Chapter 2

Beck’s turn:

“Where’s our daughter?” Sim asked. I was in the kitchen trying very hard to replicate Mama’s recipes. I can do ‘edible’, have been there since early in our marriage. I’m up to, lapsing into the vernacular, ‘pretty good.’ Haven’t reached ‘like Momma used to make’, neither mine nor his.

“With our son-in-law, dear,” I said.

“Beck, Beck, Beck,” he sighed. “You know I still have episodes. The fact that we have a son-in-law to our fourteen-year-old daughter, added to the fact that he’s ‘with’ her.”

“We’ve had this talk. If they were eighteen we’d be before the congregation...”

“I know. But I wake up at night in a cold sweat, darling. Are we doing the right thing? Or should we have made Aliyah when we first got started...”

“I know, dear,” I said. “But don’t you think that there would be boys in Israel who’d be happy to lead our daughter astray? Derek says they’re married.”

“They’re fourteen ... I know,” he said. “Let me take a deep breath. They ARE perfect together.”

“They are.”

“Where are they?”

“You can figure it out. We’re having Dana and Ed over for dinner...”

“Ahhh, one of the safe havens...”

“Better than getting found behind the shrubbery by passers-by,” I said.

“That’s why we moved into this community,” he said. “Never thought OUR daughter would...”

“Our daughter ISN’T, Sim. She’s enjoying one aspect of her marriage just as you and I did all those years ago.”

He sighed. “That’s not fair to them...”

“Cindy says ‘Fair is a place where you get funnel cakes.’ We don’t argue with the Cindy.”

“If they weren’t all so GOOD,” he sighed.

“It’s all good people.”

A knock on the door. Sim and I greeted Ed and Dana.

Inevitably the subject of conversation worked around to...

“You visit us, you visit Tara and Aaron, so that...”

“They LOVE each other, Beck,” Ed said.

I would’ve thought that Dana would give voice to that sentiment.

“He’s really open about them,” Ed continued. “So, okay ... it’s not plans about going to college and graduating. She’s graduated. He’ll graduate in the spring, same time as his sister.”

“I know. That’s the incongruity. I – we prayed that our daughter would graduate from college and find a good husband...”

He looked at Dana who’d married Ed here in this community at the age of fifteen. “And then you fell into this wormhole...”

“It’s almost like that,” Sim said. “It’s just...”

“I know...” Dana said. “I had Gramma. She looked at me, looked at Ed, talked with us both, said a lot worse things could happen in the life of a young girl ... Talked with Judge Charlie herself.”

“Sometimes she wonders why I hug her so hard,” Sim said.

I smiled. “Because you love her. She’s an exemplary daughter.”

“She is,” Sim said. “Are they becoming a problem, using your place...”

“No,” Ed laughed. “You folks feed us. Beck’s a better cook than Tara...”

“I won’t tell Tara that,” I said. “She’s learning.”

“She’ll get there,” Dana said.

Sim’s the one who caused me to blink. “I think we need to fix ‘em up a place of their own.”

Ed and Dana were caught by surprise. So was I. “What do you mean?”

“If she’s going to be a proper wife and he’s going to be a proper husband, there’s more to that than frantic coupling...”

“I don’t think it’s that frantic,” I said. “That’s part of what Dana and Ed provide...”

“They’re almost inseparable,” Dana said. “Even in the lab, even though they work on different projects, they gravitate to each other. They know what each other looks like under stress, against a timeline, when a problem doesn’t get solved.”

“I know,” Sim returned. “Even at temple, we have it down to a routine. They sit together, us on one end, Aaron and Tara on the other, them in the middle. Looks like two families. We know it’s three.”

“It is,” I said. “So what’s your plan?”

“I’ll talk with Alan and the bunch, but we’re the end of these townhouses. We have room to add another unit.”

I gazed at my mate. “That’s terribly committal of you, Sim.”

He shrugged. “Everybody but me seems to think it’s a done deal. I’m being practical. They can’t be shuttling between one place or another, turning their relationship into a concentration on where they can be intimate. They also need to grow as a real couple, and that includes having a home together where they can share more than their bodies.”

On the previous evening, we had our unofficial in-laws.

“More to marriage than the engagement of sticky bits,” Aaron said. “Especially at eleven at night when the victim is sleeping on the sofa after doing a good deed for somebody.”

