(started 4/12/21)

Julia and I had been married for just over two years when she called me at work and said she’d just gotten a call from my mom. She said my dad was doing some yard work when he collapsed and that one of the neighbors saw him go down and had called 911. Mom said the police, fire, and emergency rescue people got there in surprisingly short order. She was with Dad and heard them say that he’d had a heart attack and watched them apply cardio defibrillation before loading him into the ambulance and taking off for General Hospital.

I filled my boss in on what was happening and left for our apartment while Julia packed what we’d need and enough clothes to last for a few days. When I got there, Julia was ready. She’d called her office and told them what was happening and that she’d call and let them know approximately how long she’d be gone. They told her they’d give her a week. She gave their job back to them and told them to mail her last pay to our apartment address. The bitch she worked for backed off and told her not to be hasty, that they could work out something. Julia told her to work it out in the bathroom and be sure to wipe herself when she was finished, before hanging up on her.

Julia’s highly intelligent and a really good woman. Our only problem has been and is that she has a low sex drive. She wouldn’t let me take a test drive before we got married, so I’m stuck with a highly intelligent, good-looking, tight-pussied woman who just passively lies there until I’ve finished fucking her. Needless to say, that’s far from being emotionally satisfying.

When I got to our apartment, Julia had everything packed and waiting by the door. She loaded it into the car while I took a quick shower and changed out of my work clothes for the five-hour drive.

We were taking my black 2020 Dodge Charger. It’s nondescript ... looks like a State Police cruiser without the spotlights and lightbar. What they don’t have that I do is Dodge’s 6.4-liter HEMI 475 hp V8 engine ... with a top speed that’s 48 mph higher than theirs is so they’ll never get close enough to read my license plate number. I plan to make tracks. For early warning, I have a Cobra DualPro 360° Radar Detector that attaches under my rear view mirror.

After I got the car, I took it to my friend’s speed shop to rework the suspension and handling package and install Brembo’s heavy-duty racing brake package. The handling’s so good that I can set the car and power through a 90-degree turn @ 70 mph as if it was tied to an anchor point with a heavy cable. The G force is wicked but what a rush!! I can’t imagine what those NASCAR drivers must feel ... and they’re feeling it lap after lap, at much higher speeds, while trying to avoid making contact with other vehicles, twenty to thirty inches away, as they each battle for position!!!

[Sorry ... I love my car and I get nuts when I start talking about it.]

Julia had our cell phone chargers in her hand when I came out of the bedroom. She said, “I watered the plants and asked the superintendent to come in and water them again, every five days until we get back. He said he would and was marking it on his calendar. Everything’s locked up and I’ve already put all our stuff in the car. I preheated two thermoses with boiling water before filling them with hot coffee and the plug-in cooler has three jugs of your Ocean Spray Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice and two gallons of Mango Nectar in it. I made egg and olive and ham salad sandwiches so the only thing we need to stop for is to use a bathroom and fuel. On the way to the car, I told her that I’d just stopped at the Kwik-Fil and topped off the tank so we were ready to sail.

I’m Ernie Webb, Jr. Adopted when I was 3 by my dad when he married my 16-year-old mom. She’d been gang-raped by three 13-year-old neighbor boys when she was 11 and was afraid to tell anyone about it. Since she hadn’t told on them, they made her suck them off and let them fuck her for more than a year until one of the three finally got her pregnant. When questioned, they said they couldn’t remember how many times they’d had sex with her, which made it look like she was a whore and what happened was her fault.

My dad is a semi-retired businessman who, over the years, established a string of laundromats, car washes, and dry-cleaning locations. He hired, worked with, and trained people to manage his operation before he slowly backed away and watched to make sure that they could handle it. According to him, they were honest people and were doing a very good job. I know how to do a lot of what they do, but I’m a mechanical engineer, so my skills don’t really mesh with my dad’s operation ... and he’d never pay me what Mechanical Engineering International pays me.

