“Love and Family During the Great Death”
Chapter 03:
When David, Alice and Ellen returned to the house, Ellen
still couldn’t get over it.
“It’s amazing, David,” she said with the awe she felt
evident in her voice. “I can’t believe that you and Alice built this all
yourselves.”
“Well, we did have a little help from a few
construction guys,” David admitted with a grin.
“Still, this is amazing, and not just because the two of you
did it. It’s a phenomenal work of architecture in its own right. Just look at
that window. It’s huge, but it’s impossible to see from outside. All you can
see riding up is a tiny little wooden building, yet when you come inside it
opens up like the Taj Mahal.”
“It’s hardly the Taj Mahal,” David demurred.
“You know, I’ll bet you could get this featured in one of
those architecture or home magazines. Can you imagine what your Ex would think
if your house, which she’s never visited, was featured in ‘Home & Design’
magazine?”
“She’d die!” Alice exclaimed, getting into the idea.
“You’d better believe it. From what I’ve heard about her,
she’d be up here to stake her claim before the ink dried on the magazine,”
Ellen assured David, who still didn’t look too sure.
“Nah, as much as she loves to shop and be recognized, she’s
just not a country person,” he argued.
“No, she wants to be in the center of things,” Ellen argued,
despite never having met the object of their discussion. “She wants to be seen
by others. But there are plenty of people who have the best of both worlds.
They aren’t mutually exclusive. She wanted her place in the social orbits of
the city, but that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t like to show off a beautiful home
in the country, as well.”
“Ah, but there’s the rub, I couldn’t live in that
environment any longer, and she couldn’t even stand to imagine a life out here.
Neither of us could compromise,” David explained. “There’s no way it would have
worked out.”
“You know, you seem to be fairly inflexible about all of
this, yourself,” Ellen informed him. “As much as you dislike the life you
abandoned and she followed, you can’t simply cut off all contact with each
other. As much as people like to believe that love and marriage is about wonderful
parties and beautiful people, part of it is a promise to love and honor each
other, till death breaks the marriage vows. That vow isn’t for the couple, it’s
for the family. It isn’t just you and her. As soon as you began planning a
family, it stopped being about the two of you. You really need to try to
connect with her on whatever level you can, because you owe it to Alice. She’s
caught between the two of you. Her mother won’t visit you, no matter what, and
you’ll only visit the city to pick her up.
“The two of you really need to sit down and work things out
between the two of you. You don’t need to become intimate again, or get
remarried, but you need to make peace, because the only one to suffer when you
fight is Alice.”
“You have a point,” he admitted. “But I don’t know how to
get her to agree to any of it.”
“I think you need to reach out to her,” Ellen suggested.
“Try meeting on a middle ground, someplace more populated than here, but not in
the heart of the city. Then once you start talking, you both need to
compromise. You need to visit her place in the city, and you’ve got to renew
your invitation out here. Just make sure she knows she won’t be stuck out here.
Try throwing a party. Invite a bunch of your old friends and invite her and her
new boyfriend along. She’ll feel obligated to come if you invite Alice when
she’s with Linda. Pretty soon she’ll be coming out to visit on weekends,
bringing Alice with her, and you won’t be terrified of returning to the city.”
Alice looked up at her father hopefully. “Can we, Dad? Can
we? It would be great. I could help you plan it. You can throw a big party. I
know all of my friends would love to come.”
“Hey, hold on now,” David said, holding his hands up in a
forestalling motion. “Nothing is happening this next week. There’s a lot of
preparation if I’m going to try this. Plus there’s no promising she’ll go for
it. Then again, there’s the boyfriend to consider. He may not go along with it.
Who’s she dating now, Alice?”
Alice looked down and mumbled something, but David assumed
he was speaking too loudly to have heard it. “What did you say?”
“She’s not dating anyone at the moment,” Alice replied,
seemingly embarrassed to be talking about her mother’s many boyfriends.
“Whatever happened to what’s his name, Fredrick something or
other? He was a nice guy. I thought they were getting along great?”
“She didn’t like how he couldn’t stand up to his mother,”
Alice replied testily, “just like she couldn’t put up with Peter’s politics, or
Dan’s stinginess.”
“Well, she may be going through a rough patch, but that
doesn’t mean her next boyfriend is going to be OK with—”
“If he loves her, he’ll accept her family,” Ellen told him
simply. “It’s a package deal. If you date a parent, you either accept the kids
or you hit the road. It’s what everyone our age does. If you weren’t hiding
from the world, David, you’d realize that.”
