Chapter 2

We made one stop on the way and it was just after one in the afternoon when we set the plane on the ground near Moline. The kids had flown before, but not in a small jet such as this. The other times had all been in larger commercial craft. Mom was waiting for us. "Betty and Billy, this lady is your grandmother. We will be living with her for awhile. Mom, this is Karen Olson, Neica's sister. She has been caring for Neica's children."

"Welcome Betty and Billy. Karen, you are welcome too. It has been a long time since I watched two small kids, so I'll need help from a nanny."

"Thank you, Mrs. Baker. Being here is a relief. I was in a bind and Aaron came to my rescue as soon as I notified him. I shudder to think what kind of mess I would be in now if he hadn't."

"That's Aaron for you. Let's get along home now. You have missed lunch and I have a snack out. We will have dinner at six. That will give you a chance to freshen up. Tell me how Neica is faring?"

"She is being cared for very well, I think. Her left leg had a hairline fracture above the ankle. The right one has a compound fracture and some severe muscle damage just below the knee. She told me the operation was successful for now, but she may need surgery on the muscles at some later time."

"The poor dear. This is terrible with it being Christmas and all. At least she will be here where we can give support and care for her. I think I will put you and the two children in my wing that is down the hall from me. I want to get to know all of you. When Neica gets here, she will be in Aaron's wing."

My mother was fifty-seven. Dad had died suddenly a year ago. I had no doubt but what mother might marry again. She loved Dad, but she was so alive and I couldn't see her being alone for long. For myself, I was ready to move on to a place of my own anytime, if she found someone. It seemed as if I was just marking time since I had asked Neica to leave five years ago. We might pick up where we left off before I discovered her infidelity.

Mother and I usually dined together, she doing the cooking. I had a home office where I usually retired in the early evening. I worked for my uncle, but I took my work seriously. I did usually go out on Friday night and I often escorted Mom to a play or concert on Sunday.

We were sitting down to dinner when the phone rang. "May I speak to Mr. Aaron Baker, please?"

"Yes, this is he."

"This is Sally, the nurse traveling with Mrs. Baker. We have arrived in Seattle. You may expect our arrival at the Quad City terminal about one a.m. tomorrow morning. We would expect you will have an ambulance at our disposal. Mrs. Baker is holding up very well and if she has a suitable bed to place her in, she will not need hospital care."

"Thank you, Sally. It has been agreed you will be staying on with Mrs. Baker for at least a week. Is that correct?"

"Yes, and with the understanding you are paying my fare back to Alaska?"

"Fine. You will be met at the airport, and thank you." I turned to Billy and Betty saying, "Your Mom will be here when you wake up in the morning. She will be so glad to see you. I hope she will be glad to see me as well."

"She will, Daddy, I just know she will." This was Betty. "Billy and I never had a daddy before. You are the best present from Santa, ever."

The kids went to bed about seven-thirty. Karen and I went down to the room Neica was going to use and rearranged the furniture. I was getting concerned when the hospital bed hadn't arrived by eight-thirty, but it came at ten of nine. I called and verified that the ambulance would be at the airport on time.

By ten o'clock the bed was made up. It would be only three more hours until I would be facing the woman whom I had told to leave my home five years ago. Was I nervous? You bet. Did I have a feeling of love for her? I had to say I didn't, but I was hoping that would change as soon as I saw her.

In the same vein, I wondered if she had any feelings for me. For the past five years, she knew where I was, but I didn't know where she was or what had happened to her. Also she had kept me from knowing I had children by her. I didn't feel that was right at all. I considered us getting back together with a happy life about a fifty-fifty proposition. Time would tell.

"Karen, fill me in on Neica's life of the past five years just a little. From the pictures that were sent to me, I assumed she was on a fast track on a road to hell."

"If she had gone to hell, it would have been entirely your fault."

"You've never seen the photographs that were sent to me, have you?"

