Chapter 4

I flew us to Cancun and found a small resort just north of the strip. Excellence Playa Mujeres, mostly full of Germans, not crowded, and known for their food quality. There was a unique lobster restaurant within walking distance as well.

I was lying on a towel on the beach getting quite a few stares from walkers by, when my wife returned with our drinks. She was eighteen now, and although they never carded anyone here, the bartender took my twenty and said, “Si Senor, she does look to be the twenty-one as you say.” I explained that we were on our honeymoon, she really was married, to me, and eighteen, and therefore legal. He smiled. The blue margaritas flowed after that. All-inclusive stays in Mexico are neat, as long as you don’t drink the water and eat plenty of yogurt.

She finally decided to bring her mother along, arguing with me until I convinced her that it was another week she needed to spend with her, that we wouldn’t get back later. I remember the conversation and the slap on my pec when she said, “Why do you always make so much sense?” I shrugged and kissed her.

Justine stayed out of our way, for the most part, but we spent a lot of time together as well. She thanked me once when Jessie ran off to the little girls’ room.

“Justine, I miss my mother. Every second I spent away from her, I wish I could recover so I could go back and spend it with her. I hope Jessie thanks me someday. Having you here with us is better than ... You needed to be here. Let’s let it go at that.” She nodded reached out and squeezed my arm.

“I know why I’m here, Charlie. Yes, I agree. Let’s let it go at that. I love you both, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for bringing me.”

Jessie came back with two more blue margaritas and a blue drink for her mother. I’m pretty sure it was blue raspberry snow-cone syrup in club soda. Justine had taken a liking to that mixture. Drinks in hand, she took her daughter’s other hand and they walked away up the beach. They woke me when they came back about a half an hour later. Jessie had tears in her eyes, a couple had fallen. Justine’s eyes were wet, too. Jessie leaned over and kissed me, thanking me for her wonderful honeymoon, then Justine did, I hugged her to me, and she went up to our room for a nap.

Jessie laid down next to me and talked about their walking conversation, how her mother was preparing her for the inevitable, and told me we’d probably have to get her mother some help pretty soon so that I wouldn’t have to be faced with providing serious health care to a dying, incontinent, cranky, woman. She told me Justine laughed when she said it. Neither Jessie nor I did.

When school started up, it was college time, and in an effort to stay around her mother as much as possible, Jessie opted for a short schedule. It was the minimum class load to be considered still a full-time student. I convinced her, and she agreed, that it didn’t really matter how many classes she took, as long as she got out of the curriculum what she wanted to get out of it. She lived at home, so housing wasn’t an issue, and she didn’t have to worry about meeting scholarship rules, so that was a non-issue. She had to commute about twenty-five minutes each way, three days a week, but she said she didn’t mind. She wasn’t a slave to the system, but instead, using it for her own gains.

We discussed it at length, and the decision was made, that we’d take a more concerted interest in our holdings when she was a learned individual and we could spend the time, together, to do it. At present I was somewhat involved, but mainly I was receiving reports and being told what was happening. If the men overseeing the operations wanted me involved in a decision, and they often did, they explained the issue, the desired outcomes, and the different paths to get there, and helped me make the right choices. I’m pretty sure my father told them to teach me how to take over for them when they retired. I learned later I was right.

She spent most of her time studying, around Justine, and taking care of her to the extent possible. Just before Halloween, we hired a travelling nurse, full time, to provide hospice care for Justine. Jessie had to attend classes once in a while, and I had a couple of trips I needed to make in the near future.

Wendy Williams was a treat. A young, vibrant, caring, compassionate, humorous, work of healthcare art. She was bouncy, bubbly, and always, always smiling. Justine loved having her around. She probably prolonged her life by couple of months, the patient just wanting to know what the elven creature would come up with next, but the bottom line was she was with us until well after New Year’s. Justine and Wendy meshed so well, that Justine had her will amended to include a large amount for her, just as a reward for her positive attitude and caring. Like her daughter, and her son-in-law, she made Justine happy, too.

After the funeral, Jessie personally delivered the check, handing it to her, hugging her and thanking her for making the last three months of Justine’s life more bearable, for all of us. She also apologized for screwing up the girl’s Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s and told her she’d be welcome to accompany us on our next vacation if she’d let us make it up to her. All she had to do was stay in touch, so we’d know where she was. We’d communicate and work on the details later.

