Chapter 37

Nikki's turn:

I'm kind of excited about going home. Only 'kind of' because honestly, since Grandma passed away, 'home' wasn't much until I found myself in the care of Dan Granger. Since then it's been a wild, exciting and happy ride. It's like my world turned upside down. Every negative I suffered, school, people in my age group, home life, all those things turned positive.

So I'm looking at me and my Dan flying back to Louisiana for WORK.

I'm kind of like an intern, really. All of us, me, Cindy, Tina, Susan, have had our look at the drudgery of entering parameters into the program that drives our power system studies and we've all had a look at what happens when things change on one or more of those parameters. It all happens right there in that computer program, and Dan says that the program is pretty good at replicating the real world.

"If the real world doesn't act like your program, then something's wrong with your program," he'd said while he was giving us an impromptu class, to which Cindy popped, "Well, DUH!", reducing the bunch to laughter.

We were learning that. Hands on, in fact, we were learning as we worked through some issues on our own railgun project and now, on the university's project.

Wednesday I went with the gang to school, sort of rolled through a few offices and through the lab, and did as I'd announced, hitching a ride home at lunch with Susan driving me. Yeah, still a student driver, and I can't drive with Susan because she's not twenty-one yet, so she drives.

Back in the apartment I make sure Tommi's food and water are topped off even though I know that Cindy will be taking care of him, and if I know my gang (and I do) Tommi will not lack for companionship in my absence. I tell him this. Almost seems like my words register in his kitty brain.

And Dan and I are out the door headed for the airfield. Half an hour later the truck is in the hangar and we're lifting off the end of the runway swinging on a long loop that will put us on course for south Louisiana.

We took off under an overcast sky, confident that the weather that had passed us in the early morning was continuing eastward and we were going west. As the trip progressed the overcast broke apart, thinned and by the time we crossed the center of Louisiana we were under clear skies. I was flying from the right seat. I'm not quite as adventurous as Cindy is in regard to flying and honestly, Dan's not gotten nearly the hours that Cindy's Dan has and our airplane is a bit higher performance than their old Cessna 180.

That's okay. Dan knows that I have a student pilot license in my possession and I've got my eye on Susan's Cessna 152. And Mister Wally says he might be rusty at it, but he IS a licensed flight instructor. Worse than that, he's an agricultural aviation pilot, so he's more than competent to teach me how to fly a taildragger like Cindy's Cessna 180.

Dan gazed at me. In my headphones I heard "Having a moment, are we?"

"Just thinking about this flying business, that's all. Susan said that if we can underwrite their plane for insurance, I can use it to get my license."

"Their plane is fifteen thousand dollars. I ... We can put that in escrow. Get a lawyer to write up something."

"I can talk to Cindy. Her step-mom's husband is a judge."

"Yeah," Dan said. "Let's do it that way. And work out a decent rate with Wally."

"Okay," I said.

We watched the miles go by, three a minute, below us. I throttled the engine back, dropped the nose to keep the airspeed up, and we did a descent to the home field. It has a control tower, so I gave up the controls and the radio to Dan. He put the wheels on the ground and we were home. We saw the rental car pull up in the parking lot while we were tying down our little Mooney.

While Dan was signing the rental papers, I was on the phone making sure that everyone was aware of our arrival.

Reminder to self: Call Sheriff Ernie. We made a point of talking to him about the state of our home when we moved to Alabama. He made sure it was watched, even though Dan's cousin comes in a few times a week to check on his cows. Tonight we'd be in there and the activity might elicit a check from the deputy that patrols that area.

"Don't want to cause a false alarm," Dan said.

I giggled. "Yeah, I can just picture it: We're running around the house, post-shower tonight, and two patrol cars full of deputies pull up..."

"Or worse," he said, "We're in the back yard under the moonlight, naked..."

I squealed. "Omigod, yes! And I absolutely intend for us to do it in the moonlight!" Okay ... I'm not the only one who's done it outdoors, but I've probably done it more than Cindy and I KNOW that she and her Dan have done it like the first week they connected. She said that they did it their first week together.

I know that Cindy was thirteen. I was fifteen when my Dan and I connected. We know each other's secret. Everybody knows mine. I'm the only one of us that knows Cindy was thirteen. They all know she was fourteen when she married Dan.

"Where's your mind right now, little one?" Dan asked me.

"Just kipping around random thoughts." I squeezed his hand. "You know how my mind is. Started off thinking of me and you under the stars."

"I thought you'd be more excited about coming home."