"No, but it was just sex. Actually she has never told me anything about what happened. She said you kicked her out and wouldn't listen to her explanation. If you didn't like her entertaining someone else, you still could at least have talked with her about it."

"Karen, your values are much different than mine. At the time we were married we vowed to forsake all others. She didn't hold to that."

"Maybe she had a reason. You could have asked her why."

I was silent for a long minute, before saying, "If it happened today, I would ask her. Don't you think I haven't kicked myself for being so abrupt with her? Maybe her reasons weren't so black and white and I have caused myself a lot of pain. You still haven't told me about what she did when she left here or what she has been doing in the last few years."

"I don't know it all. The first I knew of her trouble with you was when she called before she left Moline. She wanted to move in with me. I told her she couldn't. I was in a situation where I couldn't have a guest even if she was my sister. This was just no place for her at that time.

"It is a good thing because with the way she was feeling she might have been out on the street with me. Please understand I am speaking figuratively. I have never walked the streets. It is just that I do the same thing as those who have."

I looked at this woman who freely admitted she was a loose woman. She read something into my glance that wasn't there. She did challenge me on it, though.

"Don't look at me like that. I'm not really ashamed of my profession. I do provide a service. I do not consider myself a bad person. Sure, I could wish I hadn't been busted. That was brought about by a woman who was jealous and turned me in while I was doing her boyfriend. I was innocent, I swear." Her grin belied her words. Personally I didn't see the subject was anything to joke about.

"Karen, let me ask you a question. Do you honestly think I have been celibate for the last five years? For good or bad and for all intents and purposes Neica was out of my life. I haven't started a relationship with another woman, but that doesn't mean I haven't had needs. Who would I go to in that situation? If I met you today and didn't know you were sister to my wife, I would be inclined to approach you in that capacity."

"Somehow I don't think Neica is going to hold that against you. How are you going to feel about her in the same context? After all you dumped her for having sex with someone other than you."

"It is a different situation, altogether."

"You know Aaron. You two just might get back together and have a happy life again. I would hope so. Would it be okay if I related this conversation to Neica? It might get one bump in your road out of the way."

"I don't mind at all."

I was getting more and more nervous as the time approached for Neica's plane to land. I wanted no observers when we met for the first time in so many years, so I suggested that Karen stay here in case the kids woke up. It was all for naught as Neica had been heavily sedated and wasn't awake when she was transferred to the ambulance. I followed it home and watched as the ambulance personnel brought her in and installed her in the hospital bed.

My room was next to my wife's, but I spent the rest of the night sitting next to her. I stared at her face. She was a stranger to me. Her features had coarsened from being out in the weather. When I last had seen her, her hair had been long. Now it was in a rough pageboy and uneven as if she hadn't seen a hairdresser for months.

The nurse, Sally Peters was installed in the room on the other side. She appeared to be a competent nurse some years older than Neica and myself. "Your wife, I'm informed. Of course you are, you being Mr. and Mrs. Baker. She has had a rough time of it. Her sled was crossing a frozen river bed. I guess there was tree that was buried under a drift and one ski caught it. It went end for end and landed on her leg.

"She was on the tail end of a team of three and the two men ahead of her traveled quite a distance before they discovered she wasn't with them. She never lost consciousness and lay there under the machine in pain for almost an hour. Some fortitude, that one. Have you been married long?"

"Yes, for quite awhile. Six and a half years to be exact. I'm glad to have her home." I glanced at Neica. Her eyes were open and she was aware of the conversation that the nurse and I had carried on.

"Aaron, I'm glad to be here. And it is Christmas time." Her eyes closed leaving just a hint of a smile on her face.

I dozed until Karen came in at six. "Aaron, I'm getting the kids up in a half hour. You can tell them their mother is here in the house. When Neica wakes up, we can bring them down to visit."

"You bring them down. Neica will wake up when they come into the room."

"Okay, I just wanted Neica to know you were responsible for getting her and the children together. You deserve all of the credit."

"That was the easy part. We still have the past to deal with."

"Do you want her back in your life?"

