A Little Background:

At this time let me take the opportunity to tell you who I am. My name is Allan Russel and I’m a Consulting Engineer. I am a Degreed Engineer with an advanced degree and a Professional Engineering certification that is issued by the state in which I live.

I have worked for several engineering and manufacturing companies where I rose to the level of Director of the Materials Engineering group for the last company with which I was employed.

After many years in the industry and several years as the Director of the Materials Engineering group I finally had my fill of the political shenanigans that seem to take place in most if not all companies from the top to the bottom of each company if not all companies.

Since I had a good professional reputation throughout the industry I decided to take advantage of a company RIF – Reduction In Force. The RIF was accompanied by a very sweet package of incentives which included a generous severance, a small Company pension and a short time health care coverage package along with my 401K package.

Once my separation from the company became official I opened up an LLC Consulting company and the RIF incentives were extremely helpful to me to support myself until I could get my business off the ground and help me establish my company name to prospective clients in the surrounding engineering community.

Returning To The Present

After relaxing for a while and downing the last of my ice tea I got my lazy ass out of my easy chair and I went back to my office and my computer. I had just gotten back to the work of writing the results of my investigation for my client when my desk phone rang. Picking it up and saying hello I found that the call was a good friend of mine Bert Compton.

Bert Compton is a degreed engineer with a Professional Engineer certification who is doing the same thing I’m doing. He took a RIF package from his company and has started his own consulting service. He is a damn good engineer who is in another discipline than me.

We have worked with each other on consulting work where it required both of our background expertise to complete the work. Depending on which one of us originally took on the work he wrote the final report and it bore both of our signatures and responsibility information. That cooperation made money and more work for each one of us.

Bert began, “Allan, this is Bert Compton and I wanted to let you know about a phone conversation I just had with an acquaintance of mine. He called me before lunch and he told me that he has seen a post on social media from a woman by the name of Kay who is looking for information on a person by the name of Allan Russel. He went on to say that he thought I knew you as I had mentioned your name to him in the past.”

“Is that all the information he could give you, Bert?”

“Yeah, that’s it, Allan. He said that this woman was looking for you saying that she was trying to get into contact with her relation that she has not seen or heard from in several years. Do you think that you might know this woman, Allan?”

“Well, I have a Sister with the first name of Kay but, without any other information like her middle name or last name I can’t really know if it is my Sister or not. Do you still have your postal box, Bert?”

“Yeah, I do. What do you have in mind for my postal box?”

“You know I don’t have any presence on any of the social media since I think it’s normally a waste of my time. I have more important things to do with my time. But, ask your friend to contact her and ask her to send a letter to your postal box giving her full name and her relationship to me and her phone number and her EMAIL address as optional. Tell her to send that letter to your postal box addressed to Allan.

He can tell her that he has an acquaintance that he thinks may have a line on me and if I’m interested in talking to her I can call her on the phone. Otherwise, I’m not interested in wasting my time talking to her if I don’t know who she is. When you get her information let me know and if I think that she is my Sister I can call her and see what’s on her mind.”

“Ok, Allan, that’ll work. It protects both of us and her, too, to a large extent. I suspect that it will likely be at least a week before we hear anything back from her. If and when I get a response from her I’ll let you know and we can get together and have a couple of brews and I can give you the letter with what she has to say.”

“That’s a go, Bert. If this does turn out to be from my Sister I’ll probably have to buy you a couple of six packs for your help, Bud.”

About a week and a half later I got another call from Bert and when I answered he said, “Allan, I just checked my postal box and I have that letter from Kay in my hand. Don’t leave your house because I’ll be over there in about thirty minutes with the letter in my hand. You can read the information in the letter for yourself when I get there.”

“Ok, Bert, I’ll be right here since I’m in the middle of writing a report for my client and I’m trying to get as much done as I can before the end of the week.” About twenty minutes later I looked out the window and saw Bert’s car pull up in my driveway. I went to the fridge and got out a couple of beers for us and went to the door to let him in.

Bert stepped up to the front door and I opened it handing him a beer as I let him in. We greeted each other and I told him to come on into my office and we could relax and visit there. He sat on the easy chair I use as a guest chair and he sat his beer on the end table next to his chair as he reached into his pocket and pulled out the envelop to hand to me.

I pulled the letter out of its envelop and read it. The letter was addressed to Allan and it said, “Allan, I sure hope that this letter reached the person I’m looking for by the name of Allan Russel. My name is Kay Owen – maiden name Kay Russel followed by a phone number and an EMAIL address.

We haven’t seen or talked to each other for many years and I think that it is all my fault when I severely chastised and berated you for asking a legitimate question which I handled very poorly.

Unfortunately I lost track of where you were and had no way of contacting you to apologize for my poor conduct. Please give me a call at the phone number shown in this letter and let me ask you to forgive me. Signed, Your Loving Sister, Kay.”

After I finished reading the letter I looked at Bert and he said, “Allan, I read the letter and I don’t know but, it appears to me to be legit but, you know much better than I do whether it is legit or not.”

The letter brought a lump into my throat and I may have even had a tear forming in the inside corners of my eyes. I looked at him and said, “Yeah, Bert, you’re right I think it is legit. I’ll call her later this afternoon or this evening and talk to her and see if this is really legit but, I think on the surface that it is legit. Thanks for all you have done for me to get this far. I’ll let you know how things shake out after I have a chance to call and talk to her.”

Bert and I continued to sit in my office and visit for another hour or so and we each inhaled another beer in the process. He filled me in on the projects that he currently had active and I did the same thing for him as well. Since it was getting near to supper time Bert said that he needed to head on back to his office.