David stopped and considered that. Finally he responded.’
“OK, you’ve got an excellent point. The next time I see her I’ll try to talk to
her again.”
“No you won’t,” Ellen insisted. “When you take Alice back,
you’ll make a date to meet at a neutral group so you can talk about parenting your
daughter. You’ll meet, without Alice there, and you’ll talk like two
adults about what each of you needs to do for your daughter.”
David shrugged. He was a little confused why this would be so important to Ellen, who really shouldn’t care how he got along with his ex. But Ellen saw it in a different light. For her, it was a matter of taking care of one’s children, and he couldn’t do that if he couldn’t communicate with his ex. Thus this was important to her. If she could improve their basic communications, without their having to change too much, it would help Alice tremendously without impacting either David or his ex too much.
“OK, you win. You make a lot of sense. I can
see the logic when you explain it like that. So I’ll make a date with my
ex-wife. Does that make you happy?”
Ellen smiled and walked up to him, enveloping him in a hug.
“It sure does. It’s the mature thing to do, and I love a mature man who can
stand up for himself,” she teased. When the two of them kissed, they continued
for several moments before Alice made a noise.
“Please, you two, get a room. And you already have a room. A
beautiful room, too, if I have to remind you. I don’t need to watch the two of
you smooch all evening.”
“Hey, before we turn in, I wanted to see if we could tune in
a national news stations and see what’s happening with the storm,” David
suggested, changing the topic before Ellen started to drag him off to bed.
“That’s a good idea,” Ellen agreed. “Where’s the radio?”
“It’s over here,” Alice told her. She walked over to a tall
wall on the side of the large central window and hit a button, and music filled
the room. She reached over and switched the stereo system from the CD it seemed
to be playing, and static filled the room instead. She started slowly working
the dial, looking for a station.
“It seems our normal stations are all off the air,” she
said. The others stood there watching as Alice tried to find a station amongst
the static filled airwaves. Finally she found a single weak station, so she had
to turn the volume up.
“…cial broadcast. We’ve canceled our normal programming to…
without commercials,” the radio announced as the signal came and went.
“National communications have ground to a halt. The… tions remaining have all
switched to all news formats. The metorite storm seems to have passed out to sea,
but it supposedly devastated Hawaii, and any ships out to sea or on open water
is… been lost, including much of our military fleet.”
Both David and Ellen sat down on a nearby chair. David sat
down, and then Ellen sat down in his lap. Alice simply sat cross-legged on the
floor as each listened intently to the news they were hearing.
“… tional devastation. Major wildfires are burning across
the country, planes have been lost, ships can’t be accounted for, crops have
been wiped out or burned, and the loss of life has been phenomenal. This is the
biggest blow to the world since the Black Plague in the 15th
century, when 30% of the… lost.”
Alice fiddled with the station again, trying to get it to
come in better, but she wasn’t very successful.
“… National Emergency,” they heard when she got it to come
in again. “Word hasn’t reached many of the states, but the National Guard has
been called out, but no one knows what state the National Guard is in, or even
if it can respond. The Coast Guard has… to rescue anyone, or even to
locate bodies, instead focusing on restoring water going access. Emergency
shelters set up in… been overwhelmed, and the services are stretched to…”
Sighing in frustration, David told Alice to turn the radio
off. “It’s no use, we already know it’s bad, and they aren’t giving us any
specific information. I’ll talk to someone tomorrow. I think we can find a
better source of news than this. For now let’s go to bed and rest up for the
morning. We’ve got a lot to do tomorrow, and we’ll need our rest if we’re to be
expected to make any progress at it.”
Alice leaned in to turn the radio off, but instead turned on
some music which she switched from the huge living room to the back bedrooms.
David and Ellen looked at her.
“Mood music,” she told them simply, shrugging as if it
should have been obvious to them.
When Ellen and David made it to his bedroom, David took her
into his arm and gave her a tentative kiss, not sure how far he could push
since he’d only known her for a little while after being out of the market for
so long. However Ellen was ready for him and receptive to his advances. She
received his kiss and encouraged him to continue. They kissed for a while,
simply making out like randy teenagers by the door, while romantic music played
in the background.