I stared at my sister-in-law. "Yes and no. Yes, I want her if she was like when we first married. No, I don't want her if I can't trust her, but I am willing to try to find out. I suspect if I had paused to listen to her before, we would have made a clean break or I would have forgiven her and wouldn't have had to deal with this five years later."

"Maybe or maybe not. I think you are a softer, more forgiving individual now than you were back then. Time does that to a person."

Sally made an appearance and asked me to step out of the room while she woke Neica and made her more presentable for the kids.

Karen said, "I'll go get the kids up. Coffee is made. Grab a cup. You've been up all night." I watched her as she went down the hall ahead of me. The thought came to me that I'll bet her patrons received a little love along with the sex they purchased from her. I went into my bathroom for a quick shower. I wanted to be presentable for both my wife and the kids.

I was back soon enough before the others came in to greet my wife. It was hard to realize the woman laying the bed was married to me. Her face and arms were weathered from being out in the harsh weather. She didn't seem especially glad to see me either. "Neica, I've missed you."

"You didn't feel that way five years ago. We could have settled this back then."

"I don't think you can blame me that much for my actions. Look, the kids will be here in a minute. Let's put off talking about the past and give them a good Christmas. I still have to work some in the next ten days. I want to get to know the children in the evenings."

"That would be best. I need to find out some things about you and, yes, about myself as well. I've been terribly hurt and I'm not going to fall into your arms just because you found out you have kids." We couldn't discuss this more as we could hear Karen and the kids babbling as they approached.

Betty and Billy came charging into the room and over to their mother, wanting kisses and exclaiming how glad they were to see her. They wanted to see both legs and the casts that encased them and then questioned if she was hurting. "Not now, but I did for awhile. I just can't use my legs until they get healed."

I sat back against the wall. Suddenly they came to me. "Daddy, Aunty Karen said Mommy is here all because of you. She said we should give you a kiss to thank you."

Betty's arms came up and she kissed me right on the lips. This was followed by Billy who didn't appear to be into kissing. "How about giving me a hug and a high five?" This was better. Karen was standing in the doorway and laughed. Neica looked on with a slight disgusted look as if she was losing control of her life.

"Hey Guys, I have to work this morning. I've been up all night and I need coffee to keep awake. Kiss your Mom again and let's go see what your grandmother has for breakfast." I walked over and tipped Neica's chin up with my fingers so I could kiss her on the lips. It wasn't much of a kiss, as she kept her lips pressed tightly together. I smiled into her eyes and headed for the door.

I paused, "Neica, I'll have Mom call for a hairdresser to come in and do your hair. While she is here she might as well do Karen's. I'll be home early and I'll see you then."

Karen followed me into my mother's wing. She came up beside me as Billy and Betty ran on ahead. She whispered, "You are keeping Neica so off balance. You liberate her from a hospital bed in the far north and when she gets here she finds her kids are already calling you Daddy.

"You pretty much just told her she looks like hell and you are doing something about it. Not only that you are treating her whore of a sister as an equal. She can't enjoy that."

"Hey kids, I have to talk to your Aunt Karen a minute. Start breakfast without me." I turned Karen to face me. "My problem is that I don't know Neica anymore. The first words we had, I thought we could go back to where we were before. She said she was glad to be here and we would have a Merry Christmas. Then this morning she basically pushed me away."

"I think you both are expecting too much of each other. You are pretty much strangers after being apart for so long. But you were close back then and now you are tied together with Betty and Billy. Give yourselves some time and have your Merry Christmas."

"You know what they say about prostitutes and bartenders don't you? You're both psychologists without a license. Don't get bent out of shape at my analogy either. I mean it in a good way."

"Thank you Aaron, No offense taken."

Mom was bustling around happy as could be. I was beat, but I had a couple of things I couldn't put off at the factory. I put all thought of Neica out of my mind. The images of Billy and Betty kept intruding as I went about initialing various papers that came across my desk. I called Sam, the techie who had taken over installing the computer components.