"Dan, home is where you are. Maybe if things had been happier here I'd look at it differently but I don't have much in the way of roots."

"You do. You just don't know it," Dan argued. We turned off the main highway onto the road that led past our house. "This is home. Roots. Your mom might not have realized it, but I'm sure your grandma did."

"Yes," I said, remembering. "Grandma did." It's been a bit more than a year since the hurricane that threw me and Dan together. I remember talking about the aftermath with Dan, looking together over the fields of storm-blown debris. He's right, a year later you have to pay attention to see the reminders. But this is MY road ... Omigod! He's right. I called it MY road. I do have roots. "You're right, baby," I said. "This is OUR road."

He turned his head and smiled. "Your ancestors have to be from someplace like this. One of these days we need to look and see where your grandma cme from."

I squeezed his hand. "This is where WE come from. We're in Alabama now but this is where pieces of us will always be." This guy is my husband. I want our lives intertwined.

The rental car finally rounded that last meandering curve and headed out of the low road to the ridge that held our house.

"Is it okay if I get excited?" I asked.

"Just as well you did," he laughed. "I am."

My hand confirmed a definite level of excitement there in his lap.

"Just remember, we are meeting Steve and Carole for dinner. Don't wanna be late."

"And you don't want me sitting there with one of those indelible grins from the spectacular sex."

He laughed. "It's all spectacular, little one."

"I read somewhere about 'nights of pleasure'. They were talking about sex, but they missed the point, Dan."

"Missed the point?"

"Lifetime of pleasure. Because it's not just about the physical act, it's about the life."

"Pleasure begins when I open my eyes and you're next to me," he said.

"And continues all day while you're doing your things and I'm doing mine, because I know that you're there."

He smiled. "We oughtta write greeting cards."

I know what he's saying. There's a tendency in the world to ascribe derogatory terms to the kind of things we say to each other. You know what, though? I FEEL the things we say. Life is better with my mate. And that's not because he provides material things. We share material things. It's because I have somebody I can talk with and laugh with and love with. And if that's smarmy, then you can smarm me until the sun burns out because I like it.

That's a conversation I've had with my sisters, too. Cindy giggles, "My life went from being a bad country-western song to a great little Hallmark card."

"Fairy tale," Tina says. "Once upon a time there was a tormented princess..."

"Who had a friend who needed a prince of her own," Susan jumped in.

I know some married people at college. Some of them seem happy. Others, maybe not so much. I heard some of them speak of frictions in their marriages. I try to think of frictions in mine. I'm about at the stage Tina intimated to me about her Alan's absolutely horrible predilection towards trimming his toenails in front of her.

"That's the worst, then?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said, bouncing her auburn hair.

"Toenails." Cindy emphasized the single word. "Gee, Tina, I can see where that WOULD be a major hurdle. I mean, how can you possibly STAND it?"

Susan was giggling. "Dad forgets to use coasters. Mom comes unglued about water rings on the furniture."

"What's that phrase that's popular? 'First World Problems'? We're the domestic equivalent," Cindy said. "I mean, does he get upset if you squeeze the middle of the toothpaste tube?"

"We use one of those little bottle thingies," I laughed.

So yes, it's good. Even when you walk into a house that's been locked up for a few months in your absence, it's good. It's good when you run around said house, opening windows and letting the fresh breeze blow through, exchanging inside air with outside air from somewhere waaaay north.

I followed Dan out the back door as he did a quick inspection of the house. Looking over the fence, the only signs of my former home was the concrete foundation, visible though a summer's worth of weeds and burgeoning underbrush. He saw me looking.

"You know what that means, don't you?" he asked me.

"No neighbors." Giggle. "I'm gonna go get a blanket..." Just as I made that statement, I heard the unmistakable sound of a car turning off the road and into our drive. I looked at Dan. "Or not. Let's see who that is."

Back into the house just in time to heard the knock on the front door. Through the window I saw the car, a marked Sheriff Department unit. Dan opened the door.

"Uh, would you be Mister Granger?" the deputy asked.

I didn't recognize him. I know a lot of them.

"Yes I am," Dan said. "And you're..."

"Stephen Leblanc. Sheriff Richard said you'd be back here today. Wanted me to come check on you."

"That's very nice of 'im," Dan said. "You go by 'Steve'?"

"Yessir," he said. "Sheriff Richard told me to keep an eye on this place, and he told me that you were back home, so I thought I'd check in."

"I appreciate it. Ernie takes good care of us."

"Yeah," Steve said. "He told me some of the story."

"It's a good story," I said. "Hi, Steve."