Chapter 1

The last turn at the end of a long drive. Two nights away from home, a day’s work on the site fixing a couple of issues that the site’s technician just couldn’t get a handle on. Experience counts for something. Intelligence counts, too. The problem he’d been fighting for three days took me about an hour’s worth of checking and probing. The rest of the day was spent taking care of a few administrative and training functions. I spent a second night in a hotel room, got up the next morning, attended the station’s safety meeting, always a good ‘image’ move, and drove home.

Wasn’t in a big hurry to get home other than the fact that it was MY space.

My space alone. A five-year marriage collapsed in an official manner a couple of months ago, dissolved when the ex signed the papers. Apparently admitting to adultery will get you the fast track to divorce and these days the term ‘adultery’ is so archaic as to be almost meaningless.

She got what she wanted – half of five years of savings, half the equity of five years of the house I owned when she married me. For most of the five years we were married she’d wanted to sell that house. It was a source of friction – too far out in the country – and not just the WRONG neighborhood, but not in a neighborhood at all, a little country house in a little yard surrounded by a few acres of land I leased out to an old family friend who ran a few cattle.

There’s a car in the driveway. That would be Remy, daughter of a woman who was at first a friend of the ex. The ex might’ve gone to greener pastures and Remy’s mom laughed it off as just a normal event of today’s society. Remy was the result of one of Mara’s poor choices.

Oddly, when my marriage broke up, I didn’t lose contact with Mara and Remy. After all, I’d helped Remy graduate from high school.

It wasn’t that Remy was slow, it was just that she had some strange problem getting steps in order to solve problems, or to absorb the lessons presented by her teachers in class. I don’t know how I got tagged, but for the last two years of her high school I was Remy’s tutor.

Remy? Very non-descript young lady – well, eighteen now. Thin. Mousy hair, kind of almost blonde, natural curl. She kept it cut short, kind of pixy-ish, uncolored, unpermed, and when brushed out, it formed a wreath of soft curls framing a face with a sharp nose just a little too big, thin lips, brown eyes. She had neither ass nor tits that drew attention.

The relationship that developed between Remy and me was friendly. Sometimes she had a bit of a speech issue, not exactly stuttering, but more stumbling, as she tried to line up words for her thoughts. Ignoring those, she was pleasant and fun to talk with. Friendly. Nothing more, at least from my vantage. I was ten years older than her. I thought that was an insurmountable obstacle, and I’m not a horndog anyway, so ‘friends’ was fine.

During the course of time, it wasn’t unusual for me and Remy to be left alone at the house while I worked with her on schoolwork while her mom and my wife went shopping or to dinner or whatever. Nothing ever happened. Two friends, okay. Looking back, she was looking at me with some detectable amount of fondness, but it was Remy and Remy just didn’t fit the normal patterns.

Three things happened at once in our lives: my divorce. Remy’s high school graduation. Mara’s acquisition of a new boyfriend who might be ‘the one’.

The effect of the first is that when Lana left me, she took what she determined were HER belongings, and she left the house a mess. I was working on straightening things up when I talked with Mara. No, me and Mara? Nothing. She’s almost ten years older than me, has that kind of ‘rode hard, put up wet’ look to her. Underneath that exterior, she’s mostly a nice person, working hard to provide for herself and her daughter.

Anyway, Mara called. We had a conversation about Lana’s departure – this was before the divorce was finalized. I mentioned the condition of the house.

“Why don’t you use Remy? She can certainly straighten things up. And if you pay ‘er, well, she can use the money. I mean, she’ll already be over there a lot to get you to tutor her.”

After school wasn’t a problem. A school bus dropped Remy off at the driveway to my house. She knew where I hid the key. Prior to Lana leaving, it wasn’t unusual to find her and Lana in the house together. Now?

“You think she won’t worry about being alone in the house with me?”

Mara laughed huskily. “Yeah, sure! You two have studied together alone before.”

“Yeah, but you and Lana were always right over the horizon.”

“Remy trusts you. That’s more than I can say about some of the other men she’s been around. She costed me a couple of boyfriends, you know ... They thought maybe me and my daughter were a ‘buy one, get one free’ deal or something.”