“You have no idea how ready for this I am,” Ellen gasped
when they broke their kiss. “I had no idea what to do when I was in my car. I
was afraid to stay there, but I didn’t know what else to do. But you did. You
came in, grabbed me, even carrying me when I couldn’t get away fast enough. You
took charge of the situation and saved both your daughter and me. If it wasn’t
for you stumbling across me, I wouldn’t be here now. Not only that, but when
you saw those guys breaking into the drug store, you took action without a
second thought, even though you were putting yourself in danger. I was a little
shocked at what you did, but I can’t deny how effective a solution it was, and
I’ve been horny ever since. In fact, I’ve been turned on ever since we met.”
She pulled him behind her as she backed up to the bed.
“You’re so sexy it’s unbelievable, and I can’t believe that someone else didn’t
snap you up as soon as you were available.”
She kissed him, sat on the bed and began unfastening his
pants. “I loved it when we made love out there in the field, and it made
everything that was happening bearable, but I’m anxious to make love to you
face to face, and I’m also ready to see what this,” she said, grasping his
erection as she pulled it out of his pants, “looks like.”
“Ooh, it looks wonderful. Just what I would have imagined,”
she said, slowly stroking it as she examined it. “Not quite how I pictured it.
I’m not sure if anyone has ever told you before, but each one is unique within
a certain similar design. Yours is just the right size, big enough but not so
big it would be uncomfortable; a nice width providing a nice heft and a good
handful. Overall I’d give it a solid A-,” she said with a crooked grin.
“A-?” he asked.
“Well, it leans a little to the left, and I kind of like
them straight. Plus the balls are a little too hairy, but we can do something
about that later.” She grinned when she saw him involuntarily squirm at the thought
of sharp objects too close to his balls.
“Does that mean you’re…?” he asked, leaving the rest unsaid.
“Bare? Well, I was, but I haven’t been dating for a while,
so I’m probably a bit scratchy at the moment. I still shave, but I don’t do it
as religiously as I did when I was dating.”
“Oh well, if you can put up with my hairy balls, then I
guess I’ll have to put up with your scratchy…,” he couldn’t quite bring himself
to say it, after having spent the last couple of years watching his tongue
around his daughter.
“You can say it. It’s called a pussy,” she told him with a
smile.
“Anyway, are you going to do something beside weigh that?”
he asked, since she still hadn’t done anything with his cock, which was still
leaning to the left.
“Yeah, I was thinking of trying this,” she replied, holding
it upright and drawing her tongue up the entire underside length of it,
producing yet another shiver of an entirely different nature.
“Oh, that feels so much better than a razor to the
nuts,” he gasped out.
“We’ll see if we can find some other pleasurable
sensations,” she responded. “How about this one?” she asked, swallowing his
cock in one swallow.
“Ohh, I think we’re going to get along great,” David replied
with a slightly drooling grin.
Ellen proceeded to show just how impressed she’d been with
David earlier, how much she wanted to impress him, as well as thank him for
saving her life. She bobbed, sucked, slurped, licked, and occasionally hummed.
David was busy clutching her head, gently humping her face when she eventually
pulled back.
“I was thinking I’d take the pressure off, but you haven’t
come yet, so despite the length of time you’ve gone without, you still seem to
be in good shape. Now come down here and let’s play,” she said, as she pulled
him down by his shirt.
“Sorry, but I’ve always had this thing about blowjobs,” he
explained on the way down. “Don’t get me wrong, I love them, but I’ve never
been able to achieve an orgasm from one.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Now let’s see if we can’t work on
an alternate method of giving us both an orgasm.”
David went down willingly, and after a little bit of lip
wrestling, during which he managed to lose his shirt, he was persuaded to go
down a little further as he decided to munch at the Y. She was right, it was
scratchy, but he didn’t mind. After so long it was worth the wait, and both the
scratches and the resulting itch, which was further irritated by the juices he
found bathing his face, couldn’t lessen the delight he took in her heartfelt
reaction.
Ellen pulled him up and they kissed enthusiastically, before
she took hold of his erection again and aligned it with the afore mentioned
pussy, leaving the insertion up to him. He didn’t wait long, just long enough
to tease her a little. In fact, he waited long enough for her to start
twitching under him as she tried to entice the head of his dick with her pussy
lips. When he thought he’d teased her enough, he finally put her out of her
misery by sinking his cock into her eager cunt, and both of them sighed deeply
at the sensation. David hadn’t felt anything like this for a long time, and although
Ellen had had sex more recently than he had, this felt much more intense than
she’d felt in a long time.