Not a bad gig. Wendy wound up making a hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars on a three-month job she claimed to have enjoyed, and considering the options, the three people she was with damned sure enjoyed it. She was twenty-four at the time, three years out of Registered Nursing school, so yeah, it was a pretty good temporary position.

Valentine’s Day came and went without a mention of the previous year. I bought her some flowers, which were waiting on the kitchen table for her. I wished her happy Valentine’s Day, told her I loved her without limits, and kissed her. She returned the sentiment and hugged me pretty firmly. I felt her shake a bit. A shiver may be more of what it was. That was enough. We were still grieving the death of her mother, and it just kind of slid by.

We had another run in with the Sheriff and his buddy Craig. He was actually in his wheel chair, Craig was, leg stuck out in a brace to keep it still. It was probably to hold it to let a surgery heal. He ran into us, literally, when he saw us at the Dew Come Inn there in town again. That was our one and only real restaurant. Other than a Subway and two convenience stores with pizza and hotdogs in little glass cases, that was all we had within twenty miles.

In any case, he was coming out of the restaurant, pushing along, supposedly getting ready to gently push the door open with his elevated foot, when my wife opened the door and stepped inside. She ran right into his foot. With her knee. Not a single person didn’t look over by the door when the man screamed.

“Oh, Mister Walker, excuse me.” That was all she said. She stepped around him, then walked to the hostess stand and said. “Table for two. Name’s Cantley. Charles Cantley. Mister and Missus Charles Cantley.”

Louise looked at her, looked at me, looked at Craig, writhing in pain and bitching at the guy, whoever it was pushing his wheelchair, grinned, and said, “This way, Jessie. Hi, Charlie. So, Jessie, how’s things? So sorry to hear about your mother. She was a sweet woman. Never a bad word from or about her. I know you miss her, hon. I sure do. I hope you’re proud of at least one of them. Your parents, I mean. Justine sure deserved it.” Before she seated us, she hugged Jessie to her. It was a genuine hug. Louise and Justine were good friends.

“Thanks, Louise. It’s been a few weeks, and it’s not like we weren’t warned. She’s spent the last eight months getting me ready for it. I’m fine. That one,” she pointed at me, “helps me cope. Hard to believe we were only together for just over a year or so when she passed. Shit. Change the subject. I want the buffet. Charlie?” I nodded.

We were served with the court case two weeks later and Jessie was being charged with assault. Sheriff Willie Bonner served the papers himself, smiling as he handed them to Jessie. She was named as the suspect in the assault charges. He read her the Miranda Act, took her downtown, had her fingerprinted and photographed, and then immediately had a man in a four-thousand-dollar suit tell him she was being released under her own recognizance, or the next time his phone rang it would be the governor. I think he might have peed his pants.

The first thing I thought of was how much fun this would be. Just on principle, I didn’t want my insurance premiums going up on account of that jackass, so I called my lawyer and told him come take care of it, making sure to look like my homeowner’s policy was paying for the accidental collision in the doorway of the Dew Come Inn, if anything got paid at all. Getting her out of jail, ROR, was only the first step in his attempt to put this case under.

The requested damages were listed at seven and a half million dollars. If it was anyone else, and my wife was at fault, I would have written a check for five million and asked them to forgive us. Not this one. I hated to do it, but I told the lawyer to hire whoever he needed to prove to a jury that Walker was in the wrong, approaching a door leading with his bad foot without assistance.

Jason found a guy that pored through the papers handed out by the hospital about safety, wheelchairs, minding the wound, and household precautions to prevent re-injuring the leg.

Craig Walker’s signature was just under the paragraph that discussed approaching blind corners or doors that could have traffic on the other side.

His case was dismissed, and it was HIS household insurance that assisted HIS medical insurance to pay for having the knee reopened, reconstructed, and reclosed, as he said needed to be done in his paperwork. It didn’t matter. This incident was over, but it wasn’t the end of Mr. Walker, nor of Sheriff Bonner.

When her Freshman year was over, we took off for meetings with each of our overseers. I introduced her as my wife, Jessica, and the first thing anyone noticed was the hair. It was powder blue.