Tara’s a happy wife. She stuck her tongue out at her husband and said, “There you are ... Ship’s already built, sitting on the ways, ready to sail. SOMEBODY needs to go there and knock out that last block to launch it.” She has this confident little grin now, a far cry from the sad, desperate look she showed when we first met her.

Sim continued, “I’ll push Alan. He knows the situation. Nobody has to publish the plans for the new apartment. As far as anybody on the outside is concerned, we’re looking for more room for Beck’s hobbies.”

My hobbies? I’ve got a little table loom. I’m a weaver. My daughter’s business success has presented me with a promise of a full-sized floor loom, but we don’t have room. I’m thinking that if Rachel moves into a new apartment with Derek, I’ll have HER room.

“Plausible,” I said, “but for the fact that we need to have Rachel’s room intact. If somebody chooses to look a bit closely, it looks like she still lives here.”

“And naturally, we keep Derek’s room intact,” Aaron inserted.

“And if we can keep the lid on this mess for another year and a half, they’ll be sixteen and we can make this official...” Sim said. “It’ll provide subject for much discussion at the temple.”

“Don’t I know it,” I said. “We already get a lot of play with them being in college, and there are rumors about Rachel’s trust fund...”

Sim sighed. “Aaron, Tara, I’m going to front construction costs from Rachel’s bank account. If you wish...”

Tara led on that one. “Derek will cover half. We consider the other half as Rachel’s dowry.”

I smirked. “How positively medieval.”

“That’s us,” she snickered. “Sitting here laying out the future of the prince and princess...”

“Let’s just hope it’s a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, not Game of Thrones,” Sim sighed.

We were enjoying an after-dinner glass of sherry when the front door opened and the couple in question walked in.

No surprise. We keep few secrets from our daughter and I doubt we’d be really successful if we tried. Derek still gets that look like he’s mounting the platform to the guillotine at times, like walking into our home with Rachel, seeing both families, and everybody knows...

Rachel, however... “I don’t see a board game or a deck of cards, so let me guess. Us, right?”

If the little beast can snark at us, I can snark right back. “Dear daughter, you will always be the main topic of conversation in my life.”

We gave them a bit of overview of the discussion.

Sim lowered the boom (yet again) on them. “If this is some kind of hormone-driven fling, both of you are going to be out some major bucks. Money for the NEW place is coming out of your funds.”

Charmingly, Derek reached for Rachel’s hand. “Mister Sim. Father-in-law. This is my wife until the end of days, just as it is meant to be. And the apartment sounds like a good idea, for the time being...”

“Time being?” Sim queried.

“Yessir,” Derek said. “I understand the troubles with our minority, but we won’t always be troubled by that. When we are older, just perhaps we might wish a bit of distance...”

“Or not,” Rachel said. “Derek and I talked. Multi-generational households have historical roots in many societies. It becomes a topic for evaluation.”

Aaron was shaking his head. He’s fairly new to these excursions from the mind of a Munchkin. Sim and I have been pretty well scarred to submission.

“You’ve talked about this?” he asked.

“Aaron, you and I have talked,” Derek said. “All about options. I know that on a strictly chronological basis, we’re on shaky ground, but like we said, married college couples are not unusual at all.”

“We know,” Sim said. “I guess we’ll have this same conversation from time to time, if nothing else but to remind you both that you are not going to find acceptance in many circles on many different grounds.”

“We constantly remind ourselves,” Rachel said. “It’s part of our life together. And it IS a life together, right?”

Alan’s turn:

I’ve got Anders down from his mountain aerie for his official CEO duties. End of year. Beck and her bunch have delivered the financials.

“The engineering side of things is doing very well,” Anders said. “Looking over these figures, I do note that we tend to pay out a significantly higher percentage of bonuses. I checked with similar companies,” he said, bridging his fingers. “First thing I noticed is that there ARE no similar companies. You guys have peeled out a niche market and are excelling. Your mix of utility to industrial is unusual but shows flexibility. I can’t complain.”

Ed’s sitting in on the meeting. “Ed, you and 3Sigma Digital Services, that’s a surprise. I certainly never gave thought to the volume of work that banks were holding onto. You and Laci nosed into it, and now, what? A dozen people?”