They both lay there, simply basking in the sensations they
were feeling. It was only with great difficulty that David pulled back,
withdrawing his cock from its velvet vice. Ellen sighed again as his cock, the
one with the nice heft, moved away from her. But she grasped his buns with her
fingers and squeezed, which he responded by shoving what he’d withdrawn with
another hard thrust.
Despite Ellen’s comment about his being a nice length, he
still hadn’t struck home yet. He’d gone partway in on the first stroke, and
went further on the second, but it took a bit of wiggling and a third stroke
before he managed to immerse himself fully, and Ellen moaned with appreciation
when he’d achieved that small goal. David, showing great restraint, kept the
pace slow and easy. Ellen appreciated it, but she’d have appreciated it more
after they’d been going together longer. Right now she was primed for hot and
heavy ‘I’m alive because of you’ raw survivor’s sex. Instead she ground her
pelvis against his and growled at him.
David responded by pulling back and pausing, looking at her
with a ‘What’d I do?’ expression that was only partially spoiled by his grin.
Ellen playfully punched him in the chest and he responded by pounding her right
back in the cunt along with a pretend cough, to which she responded with a
laugh. That got them both going. The utter absurdity of the situation hit them
both. A solitary divorced man and a lonely woman meeting on the highway in the
middle of a metorite storm. A long denied man withholding aggressive sex from an
anxious willing woman. A man and a woman in love, slapping each other during sex,
only to respond with a weak cough and a clutching vagina. Somehow, as odd as it
all seemed, it had the making of some great comedy. They both began giggling as
David picked up his pace.
“Somehow I don’t think anything you do is ordinary,” Ellen
told him.
“Stick around, maybe you’ll find out.”
“Give me a chance, maybe I will,” she responded.
“You know,” he replied, giving it to her again, “we’re both
dancing around committing, so I’ll go ahead. I really like you, and I’d like to
see a lot more of you. Would you like to stick around for a while, maybe get
some coffee in the morning?”
She laughed again. “I think I’d like that. I hate using the
‘L’ word this early in a relationship, especially when this one started under
such unusual circumstances, but I think I’d like to stick around for a good
long time. But we’ll have to talk about my sticking around. We’ll talk in the
morning when we have more time. Right now I’ve got some more important things
to think about,” she finished with a twisting gyration of her own.
David grunted his fondness of that move, and his lips told
her just what he thought of her. He picked his pace up a bit, which she
responded to, as well as their tongues dueled at a separate pace from their
other organs. David’s hands grasped Ellen’s round breasts, which were currently
jiggling deliciously upon her small frame. Her blonde locks also jostled with
each thrust David gave her, and when they quit kissing she bit her lip in a
wonderful look of mixed innocence and wanton vixen. David just had to kiss her
again. Ellen enjoyed the kiss so much she could almost surrender herself to
them all on their own. She would have, but the cock probing her inner recesses
kept reminding her of something else. What was it? Oh yeah, she was getting a
grand fucking. David was somehow managing to hit all the right spots. He had
her hot enough to do anything he wanted, and all he did was to make slow love
to her. She almost told him she loved him, and he made her laugh. She’d frozen
in fear in her car, and this man grabbed her, threw her over his shoulder and
sauntered out, depositing her beside his daughter. They calmly watched a man
die and a woman wander off to her own death, yet they helped dig people out of
their own home. This was the biggest mix-up of odd juxtapositions she’d ever
encountered, and she expected there to be many more of them yet to come.
David started pumping her a bit more aggressively, and she
responded by biting his tongue. He tried a little swirling grinding motion, and
she rewarded him by scratching his back. He licked her ear, in part to avoid
another bite, and she shouted his name in his ear. She was primed and ready.
Any more ready and she’d explode all over him. He stepped it up a pace again,
grabbed her ass with one hand, twisted her nipple hard with the other and bit
her lip.
That was all it took. She went off like a Roman Candle,
exploding in a million starbursts, shaking like a bowl full of jelly after a
metorite strike. She clutched David to her, both with her hands and internally as
well. David managed to hold on. Knowing she was going to cum big, he pulled
partly out to avoid his own overstimulation. When she locked up on him he was
able to weather it, actually regaining a bit more composure so that when she
finished quivering he was able to resume stroking into her.