She sprang it on me at the end of spring break, coming out of the bathroom at the hotel with it. It’s just as gorgeous, or maybe more than the pink, and I loved it. If she was trying to get a rise out of me, she did, but not the kind she expected.

The meetings were interesting, as they always were, all statements and questions directed at me, but when she started asking about manufacturing rates, profit margins, personnel costs, health plan options cost versus benefits, and similar things, my mentors forgot all about the color of her hair.

I now had help. Most rich people do. I was rich, I had help, and I was in love with my helper. That’s all that mattered to me at that point. I felt safer in the business world. Who would have thought, that over a year and a half ago, I fell in lust, then in love, with a cute pink haired cashier in a Podunk grocery store, and now I was looking forward to the two of us running our corporate assets together? Things were looking up.

Her sophomore year was spent with a few more classes, she wanted an MBA. I think I figured out why, but I needed her to tell me. She also wanted to know what made things work, so she pursued a minor in engineering, choosing mechanical for the first two years, and since it would take her six and a half years to get her degree due to the light class load at the first, and going all the way to the Masters, she changed to electronics and communications for the last two years of the engineering courses. She had what could be called an engineering MBA. We didn’t overwork without breaks. I had money, we had time, now and again, and used both to keep her sane.

Sophomore year, just prior to Thanksgiving, thinking about Christmas break and an extended getaway, she surprised me by calling Wendy Williams, asking her for her schedule. My wife was living up to a promise she made to make up for some lost holidays. Wendy had nothing planned and wasn’t working until the first of February when she had to be in Hannibal to assist a family that wanted her there. She’d helped them before, and they knew each other pretty well. They would be starting a relocating process and needed her to be with the husband’s aged mother, then accompany her to California to be with them where they were moving. She was to stay with them, most probably until summer, the later, and longer the better. It was an open ended hospice assignment as well. Her specialty.

“Will you come stay with us? I owe you some holidays, and although I can’t do anything about Halloween, I’d like to help by making the other three at least livable and more probably, enjoyable. We won’t be staying home the whole time, so if you accept, bring some clothing and paraphernalia for warmer weather. Beach stuff, if you get my drift.”

I heard a pause in the conversation, a couple of positive responses, then, “I’ll still be in school, but you can use a car or something. Charlie can help, most probably. It’s up to you, Wendy, but we enjoyed your company, and would like you to join us if you want to.” More silence. “OK. Let me know. Love you, too, hon. Byeee.”

“She said she’d try. She has a boyfriend problem that she’s trying to take care of.”

“Where does she live, anyway. I heard you mention Hannibal.”

“She’s from Mexico, but she works for an agency that covers the whole northeast of the state. She’s all over. Her boyfriend, she thinks, was with one of his old girlfriends, and as soon as she takes care of that, she’ll let me know.”

“I’m sorry for butting in, and honey, you know I don’t like to do that, but call Jason and give him her number.”

“Thank you.”

She did, Jason put a dog on that bone, and had pictures and even a bit of audio that Wendy used to unload a problem. She was in our house, with her two big suitcases and a smile, on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Jessie was out and not going back until the next Monday, then only for three weeks until the winter, spelled C H R I S T M A S, break started. That lasted until the middle of January, then a couple of weeks later, Wendy had to go to work anyway.

Screeches and hugs ruled for five minutes while we got her established in the front guestroom this time, instead of the back one. She got a sad look on her face for a moment, but Jessie talked her out of it. “Wendy, she loved you, and she’s in a better place, with her Mom, and she’s not hurting. Everything is fine. Smile and enjoy.” Jessie showed her the bar and that was the end of the tears for the night. I got a couple drams of good scotch out of the deal not to mention a couple of cuties, talking eight to the bar while fixing dinner. I was called in a couple of times to perform acts of manual labor, then turned loose to appease the cat.

Buster. Yes, Buster. We found out why he became less of a pain in the ass lately. He missed Justine something fierce. While cleaning up, we had missed a pair of pajama pants that had somehow made it to the corner by the dresser and found him lying on them a few times. We didn’t move them until Jessie had a brain storm. She laid them on the foot of the bed in the far corner. Buster slept there every night since then, at least one paw, and usually his whole body stretched out on those flannel pajama pants.