Chapter 18

Springtime in south Louisiana is plenty warm enough for fun on the water, as long as you realized that the water could still be cold. Kayaking was a big part of our exercise regimen, as was walking and bicycling.

Oh yeah, the little darlin' STILL has that thing about outdoor sex. One of these days we're gonna get soooo caught.

The other thing: Long-lost sister. Which morphed into THREE sisters and conversations that started out as cellphone calls were now taking place on the computer and let's see: sisters. The original, Tina, short for Christina, was indeed a product of south Louisiana, and she was married to, (I should've bought a lottery ticket) of all people, the guy I worked with right out of college, Alan Addison. Sister Number Two is Susan Carter, a Tennessee girl who has no connection to us that I know of, other than the fact that she's Tina's 'sister' and now, by inference, Nikki's. Sister Number Three sets me back on my heels. A fourteen year old redhead named Cindy, married to one Dan Richards, a name I know by reputation in the business I'm in.

Okay, I could see Susan, eighteen, and Tina, seventeen, graduating from high school this year. My mind had even accepted the fact that my own little shining star, Nikki, was going to graduate this year. That's another 'set me back on my heels' moment with Cindy. She's, yeah, FOURTEEN. And SHE'S graduating from high school with full scholarship to Auburn University.

I called Alan myself.

"Yeah, I remember you," he said. "How have you been? It's been years, Dan."

We caught up on our past histories.

"I suppose you know that you married my wife's long-lost sister."

"Oh, yeah," he laughed. "I got the complete story. I got pictures. I sit here and listen to the conversations. You don't realize that you got tied into a community."

"Community?" I asked.

He explained the plan to me.

"Where'd you come up with an idea like that?" I asked.

"Your sister-in-law, Cindy, dropped it on the table months ago. Now I have us looking at living arrangements and offices in Alabama, convenient to Auburn University, since we'll have four students there."

"Four? I thought there were three of 'em."

Alan laughed. "You don't know that Susan's getting married after graduation?"

"I didn't know that," I said.

"Her future husband's a technician on my project. He has a degree in electrical technology. His fiancé and her sisters have talked him into converting it to a full-blown electrical engineering degree. We're gonna make his job work around his college. Now you're caught up."

"Engineering business, huh?" I mused. "I've thought about it. It's nice, though, working under somebody else's umbrella," I said.

"I know that," Alan said. "I've been the same way for a long time. But Dan's already on his own in Alabama and we're looking at a little apartment complex in Auburn, Alabama. Your sister-in-law Susan's mom is a realtor and she's got some contacts."

"You guys are SERIOUS!" I said.

"Like a heart attack," he said. "Dan's doing some work for an attorney right now, but we're getting together soon to hammer out some things. HIS father-in-law, well sort of father-in-law, is a retired judge in Alabama, so we have an angle on working out the legal side."

"What about start-up capital?"

"We're incorporating, and Dan and I have substantial investments and savings. Jason's going to buy in, as is Susan's mom and dad, and rumblings are that Cindy's foster mom and the judge are buying shares."

"So I'm interested," I said. When I said it, I looked to my right at Nikki. Why was I surprised to see a confident smirk spread across her face?

"Are you interested in talking about it with us?" Alan asked.

"Yeah, I'd be a fool not to at least talk about it."

"Well," Alan said, "I believe we can target multiple avians with a single projectile."

"I'm listening, ' I said.

"Next Saturday afternoon, I'll fly MY bunch down and Dan and Cindy will fly down and we'll meet there. I think my house is the most central. Dan has to drive west. You have to drive east. All that's scheduling. The major point is that Tina gets to see your wife and your wife gets to meet the rest of the bunch."

"You're serious!"

"Are you? Look, Tina wants to see Nikki. I'd fly down there just for that. Dan and Jason and I need to get together sometime soon. We can do all that. Plus you get to sit and talk and see if you think you're a fit."

"Okay," I said. "We'll be there."

"Okay, buddy. See ya!"

