My wife:

I first met Janet five years ago. She had a seven year old daughter from a previous marriage named Amber. From the first time I met her Amber always called me daddy. Janet and I dated for two years before we got married.

Janet and I tried for two years to have another child. We both felt that Amber needed a little brother or sister to grow up with. Then we got the terrible news. She had cancer and it was inoperable. All we could do was make her remaining time as comfortable as possible.

Janet and I made a decision, we would not hide anything from Amber. We would not hide the fact that her mom was not going to live through this illness. In addition we decided to make the most of the time remaining to us. We rarely wore clothes around the house and would make love whenever the mood struck us, no matter what room we happened to be in at the time. (I was independently wealthy and didn’t have to work, which meant I was always home with Janet.) Amber often walked in on us and knew what was going on. In fact she often went naked as well, though she never joined in when Janet and I had sex because she was too young.

The saddest time of my life:

Amber was twelve and a half years old when Janet died. We were both heartbroken at Janet’s loss. The week of the funeral we were rarely seen when one or the other, if not both of us, were crying. We continued to ware mourning clothes for nearly a month after the funeral. Had you come by the house during that time you would never have seen either of us naked.

I remained in mourning for a long time, though I did wear more cheerful clothes. Amber’s mood seemed to change after only a few months. Maybe part of my longer time in mourning was due to many of the legal things I was forced to do. For one thing, Amber’s birth father had been killed in a car wreck when she was two and had no siblings. His parents had died a couple of years later that, Janet’s own parents had died just before we found out that she had cancer.

The second problem was that Janet had no will. We had always assumed that I would simply take over raising Amber and that no will was necessary. I soon found out differently. The state tried to take Amber away from me on the grounds that I wasn’t her true father. I had to file an injunction to prevent them from removing her from my custody.

It took several months and more than one court appearance, along with all the legal costs involved with that, to get Amber permanently under my care. During that time neither of us resumed nakedness around the house and Amber frequently gave me hugs and kisses to reassure me that everything would work out. Finally it did, though it took more than a year to do so. But finally a month before her fourteenth birthday Amber was legally my daughter.

Amber after her mother’s death:

Amber of course mourned her mother’s passing. Some days she’d be on the verge of ending it all and joining her mother in death and others she’d be on top of the world. She did notice however however, no matter which state she was in, that Bill, her father was taking it hard. She was determined to hang on for his sake. This was probably why she didn’t act on her thoughts of ending her life when she was at her low points.

There were a couple of times that she noticed someone approaching the house. Whenever she saw this she always went straight to him and told him about it. Each time he’d talk to them and they would eventually leave.

One time a couple of people actually came to her school. The principal called her to the office on one of those occasions and despite her trepidation she sat down and talked to them. She didn’t allow the principal to Leave the room when they asked him to, she wanted a witness in the room with her if they tried to make her leave with them.

They kept trying to get her to say that he was abusing her in some way or another, but she steadfastly refused saying, “He has been my daddy since I was seven. I know and trust him. I don’t know or trust you.” With that they tried to forcefully take her with them and remove her from his custody. The principal, knowing that he could possibly lose his job or worse, backed her and refused to allow them to take her. He had noticed how despite their provocation she had remained calm and answered their questions, which impressed him greatly. He escorted the two of them out of his school, having Amber wait in his office.

When he returned he did two things. First, he called Mr. James into his office. Mr. James was the head football coach for the junior high. He told the coach about the situation and told him to let his assistant take his classes for the rest of the day and asked him to accompany Amber for the rest of the day. (By the way they had acted he was afraid they would come back and try again, which they did.) The second thing he did was to call Bill.

Bill arrived just before lunchtime and went straight to the principal’s office. He handed him a copy of the injunction. While he read the copy, the two of them heard a commotion out in the hall. They both rushed out to see what was going on.

What they found was the two people accompanied by a couple of police officers dragging Amber by her arms towards the front doors. Bill immediately stepped in front of the doors to block them. One of the officers said, “You can’t do that sir, we are enforcing the document they have to remove this girl from her home.” “Yeah,” Bill said, “I have a similar document preventing her removal from my custody until the court orders otherwise.” The cop looked at him blankly for a moment, then said, “Let me see it.” The principal showed him the copy that was still in his hands. The cop replied, “This looks in order, sorry to bother you.” He looked at his partner and said, “Let’s go.”