She was over the moon at this latest surprise. All her previous
affairs with men had always proceeded the same way, the guy would cum and she’d
be left hanging wherever he’d left her. Now this man, this amazing man, not
only gave her an explosive orgasm, but he kept going like nothing had
even occurred. She felt her excitement rapidly building again. Damn, she was
going to try her hardest to hold on to this one. Just as she was getting into
it again, David stopped. Ellen was going to complain, when he grabbed her and
rolled her over onto her front then lifted her hips. She got the idea right
away, although she wasn’t quite sure what he was planning. But whatever it was
she was ready for it.
David moved up behind her and after some fiddling slid
easily into her. He had to shake and wiggle a bit to get all the way in, but
Ellen loved that as much as anything else he did. He grabbed her hips and
started thrusting into her for several minutes, then he released her pelvis and
reached under her, grabbing her tit in one hand, and located and diddled her
clit with the other. Ellen couldn’t believe it, she went off again, shaking,
thrashing and calling out his name, and he still didn’t come. He
continued plugging away, although it was a bit easier as she calmed down again.
Once she recovered she started getting into it once more, when he pulled out of
her pussy. She moaned loudly this time, but she was ready when his big strong
hands gripped her, moving her as if she was his own possession.
He rolled over onto his back, pulling her onto him. She
kissed him briefly, but she knew where she wanted to be. Abandoning his lips,
she pulled back, scooting backwards and throwing her leg over him she quickly
slotted his dick to her cunt and slid down heavily on him. She was so
intoxicated with adrenaline and excitement, she wasn’t even sure if he was in
all the way this time. All she knew was that she started bouncing up and down
on him, using her hands to push herself up and down on him by shoving against
his nicely muscled chest, her tits bouncing wildly on her chest.
He was kind enough to restrain them for her, although he
kept them busy as well, just so they wouldn’t get lonely. Ellen threw her head
back and cried out, arching her back and pressing her breasts into his hands as
he manhandled them. He pulled her nipples away from her tits, something she’d
never liked before, but this time she found it a wonderful boost to her
excitement level. She immediately started quivering around his invading cock
once again. She could feel her insides clutching at him, but this time he
didn’t passively hold back. This time she actually felt his cock pull back,
swell even further, then shoot inside her. She knew it was impossible to sense
such a thing, but she swore she felt it all, and she felt like she came with
each jet of his sperm inside of her.
She collapsed onto his chest, her own chest huffing as she
tried to regain her breath as her insides continued to quiver around him. He
enfolded her in his arms, a place she felt very comfortable in at the moment,
and he gently stroked her back and sides, effectively calming her down. Finally
he grasped her head and held it steady.
“That was wonderful, but please, don’t hold me to that
standard, OK? Linda and I were together for a long time, and I don’t think we
ever had sex as explosive as that was. I’m only human, all right?”
She leaned down and hugged him tightly to herself as she
kissed him. “You’re not going to be able to convince me of that, David. To me,
you’re a divine angel come down from heaven to sweep me off my feet. Well,
you’ve done it. I’m now officially yours,” she replied, before getting a
crooked quirky smile on her lips, “at least until my brain returns to normal
and I regain my senses.”
Luckily David took that statement the way it was intended
and quietly laughed along with her.
Ellen was feeling like she had hit the jackpot here. Forget
saving her life. Forget his being a wonderful father and a caring husband even
after being abandoned by his wife. Ignore the fact he was independently
wealthy, well, partially so at least, and a hard worker. He was also a
wonderful lover, a caring individual, they shared the same sense of humor, and
he was more than willing to cuddle afterwards without falling asleep. She had
no idea why Linda ever let this treasure of a man get away, but she wasn’t
going to waste a lot of time worrying about it.
They lay there quietly basking in their afterglow,
occasionally kissing and playing with each other until David turned serious. He
pulled back and looked her in her eyes.
“Ellen, I think we’re going to have to talk about what we’re
experiencing here.”
She groaned. She’d been expecting this. The ‘talk’. She was
pretty sure it wasn’t a ‘let her down easily’ kind of talk, but still, she
hated these talks. They were never good. She simply wanted to bask in the magic
of the moment and dream of what they could share together. There was enough
time for serious talk in the morning. But she pulled back and put on her most
serious expression, waiting for him to continue.
“As great as that was, you realize we’re both just
responding to the danger we experienced today. We were faced with death, and
the natural human response to that is to grab onto life with both hands and
ride it till we’re exhausted.”
