Chapter 4

The big silver diesel pickup truck purposefully rumbled away the miles. The driver is Dan Richards, a satisfied look on his face. Part of the satisfaction comes from the passenger, a little green-eyed, red-headed teen. She was strapped into the center seat, snuggled against him, and her smile was somewhat broader.

"Dan," she said, "We're buying furniture. I can't believe we're buying furniture." Giggle. "Do you realize that we're putting together our first home together?"

"I don't know that I've had a real home for years, sweetness. Then you came along and turned a travel trailer into a real home."

More giggles. Cindy is in a good mood. If you know Cindy, though, good moods have been an almost constant state since the preceeding August when she met Dan. Married. Fourteen and married. Fourteen and married and a high school graduate. With an advanced placement scholarship to Auburn University.

"Well," Dan said, "The builders say we can move into the place in two weeks. We need to furnish OUR place and the office. I suppose that Tina and Alan and Terri will be down this week, too."

"And Nikki and her Dan," Cindy said. "Just a second." Cindy whipped her iPhone out and started punching at the screen with both thumbs. "Look! Here's Nikki's process control simulator on the internet."

Dan shook his head. "I can't believe the two of you came up with that on your own."

"She did most of it," Cindy tittered. "She's after Dan to get her some relays and stuff so she can hook the real world up to it."

"For fun," Dan said, shaking his head. "You're something, darlin'. Really something."

She curled her arms around his bicep, burying his cheek into his shoulder. "And my best move to date is hanging with YOU."

"Only because I find that I have this weakness for redheaded geniuses, little one," Dan said.

"Speaking of weaknesses, I wonder how Susan and Jason are faring today."

"They're four days into their honeymoon. They probably can't walk any more," Dan said.

Cindy giggled. "And we were all wrong. We thought that Susan would kill poor Jason. And when I called the first time, she was almost passed out and ol' Jason is all alert and bright and happy."

"Yeah, uh-huh. He got himself a cutie almost as cute and smart as mine."

Cindy's turn:

I just can't keep this third-person stuff up.

Dan and I are on the way to Auburn. I'm talking about the town, not the university, today. It's time to get furniture picked out for our new apartment. I, Cindy Smith-Richards, am furnishing OUR new home with my husband. It's just so right.

The new building has six apartments. We're getting a two-bedroom unit. So are Nikki and her Dan and Susan and Jason. Tina and Alan and Terri are getting one of the three-bedroom units. We're talking about renting the other two apartments, a two-bedroom and a three-bedroom unit, but we're going to be picky about it.

The new international headquarters (Nikki's term) of 3Sigma Engineering is one of the larger of the three units of the strip mall that's built in front of the apartments. We have things figured out. A restaurant is looking to relocate in one of the other units. And get this! It's INDIAN! I can just smell it now. I need to talk to Mizz Patel and see if she knows who it is. She tells me that the Indian (dot, not feather! Her description, not mine) community around the university is close-knit. Everybody knows everybody, even if they don't get along.

Work. It does little good to have a new business if there's no work. Under the letterhead of the new company, my Dan's already doing some consulting for, of all people, a law firm. Yes, when I was a mere eighth-grader (last school year) I had the opportunity to tutor and assist the math teacher. One of the kids I helped, Kaylee, was the daughter of one of the local attorneys. Kaylee and I became good friends and her dad has been using Dan for some consulting work. Word's getting around, so 3Sigma is lining up for that little piece of the pie.

I'm happy. I may be just a tiny bit prejudiced and maybe even ill-informed, but I think that after seeing Dan at work, he's got a handle on getting the business off the ground. And no, I didn't forget that we got Alan and a whole other Dan and Jason, that is if Jason survives both his honeymoon and a couple of years of going back to college to get an engineering degree.

I don't know what I might bring to this thing right away, but I do know that Nikki's doing some stuff that has her husband wondering, and I'm able to pull up an app on my iPhone and see what her simulator looks like in Louisiana, and she and I both have been doing some programming. Yes, Dan (both Dans, actually) explained that what we're doing is rather rudimentary, but we're doing it and getting better, more aggressive, learning things that are hardware, not theory.

That's a big deal in life, the difference between theory and the real world. Theory says that a fourteen year old girl is supposed to be aflutter over boy bands and boys in general and clothes and stuff. That theory works out to be true for the center of the bell curve. Out at the ends? Maybe not. And I'm out at the end.

My real world is a whole lot better for me and my Dan. I don't think that most girls in their teens would do well where I'm at. I read books about some of this stuff and I know I'm not normal in a lot of ways. I find myself focusing and fixating on things. Dan's one of them, the best one. I don't give other males, men or boys, so much as a second thought. They're just people to me, to be nice to if that works, to be ignored and avoided if it doesn't.

I know all about the conversations. The kids I helped through school were a mixed collection of male and female and I know about the flirting and the giggling and the suggestive talk and all that. I know what a girl likes when a guy she's interested in pays a bit of attention to her.

Unfortunately I also know from close observation the effects of that stuff taken to one of its logical conclusions, from watching Mom.