When Bert left I went into my kitchen and fixed my evening meal. As I sat and ate my meal I pondered why Kay all of a sudden would want to find and talk to me about something that she did many years ago.

Kay and I had never been particularly close all of the time we were living at home with our parents. I knew that was probably a result of the difference in our ages. I am several years older than she is and we really didn’t have that much in common with each other before I left home.

She was a very pretty and very shapely teenage girl and the boys followed her around like wolves after their wounded prey. She may have regarded me as one of the wolves at that time and that may have been her state of mind when she read me out so forcefully. I quit speculating, finished my meal and went into the living room to relax for a while before I called her.

Another hour had elapsed and I got up, trudged my way into my office and called Kay’s phone number. The phone rang three or four times and when it was finally answered a tiny little voice said, “Hellwo.”

I responded to the voice saying, “Can I talk to your Mommy, please?”

She immediately yelled out, “Mommy it’s for you.”

I could hear a female voice in the background say, “Ok, Honey, tell them I’ll be right there but, please don’t hang up the phone, Baby.”

A couple of moments later I could hear the sounds of the phone being transferred between hands and a mature female voice came on the line and said, “Hello, can I help you?”

I responded saying, “Kay, this is Allan. I think that you wanted to contact me and talk to me.”

“Oh yeah, Allan, I have been desperately trying to find you.”

“Well alright, Kay but, let’s make sure that I’m talking to the person I think that you are. What is your last name and your maiden name?”

“My full name is Kay Owen and my maiden name is Russel and if your last name is Russel you are my older brother.”

“Yes, this is Allan Russel, Kay. I got word that a woman on social media was trying to find me through a good friend of mine and his acquaintance. I asked him to have his acquaintance contact you on social media since I have no presence there and asked them to tell you to send me a letter with your name and contact information. I received your letter from my friend Bert just this afternoon. So, I thought I’d give you a call and talk with you. What is it that you want to talk about, Kay?”

“Oh, Allan, this has been such a long search trying to find you and now that I have contacted you I want to know where you live and I want to come and see you. There is so much that we need to talk about and trying to talk about it on the phone is just not what either one of us want to do. Will you let me come visit you so we can talk and bring each of us up to date on what has happened in all the time we haven’t seen each other?”

“Sure, Kay, you can come and see me if you want to. Are you still living in the far west suburbs of Chicago where Mom and Dad lived when we were growing up?”

“No, I’m now living in Wisconsin just north of the Illinois state line. And where are you living? Are you still living in Illinois somewhere?”

“No, Kay, I’m living in Texas just north of Houston. I’m living in the city of The Woodlands, TX. If you are going to come and visit me you would be best off to get on a plane and fly to the Houston airport and I can pick you up there at Intercontinental airport. Once you get here you can stay as long as you want to.”

“Well, I plan to drive down there it’s just going to take me a lot longer to drive down there than if you were still living in Illinois.”

“Yeah, it’s going to be actually more than two days, like three days to drive down here from where you are presently living. When do you want to come down here?”

“I need one day to get ready and then I can start out the day after that. Since today is Wednesday I can leave on Thursday early and then with three days of driving I can be there on Saturday afternoon. Is that acceptable for you?”

“Yes it is, Sis. That will give me time to work on my report before you get here. I need to get most of it done before this coming weekend and that will work out well. If I can get most of it done before this weekend I’ll only have just a little left to finish next week when my client is expecting me to submit it to them.”

Before ending our phone call I cautioned her, “Honey, whether it takes you three days or more to get here, I want you to be very careful. I want you to drive safely because I want to have you here with me for however long you want to stay with me. I want us to catch up on our lives since we last saw each other.”

Then I gave her some information on the best and most direct route I thought she should take to get here with the least problems for herself and her driving. Then I told her that I loved her and I was eagerly waiting for her to arrive here at my home.

“I’m really looking forward to getting there and being able to visit with you, Allan. There is so much I want to talk to you about and there is so much news that I need to tell you and you really need to know about.”

“Well, I just want you to drive carefully and get here safely. I also want you to call me before you leave on your trip. That way, I’ll have a better idea of when to expect you. If you want to you can call me at the end of each day’s drive and let me know how your trip is going, also.”

By the time we finished our phone conversation it was rather late in the evening and I was pretty tired. I really didn’t have the drive to continue any further work on my report. I had saved my work on the report and I made a back-up of the file and shut my computer down. After shutting my computer down I went into the kitchen and poured myself two fingers of Jack and sat down in front of the TV to relax before finally going to bed.

The next two mornings I got up early and continued work on my report. I worked diligently to get as much work done in those two days as I could. I only took breaks for meals and trips to the bathroom and I got the report nearly finished in those two days. I knew that I could finish it up in a couple of hours or less on Monday.

On Saturday morning which I have always set aside for doing my weekend Suzi Homemaker work of doing my laundry, cleaning the house, making sure the beds were made with clean sheets and paying my bills. I also made sure that there was a working night light in each of the bedrooms, in the hall and in the bathrooms.

I finished up my home maker work by noon and was just about to go into the kitchen to make myself some lunch as I heard a car pull up into my driveway. I looked out the window and saw that the car was in my driveway with a woman at the wheel. When I stepped outside, the woman had gotten out of the car and walked around to the passenger door where she was about to lift a small sleeping child out of a child’s car seat.

I softly said, “Here, Kay, let me take her and you can get your purse and whatever else you want to bring into the house for right now.”