“Well, I don’t want to put her in a situation she doesn’t like.”

By the time summer arrived, Lana was gone, Remy had the house back to normal, and because, one, she put a lot of effort forth, and two, the guy had it for woefully cheap, I bought an old Japanese sub-compact, saving her mom and me the effort of providing transportation.

“Title’s in my name. It’s on my insurance. It’s yours to drive.”

“Are you gonna give me a speech about using it responsibly?”

“Do I need to?”

“No.”

I thought that having her own wheels would signal the arrival of the more social variety of Remy, the one who’d be running to meet friends, maybe dating, whatever.

I would be wrong.

“I’m not the one guys wanna date,” she told me when I gently questioned her. “I tried it. Wasn’t ever good. One time it was really bad.” She sighed, looked hard into my face. “I got ... did something I shouldn’t have done. It hurt. And now it’s gone.”

“What’s gone?”

“Something I was supposed to save for marriage, at least that’s how I think about it.”

“Oh.”

“I really don’t wanna talk about it. Shouldn’t’ve said nothing.”

“It’s okay. Friends talk.”

“You’ll think I’m trash.”

“I will never think you’re trash.”

She looked at me sideways. “I didn’t WANT to do it. He kinda...”

“Raped you?”

“Not exactly. I thought I could stop ‘im, you know, kissing and hugging, but he...”

“Did you say ‘no’?”

“Yeah.”

“Rape.”

She shook her head. “It’s over. History.”

“Okay, Remy.”

So Remy’s car – In MY name, it was on MY insurance. Kinda risky, but I accepted that. The money I paid for her housework bought her gas. In return, she did the shopping for me, ran errands.

That brings us to today. I parked a distance behind my personal car, leaving room so either I or Remy could get out past the company vehicle. Passing hers, I absently touched the hood. It was cold.

I walked in the front door.

“Remy, I’m home.”

“I’m in the bedroom folding clothes.”

I walked in. The laundry was piled on the bed, several stacks of folded towels and such on one side of her, the unfolded pile on the other.

“I told you I don’t have a problem doing my own laundry, baby.”

So that brings us to the third of the three events that stirred up my little world – Mara’s new guy. This one not only HAD a job, but he’d had the SAME job for twenty years. A good one, finally. I’d watched Mara’s search for a few years. Hell, I liked this one. They were talking about next steps – he owned a house, she was talking about moving in, actually marrying the guy, which left Remy on shaky ground.

“Mom said when she graduated high school she moved into an apartment with two of her friends.”

“I’ve heard of that situation,” I said.

Remy’s face was sad. “I don’t have friends like that.” She took a deep breath like she was getting ready to make a big leap. “I fixed up your guest room...”

I guess she thought I’d get upset or protest or something. Instead, I said, “You sure that’s what you want to do? I mean, what’s it look like? What’ll your mom say?”

“Mom said I oughta ask you, so I think she’s good with it.”

“Heaven help me if Lana ever found out.”

Remy’s face turned stern. “Mizz Lana gave up her claim on you a long time ago.”

“Yeah...” I said, not thinking about anything in general. There were some good things, good times, in my marriage. For a few years, the sex was great, she was smart, funny, bright ... but she wanted things I couldn’t compromise on, as did I. Since then I really haven’t noticed that I had no special person in my life, and sex for me was an occasional bout of pudd-pulling lest things build up too much and I start having wet dreams.

Remy caught the tone, the faraway look, answered, “Yeah, you’ll probably find somebody one of these days.”

“You never know,” I said.

“By the way, I moved some of my clothes into the guest room.” That wry, slightly twisted smile.

“You knew I’d say yes, didn’t you?”

“Why wouldn’t you? Because sometimes you worry too much about things, like what my mom would think. That’s why not.”

“You’re her daughter, I mean, parental...”

“Mom knows all about me. She says you’re somebody she trusts and that I already have a place here from studying and housekeeping and all that.”

“All that” was an increasingly frequent evening event, eating popcorn and watching movies, my one luxury being that I subscribed to every streaming service imaginable. I’d lounge in my recliner, usually, with Remy nearby, stretched out on the sofa. We watched vintage Tarzan and cheesy B-movie sci-fi and anything else that came to mind.