When I hung up the phone I turned to look at Nikki. "So how much of this is a surprise to you?"

She smiled. "You are about to observe the full power of this completely operational sisterhood." This smart-assed remark was followed by a bounce and the presence of a fifteen year old cutie in my lap. "Baby, they're excited. It's a way forward. I think you'd be smart to listen. That's all. If it's not something that jumps out at you, then here we are. We have a wonderful situation where we're at."

"I just don't want to cause you any more turmoil, baby," I said.

She put her forehead against mine, our noses touching. "Dan Granger! You're my husband. Let's look at the last seven months of my life. How much turmoil do you think there's been? And it's all GOOD!"

I leaned against the back of the sofa, shifting her weight on top of me. "If you're happy with it, baby, I'm game for an adventure."

"WE are game for an adventure."

"There's no way I wanna miss that, baby," I said.

I didn't mention that conversation at the office. One of the neat things about being an engineer in my specialty was that I was imminently portable, as long as I didn't play that card too many times. It was something Nikki and I had talked about at length in some of the many talks about my career and what I did to put bread on the table.

We were now less than two months from graduation day. The scores were in for the exit exams and just as I'd suspected, Nikki and her study group had nothing to fear from that little hurdle. That didn't slow down the studying, though, because grades were still important. The more 'A's' on the report card, the brighter the future, and in some small way I hoped that I'd added a little to their prospects. I know Nikki did, but even more important, they'd lifted one another.

Yes, there was a bright spot among all those bright spots. Miss "I'm GOOD at English" Kellen had been talking with her guidance counselor. I kept my secret, a phone call to him suggesting that Kellen just might need a little prodding for a direction, and she was parlaying her academic success into a run at pre-law.

She announced that fact to me when she flounced through the door for a study session.

"I'm proud," I said, but it's not a done deal, Kellen. That's a lot of work. But you're up to it if you apply yourself."

"Oh, I DO apply myself," she said. "Mom an' Dad push me. You an' Nikki tug. I just HAD to go in the right direction. Couldn't help it."

Nikki was there at my side. "Kellen, that's why you'll do well. You're smart and your parents showed you how to use that."

"You forgot 'pretty', babe." Nikki said, leaning against me.

"Oh, she knows that, too, baby, but Kellen's not the type who's gonna try to get by on looks."

Kellen blushed at Nikki's remark, then her eyes hardened briefly, then softened when she parsed my reply, then she giggled.

"What's funny?" I asked, prompted by her eyes.

"Oh, that you're kinda like a second dad or a favorite uncle to me, but you're married to my best friend, who's a year younger than me."

After the gang left that night, I had a decidedly loving Nikki imposed upon me on the sofa.

"You know," she said, "that conversation with Kellen. I just GOT it."

"Got what?"

"That first week we spent together after the storm. You're LIKE THAT with people. You were like that with me."

"Like what?"

"You just met me as a result of a random event and immediately decided that I was worth helping."

"I was right, you know..."

"You KNOW what I mean. Sure, we fell in love and we're married, but before that, you were helping me be a better person."

"Ulterior motives, little brown-haired girl. Who wants to live with a bad person?"

"You're avoiding the point."

"Only a little, just because I like your 'outraged' look," I said. "You, baby, obviously needed help when I found you, then ... you are a decent person, so why NOT help you? Same thing for Kellen. Nice girl. Tries to understand. Why NOT help her?"

Arms around my neck, blue eyes staring into mine. "But you married me."

"Like I found the missing piece of my life's puzzle, baby. If you hadn't been smart and decent, none of this would have happened."

She batted her eyelashes. "Cute wasn't enough?"

"Oh, probably would've been. You're AWFULLY cute."

"Then you could've been 'Dan and his teen-aged hooker wife'," she giggled.

"That would've probably stopped me," I laughed.

"What about if I'd been just a little bit less innocent than I was?"

"Probably wouldn't've stopped us," I said.