Ellen nodded that she understood. She knew the concept, and
had tried to warn herself as she felt herself falling into that familiar
pattern. But it had proved to be irresistible. Still, she wanted to see where
he was going with this.
“If you are serious about wanting to spend time with me,
we’re going to have to try to get this wild rollercoaster back on an even keel
so we can see if this ride is going to last. I don’t want this to be a fast
ride to nowhere. I like you, a lot, and I’d feel crushed if this sputtered out
in a couple of week’s time.”
Ellen could hear the vulnerability in his voice and could
see the tenderness in his eyes. She reached up and caressed the side of his
face with her hand, trying to warm his frightened little soul. They’d been
speaking in whispers, quite a contrast from the excited coupling they’d been
engaged in only a little while ago.
“David, I think—” she began before she was interrupted by a
quiet knocking at the door. They both turned to stare at the door.
“Are you guys done yet?” came a timid little voice from out
of the darkness behind the closed door.
“Alice? What’s wrong, are you OK?” David asked, concerned
that something terrible had happened to his daughter.
“Not really, can I come in?” she asked.
Ellen quickly rolled off of David and searched for her clothing,
but it was nowhere to be seen, so instead she yanked the covers up and over
her, trying to cover herself. David reacted a bit less drastically, being a
little more used to having a daughter around and knowing their own unwritten
code of conduct around the house. He pulled the cover up over himself until he
was covered, then glanced at Ellen to see what shape she was in.
She looked a mess. A beautiful mess, but it was clear what
she’d been doing. Her hair was a mess, wild and frizzy, with stands stuck to
her face with her own sweat. She was still huffing a bit, and although she
tried, she couldn’t quite cover her chest all the way up. David could see
through the sheet she was trying to cover herself with that her nipples were
still hard. David couldn’t help himself, he started to quietly laugh.
Ellen looked at him in disbelief before the absurdity of the
situation struck her as well. Then she started giggling as well.
“Does that mean you’re decent yet?” Alice asked in her
little girl voice, which alerted David that she wasn’t feeling as confident as
she normally was. She usually liked to act like a grown up, trying to impress
her father and everyone around her with how mature she was.
“Well, we’re not quite decent, but we’re as close as we’re
likely to get,” David warned her. The door silently and slowly swung open until
a small hesitant face peered at them out of the darkness. Ellen slid down under
the few sheets she had available, blushing as she did, but the expression on
Alice’s face melted her heart and made her forget her nakedness.
“Come on in, what’s the problem?” David asked.
“I was feeling all alone, and I started thinking about
everything that happened today, and I wanted to come in and sleep with you guys
for a little bit.”
“Have you been… waiting out there for long?” David asked
with a bit of trepidation.
“I tried to wait,” Alice replied in a small voice. “I tried
to tell myself a big independent mountain girl doesn’t go running to her daddy
just because she’s scared. I also wanted to give you your own time together.
But I still wanted my daddy to hug me. So I came out and waited outside
your door, hoping you’d finish quickly.”
“Just how long were you waiting?” Ellen asked, not overly
embarrassed this time, simply more curious.
Alice was silent for a moment. “A while,” she responded.
David took a breath, steeling himself. “What did you hear?”
he asked.
“Well, I heard your name a lot, and there was a lot of
noise. I think you need to move your bed to the middle of the room. You’d
scream, then you’d talk, then you’d make noise, then Ellen would start
moaning.”
“OK, I think that’s enough. We get the idea,” David said,
opening his arms to his frightened daughter, which only caused the sheet
covering both him and Ellen to fall to his waist. Alice ran to him and hugged
him, then scrambled over him. Ellen quickly moved over to make room for her,
which may have exposed her breasts, she really wasn’t sure, but Alice paused.
“No, you two need to be together. This was your night. I’ll
sit here beside Dad.”
“Nonsense,” Ellen told her, patting the bed while trying to
keep the single sheet covering her. The blanket seemed to have fallen off of
the bed.
Alice looked at her for a minute, as if gauging her
sincerity, and then she seemed to decide it didn’t really matter, and she
crawled across David, ignoring what she might be accidentally kneeing, and
settled in between the two.