So right now me and my practical exercise in the mechanics of human interaction (he laughed the first time I popped that phrase on him) are headed to talk with the contractors about how we want our apartment painted and floored and we're picking out furniture.

I nestled into Dan's side. "Queen-sized bed."

"Not a king? Lots more room," he said.

"Nope! We tried kings at hotels. I don't like 'em. I lose you in one at night."

"Queen it is, then, sweetness," he said.

We had other discussions. I know he had the place plumbed for natural gas for heat and stove.

"But you're an ELECTRICAL engineer," I said when we talked about that choice.

"Yep! But man's been cooking over fire since before history. I like the control and the instant change."

And he didn't get an el cheapo stove, either. Not quite restaurant quality. But good. When I talked to the sisterhood about it, the next day I got emails from Tina and Nikki. "Get us one." And Susan. "See if you can get a discount when you buy four, then give Dad a chance to see what he can do."

Four new stoves are awaiting delivery. We wrote the check to Mike Carter. And refrigerators. And I think this is a milestone in my life. Talking with Mizz Ann she tells me about her and Jim and setting up households a few times when he was still a Marine, and the last time, when they settled into their home in Alabama. Seems like they had a lot more struggles than Dan and I are having. So that's a big plus in our lives.

Somebody said that all the pluses have to balanced out by minuses elsewhere. I don't particularly buy into that idea, but there's a new development that is really surprising to me, and I'm not sure how it's going to pan out. Mizz Helen got a letter at the RV park. From Mom.

It's been ten months. This is the first time either of us has heard anything from Mom. I was settled with the idea that Mom basically just dumped me and hauled her butt to Nevada and was done with the whole idea of having to deal with having a daughter. Then this letter showed up.

It was addressed to Mizz Helen and me.

"Dear Aunt Helen + Cindy,

I am still in Vegas, but its hard since Vince and me split up. Its something we both decided to do. I know he was tapping some drink bimbo at one of the casinos on the Strip and I thought that Vince wasn't that good a deal and I know a couple of guys who are better looking and have better prospects if they want to take me on.

Cindy I know I havnt been the best momma to you and that's why I left u with aunt Helen. I know she gives u a better place to live and better cloths and stuff. If I was u I think I woud latch on to that Dan guy if you cuod get him past ur age.

Rite now I am sharing an apt. with another girl. We share the rent and things and we think we can get better jobs at maybe one of the big casinos on the Strip where tips are good and there are all kinds of nice men looking for some companions. One of them might just be the man I am looking for.

I might evn make enough money to come back to Alabama some times.

Love-
Donna"

I read it. Dan read it. Mizz Helen and Mister Charlie read it. I agree with Dan. It's cryptic.

What am I expected to do about it? What's Mizz Helen supposed to do about it? After all, it did have a return address. But it didn't have a phone number, and I KNOW she's got to have a phone.

It's quite confusing. She said in her own words that I should latch onto Dan. I did that before she dumped me off on Mizz Helen. But should we tell her? Mister Charlie said that in view of her voluntary dissolution of her parental rights, she would be hard put to have any effect on Mizz Helen or Dan because of my marriage.

That made me feel better because when I first read the letter, I had a big knot in my stomach. My life began anew when I got Dan. I can't imagine life without him. I was reading somewhere about the practice of suttee in India, where when a man died, his wives would throw themselves on his funeral pyre. Well, to be honest, some of them didn't do so voluntarily, but I can understand how the practice might have started. Dan is my life and I sincerely think that I am his.

"I have to trust Charley on this one, baby," Dan told me. "That letter, though, it's almost like she was in a haze when she wrote it. Like, 'Hi, I'm still here doing my thing and I guess you're okay, so bye-bye.' It's ... I dunno."

"I wonder why she even thinks about coming back here, Dan. She has no place to stay. I can't picture her thinking that she's going to stay at Mizz Helen's, and she doesn't know that Mizz Helen's married, either."

"So we just don't say anything," Dan says. "If she asks specific questions, then you don't have to lie, but I don't think we need to volunteer anything, either."

"Okay, baby," I said. Later I repeated those thoughts to Mister Charlie and Mizz Helen.

Mister Charlie said, "That might be a good approach, child. If we make waves right now, we could end up with a little fight. It wouldn't be much of a fight because what we did in your case, making Helen your guardian and then waiving the age rules for your marriage; both of those are backed up by existing application of the law. Still, there's no sense in having a fight over it if we don't need to have one."

So there's that on the table. We're going to push it off to a far corner. All those months that I wondered about Mom and wished she could see how things have turned out for me, and now there's a little bit of fear that she might pop up and try and stir up some crap.

So now I'm riding up the road with my arm linked to my guy and we're furnishing the first house we're getting together. And now I'm thinking that just maybe I might want to get Susan's mom involved.

"We need to get Susan's mom involved, baby," I tell Dan.

"Why's that?"

I sigh. "Interior decorating is not one of my skill sets. And I've seen YOUR house..."

"OUR house," he corrected.

"Point taken," I said, "but I had nothing to do with the decorating. It looks like an office at the Pentagon, or one of those science labs. Mizz Kathy, Mizz Ann, both of them, they have some skills."

Chapter 5 »