Even with two stops for fuel, we made the six-and-a-half-hour run in five hours and four minutes without hearing a peep from my Cobra. As soon as we were parked in the hospital’s emergency department parking lot, we headed inside to the desk and, after I identified myself, the nurse let us go in to be with Mom. I wasn’t surprised to see that she was scared. Dad was in surgery having open-heart surgery to replace two valves and a blocked artery to his brain while she’d been sitting here alone and crying. Dad is sixteen years older than Mom is and the only man she’s ever loved. He’d listened to the background of her story and had taken her side when all her friends had deserted her and her own family was treating her like shit. He was established, so when he asked her to marry him, she accepted. He always treated the two of us like we were golden. Little wonder that Mom is so dedicated to him.

Julia had called her when we were pulling into the parking lot to tell her that we had arrived, so when she saw us, she was calm enough to tell us that the Dr.’s had told her that Dad had suffered a serious heart attack and that they’d needed to perform surgery on him immediately. Mom said they’d given her some medication to settle her nerves, right after they took Dad up for surgery. She said they’d taken him up about four and a half hours ago and she hadn’t heard anything since. I didn’t say anything, but it didn’t sound good.

That thought no more than crossed my mind when the door to the small room we were in opened and a white coated Dr. in green scrubs stood there, doing his best to look neutral. Just seeing the grim look on his face told me that he was the messenger of Death.

Before he could say “Mrs. Webb?”, I had my arms around Mom because I knew that she was going to go to pieces.

Stepping into the room, he closed the door, and in a quiet voice he told us that he was sorry and then said what I knew he was going to say.

Mom cried out and, in a heartbroken voice told us, “He was already outside, working in the yard, when I got up this morning. I didn’t even get to say anything to him today and now he’s gone.” She just turned into my shoulder, cried out, “Ohhh, Ernie.” ... followed by deep, soul-wracking sobs. Everyone in the room heard and felt the heartbreak in her voice. We all knew she wasn’t talking to me.

There was a lot to do. We discovered that Dad was heavily insured and also that he’d left sole ownership of his incorporated business operation to Mom and me. I was amazed when his attorney showed us that, including each business’s cash balance in its bank account, the combined net worth of Dad’s business empire was well over thirty-six million dollars. I always knew that we were in good financial shape, but I’d had no idea that he’d built it up to that much money. I noticed that nearly a third of the net worth was a result of insured loans being paid off on very valuable equipment.

I smiled to myself. Dad sure believed in insurance. I don’t know what he paid out in premiums, but he’s one client who got his money’s worth.

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Dad’s funeral and burial had been four days earlier, and Mom still looked stunned. When the Executor had finished giving us all that information, she just looked at me and said, “I can’t run all that.”

I knew she couldn’t. I’d have to switch careers.

I called my boss and explained everything, then notified headquarters human resources and personnel of my immediate resignation from the company.

I put Julia and her cousin Karen on a charter flight back home to clear out our apartment and dispose of what we wouldn’t be bringing with us. One of them would drive Julia’s new Toyota Rav 4, and the other would drive the loaded rental truck back.

Four rooms of Mom’s house are dedicated to business office space, so, for now, Ellen and I will live with Mom in her forty-eight-hundred-square-foot McMansion.

A few of Dad’s family members and Mom’s many friends had her surrounded, so I was free to connect with our business location managers and supervisors. They each assured me that they’d work with me to bring me up to speed while continuing to run their operations as efficiently as they always had. I knew that Dad wouldn’t have put them where they were if he didn’t trust them and know that they’d do what he wanted. They know that I’m an engineer with some basic knowledge of their operations, but until I’m up to speed, I’d have to trust them, too. They also know that engineers are notoriously detail-conscious. When it gets down to the nitty-gritty, I really don’t know how much like my dad I am, but if I find out that anyone has taken advantage, I’ll see to it that the least of their concerns will be the loss of their job.