Ellen turned and examined the girl she’d spent so much time
with today. She was in that tender cusp, midway between childhood and
adulthood. She had reddish brown hair that although being clasped behind her in
a ponytail, still managed to hang in front of her face, highlighting her many
freckles. The red of her hair and the freckles highlighted her dark blue eyes.
But it was her expression which captured Ellen’s heart. She looked like she
needed comforting. She was biting her lip. Nibbling at it, actually, and she
looked nervously between her father and Ellen.
Without thinking about it, Ellen threw her arm over her
shoulder and pulled her to herself, even as David did the same. The smile that
instantly split her face made them both feel wonderful, like maybe they weren’t
terrible for having engaged in sex in front of a young girl. Well, not directly
in front of, but close enough.
“Don’t feel bad for being scared,” David told his daughter.
“What we went through today was hard to face, and it affects everyone. The
reason we were getting so carried away was a reaction to the same fear,” he
explained. “Most soldiers come back from the war disturbed for life because
they saw things like what we saw today. Now is not the time to be brave. Being
brave involves holding things inside, and holding things inside is part of what
makes it hard to recover from this. What we need to do is discuss it so it
doesn’t fester inside us.”
Alice simply looked at David’s face, as if evaluating what
he was saying. Then she leaned back, opening her palms in her lap, leaning
against both Ellen and her father.
“It was terrible,” she said. “The sky was boiling, fire was
falling down on us, and it felt like God was pissed at us for something we’d
done. You saved us,” she said, glancing meaningfully at her father, echoing the
sentiments of Ellen as well. She continued pouring her heart out, recounting
everything she’d observed. “Then we saw that couple. They were in the same
situation that we were, except they didn’t have anyone to save them like we had
you. The guy was killed right in front of us. He was hit a couple of times and
neither of them knew what to do. They didn’t know enough to get away from the
road and the car and all those metal and plastic pieces from the cars.
“After he died, just falling over, his head jerking back
like something smacked him in the head, we saw the woman with him crying. I
felt for her. She lost someone close to her, and I imagined what it would be
like if I lost you. That almost made me fall apart then, but I wanted to be
brave for you and Ellen. I didn’t want Ellen to see what a little girl I was.”
“There, there,” Ellen said, pulling Alice against her,
cuddling her as Alice broke out crying, tears running down her freckled cheeks.
“You didn’t need to be brave for us. What we saw was terrible, and anyone would
have cried. In fact, the only reason I didn’t is that I was so thankful to be
alive. Your father saved me, and I was so thankful I wasn’t in the same
situation that woman was, all I could do was to hold onto each of you.”
“There’s nothing wrong with letting your emotions out,”
David tried to explain. “And I hope you don’t expect your future boyfriends to
always hide their emotions. Men may not show their emotions as much as women
do, but it’s necessary to let it out occasionally. Unfortunately men aren’t
allowed to do it very often, and a lot of men suffer for years as a result.”
“You always know what to say, Daddy. I’m so glad you
were there today. If I was home with Mom she’d be a mess, I’d have had to take
care of her.”
“Your mom falls apart on occasion, but she pulls it together
when she needs to. She’d have pulled it together for you. Always remember that
she loves you very much, and as much as she keeps making you do all those
things you hate, she’s doing it for you.”
“Keep talking, honey, what else bothered you?” Ellen asked.
“Well, when we saw that first town, the one that was all
messed up and the road was blocked by a burned out truck, I saw a dead body
lying by it, and I knew the man had burned to death when the truck exploded.
But you got us out of there, and I was glad you did, too.
“Then, when we turned off the highway, you turned off at Reggie’s
drug store,” she said, referring to the store by the lead pharmacist/owner’s
name. “There were bad people inside. People who weren’t afraid to break in and
take whatever they wanted, and who wouldn’t think anything about hurting us
either. But instead of turning away, you went after them. You showed me what to
do, and you also gave me something to do it with, but you let me figure out how
to do it on my own. Ellen wanted to go with me, but I told her to watch out for
both of us, so she stayed behind while I punctured their tires so they couldn’t
get away. Then when that was done I came back to the car and locked it like you
said.
“I really wanted to go in after you. I thought it was what
you did, so I should be willing to do it too. But I was also scared, and I
wanted to hide under the seat until the danger went away. But just like that
couple, waiting for danger to go away doesn’t help anything. But I listened to
you and I followed your advice, telling myself I’d only get in your way if I
went inside.
“When you came back out and opened the back of the truck I
almost jumped onto the ceiling. But you were calm and collected, just like you
were when we were in all that danger out in that field.”
