's see if I can explain the situation in a coherent manner.