"I am glad to know that, baby. But I'm even more glad to know that I WAS innocent, well, maybe not exactly innocent, but definitely virginal, with no experience at all. Just makes me completely yours," she said softly, and punctuated the statement with a kiss.

"Mmm-hmmm," I said. "I remember."

"Me too," she smiled. "It's one of the things that go through my mind when I'm being bored at school. I replay..."

"The day you asked me how long you could stay here..."

Bright blues eyes looked at me, happy crinkles in the corners. "THAT day. And AAUGHHHH, that NIGHT!"

"You know," I said, "We don't have to just sit here and TALK about it."

"I know," she said. "But I didn't want to appear anxious." She wiggled. "But I know a couple of parts of us that are anxious."

Sex. Then shower. She was drying her hair when I finished shaving, stood up, kissed me like THAT, and it was sex again. And slide off into slumber, spooned together, my nose savoring the tendrils of her perfume.

Yes, life was good in so many ways, but there were the unknowns now. What was I supposed to do about Nikki's mom? I thought the weekly letters were okay, and every few weeks we made the trek to the prison for a visitation. That was pretty standard, if you can call visiting your wife's mom in prison any kind of standard.

The new 'sister' thing was even more of an unknown. On the surface it was a good thing. Nikki found a bit of happiness in finding that a friend who was in a bad situation had come to good, but now we both were faced with a whole new set of possibilities for our future. I'm an engineer, and I like what I do, but seriously, Alan was offering a much bigger arena to play games in. Nikki and I talked and talked.

"That's different than this," I said. "Here, I stay home most nights."

"And I got to go with you to that conference," she said.

Yeah, that was fun: one of those trade shows for my industry. Fortunately they had provisions for a special program for spouses. Her reports were hilarious after her first day of fielding questions: "You're dad brought you to this show?" "No, I'm here with my husband." "Babe, you look so YOUNG? What do you DO to look like that?" "I hang around bein' fifteen!" "No, REALLY!" "Really! I'm fifteen. Wanna see my learner's permit?" You can imagine how things tracked after that. By the end of the show, though, she had several friends, all of them a decade or two or three older.

And I got emails from remote acquaintances: "Who IS your wife? Mine can't stop talking about her." All I could do was smile and offer an abbreviated version of the story. It wouldn't do my normally staid image to tell people how my heart did flip-flops every time I thought "Nikki is my WIFE!" Middle-aged engineers aren't supposed to ga-ga about fifteen year olds., and I was married to one.

But back to the conversation.

"I talked with the bunch about the community," she announced.

"How did that go?"

"They make it sound so good," Nikki said. "Tina says that they're getting an apartment complex and they'll all live there close together, and she and Cindy and Susan and maybe Jason will go to classes, and with that many of them, they'll be able to support one another no matter what the schedule is. And if the guys have to go out of town for a while, then they can be there to support each other on that, too." Her eyes changed to a softness that melted me. "Of course, THIS is our home, and it's YOUR ancestral land, and I never want us to give it up."

"So, then, brown-haired angel, what's the solution?"

I should've known Nikki had already formulated at least ONE solution. Nikki had blossomed in the months we'd been together. I'd created a monster, encouraging her to openly discuss her feelings and thoughts, and she'd picked up the lesson quite handily. She picked up EVERY lesson quite handily.

"Here's what I think." Yeah, she emphasized 'I'. She knew she had me when she did that.

"What do you think?"

"I think that four years is a reasonable expectation for a nascent ('nascent'? Where'd THAT come from?) engineering business to come together and solidify, based on the individual reputations of the core personnel. During that four years, we can live in Alabama with the rest of the community, keeping this place as our refuge and roots, and then when I graduate, we move back and do a regional office. You just KNOW there's enough work right here to do that."

I made the mistake of laughing.

"Whaaaaat?!?!?" She feigned outrage. "You're the one that MADE me like this!"

More laughter. "No, baby, that's some rare genetic mutation. You're the happy result."