“I wasn’t nearly that brave,” David corrected her. “I was
scared to death. I was scared that if I screwed up I could be hurt or killed
and I couldn’t protect either of you. That scared me more than anything
else. Pain or death is temporary. The idea that something might happen to
either of you worried me much more. That’s what kept me going.”
“You were so collected, so calm on the outside. I was ready
to do something if anything happened to you. I didn’t know what I was going to
do. You took that two-by-four with you, and I couldn’t see anything else in the
car. I remembered the car jack, and I thought I could grab that if I needed to,
but I didn’t. I couldn’t get out of the car to grab it. I knew I could if
anything happened to you, but until then I was helpless.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Ellen told her, no longer conscious
of her state of undress, although she continued holding the sheet against her
breast with her arm. “That’s perfectly natural. You were in no position to do
anything.”
“But Dad wasn’t either, and it didn’t stop him. He went in
anyway. He wasn’t trained to do that, he wasn’t armed or equipped, but he
figured out what he could do and he did it.”
“That was a very stupid thing I did,” David admitted. “I did
it mostly because I was so angry at the world, not because it was in any of our
best interests.”
“Still, I want to be more like you. I don’t want to be like
Mom, always dressing up for dates with the latest guy and being seen at the
latest party. I want to accomplish things. And I don’t want to do it because
it’s expected, I want to do it because it needs to be done.”
“Don’t worry, Alice,” David told her. “You’ll have plenty of
time to do a lot of things. You did when we came across those houses that were
damaged on the way back. You helped us lift that beam off of that woman and
man.”
“Yeah, and I was also there were we uncovered that man who
died,” she lamented.
“Still, you can’t always be successful, but that can’t keep
you from trying,” David patiently explained. “It’s those people that try who
succeed. Those who are afraid to try, never accomplish anything. The successful
fail lots of times, but they succeed only because they keep trying.”
“Well, I was impressed that you knew exactly what to do when
you got here,” Ellen told her. “You knew what needed to be done, and the fact
we were doing it in the dead of night, after the day we had and the things we
faced, impressed me no end,” Ellen told her honestly. “You were brave in your
own right, and I can see where you got it from. Like father, like daughter.
You’ve inherited the same spirit that your dad has, and I think you’re just as
brave as he is. Don’t confuse lack of opportunity with cowardice.”
Alice remained silent as she considered all that her father
and Ellen had told her, making David reflect on how she’d reacted to the other
events of the night.
“Tell me which you thought was worse,” he proposed, “the
other thing that happened at the drug store, or listening to your dad fool
around from the hallway?”
“Actually, we couldn’t see what happened,” Alice told him.
“We heard the guy scream, and we both looked, but we couldn’t see anything,”
she explained. David cast a quick look at Ellen and she shook her head, letting
him know she was well aware of what had happened, but had managed to hide it
from Alice. “By the way, what did you do to them?”
“It’s probably better that you don’t know,” David hedged.
“Come on, Dad, you went out of your way to get rid of your
nail gun. I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of what happened.”
“I’ll have you know I didn’t kill anyone,” David
assured her emphatically. “I had to hurt them a little, but they should be OK.
Let’s just say that I scared them pretty well.”
Alice seemed to accept that, since she knew her father was
unlikely to talk about it right then. “Actually, I wasn’t upset that you
and Ellen were ‘fooling around’. I mean, I’d rather not have to listen to my
father doing that kind of stuff, but I’m glad you did. You’ve been on your own
for much too long. You needed to finally get involved with someone, and I’m
glad you and Ellen are getting along so well.”
“Well just remember, we’ve only known each other for a day,”
David cautioned his daughter. “We’re still getting to know each other, and
we’ll have to learn each other’s bad habits over time. So don’t be too
disappointed if things don’t work out.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t be upset. I figure it’s enough
just getting you to try. But I’m pretty sure you and Ellen will get along
pretty well. You seem to be pretty close at the moment.”
“Well, it’s been a long day,” David announced, thinking
Alice had said as much about what was bothering her as she was going to at the
moment. “We’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow, as we’re going to have to
survey the damage around the house. So let’s see how much sleep we can get.”
With that David settled down in the bed, cuddling Alice
between him and Ellen. As the others also lay down, Ellen reached across and
held David’s hand as it rested on Alice’s waist.
To Be Continued