But Should We?

This is a flash story. I wrote it whilst working on another story. I'd like to thank my Beta readers and Randi for her editorial support. Any errors are as a result of subsequent post-editing tampering. I'm a writer. It's what we do.

Dave and Sally Dawson sat on the back decking of Dave's large and fairly opulent house. They were enjoying the last warming rays of the sun as they sat, drinks at hand, gazing at the growing golden sunset.

The sunsets in the valley were always spectacular, which was the main reason Dave had decided to have his house built on a south-to-west axis. Solar panels facing due south and the decking and the large glass wall, which could be fully opened if desired, faced due west for the sunset.

It was bliss. Although Dave and Sally had the same last name, they were not married. At least, not to each other. They were father and daughter in law.

Dave's wife Tegan had given him a son, Harry, but she had expressed homesickness and eventually she had, tearfully protesting her overwhelming love for both Dave and Harry, returned to her native homeland, Australia.

She had promised that once she had "re-found her equilibrium, she would return to her two boys, both of whom she loved more than life itself."

Harry believed her, well, she was his mother and why would his mother ever lie to him, right? He believed her, poor little bugger.

Dave, however, was not stupid nor did he have the naivety of a boy of 12, like Harry. His thoughts regarding Tegan's probable return home to the USA were running 50/50.

He knew that if she didn't return that he would be hurt, of course, obviously he would, but there was a vague idea that was somehow inculcating into his head that Tegan was not quite what she had once been.

She had, he felt, been distancing himself from both himself and their son to such an extent that he was beginning to feel ambivalent as to whether he cared about her disappearing from his life or not. Well, from the lives of himself and Harry, to be honest.

However, he realized that if she did what he feared she might: send them a Dear Dave/Dear Harry letter from the safety of an 8,000 odd mile distance, he knew that Harry would be devastated and would require counseling. Communication between the three was sporadic. It soon petered out becoming very one-sided with very little coming back from Tegan.

Eventually pissed by the lack of responses from her, both Dave and Harry went, as the common vernacular would put it, 'low contact.'

The Dear Dave/Dear Harry letter thing? That was pretty much what happened. Dave received the two letters, one for him, the other for Harry, in the same envelope.

"Fucking cheapass bitch!" he had thought. They were, as he had suspected, a Dear Dave and a Dear Harry letter. "Shit!" he thought. "If only for once in my life I could have been wrong about something! Other people's fucked up ideas, I often can predict what they're going to do."

She apologized to Dave for being a bad wife and she apologized to Harry for being a rotten mother, but she was not coming back to America and she would be filing for divorce in Australia using a firm of solicitors that specialized in overseas divorces. The term solicitor made him grin, briefly. It made them sound like a set of telemarketers, or something.

Apparently, she had had to wait for a year before filing, which is what she had done. As Dave had suspected, Harry took it very badly. Very badly indeed. Well, what thirteen-year-old wants to learn that his mother, his own damned mother, for fuck's sake, didn't love him enough to want to remain in his life?

Actually, Dave's problems with Tegan's abandonment of himself raised similar issues in his psyche. What man of 38 wants to deal with the fact that the love of his wife was flipping the bird from the other side of the world? Certainly not Dave.

Dave arranged therapy for both Harry and himself. They were muddling along, with their therapists pointing out that none of what happened was either of their faults.

A couple of years later, via something on Facebook, or Instagram or whatever, clued Dave into the fact that Tegan had actually been involved in a long-distance sexting relationship with a former boyfriend in Australia from before she had moved to America, and that he had convinced her to abandon both her clueless husband and her equally clueless son.

Shock of shocks, surprise of surprises! The bastard had then cheated on her within months of marrying him in Australia. Dave chuckled to himself and thought "You fucking bitch! That's your very own schadenfreude moment, right there!" He wasn't sure how to pronounce schadenfreude, but he damn well knew how to spot it when he saw it.

Dave was somehow relieved and also irritated that Tegan hadn't then reached out to him or Harry to try to come crawling back to him. Why? Basically, he resented the fact that she hadn't given him the opportunity to tell her to pound sand. Petty, he knew, but petty can be good, sometimes. At least that got a chuckle from his therapist, if nothing else good came of that.

She hadn't even reached out to Harry. Dave had shaken his head at that. It was like her 16 year-long courtship, marriage and the birth of their son had never happened for her. It was truly bizarre.

He had asked his therapist, an older woman who looked as if she had spent most of her life outdoors working on a family ranch (she actually had, but that's another story), why Tegan might have done that?

She shrugged, gave him a sly grin and said: "Oh, us old therapist types have a technical expression for people like her. Do you wanna hear it?" Dave had nodded in anticipation.

She said: "We call them fucking nut jobs!" She laughed at her own joke, and then so did Dave. Well, it was funny.

As the years passed by, Dave dated a little, but he felt too jaded to bother looking for a replacement wife. After Harry's grades had tanked, the counseling that Harry received, plus the support of his father helped him get his grades back up to such an extent that he was able to obtain a full-ride scholarship, with the assistance of a grant program that Dave's company offered for the gifted children of staff members. That Dave was widely seen as King of the C Suite, didn't hurt at all, there.

Harry enjoyed school and he obtained his BSc in Finance and Business Studies and his MBA within four years. He also found, and married, the love of his life, Sally Trasker who was that delightful combination, a girl with both extreme beauty and extreme intelligence.

Harry was very clearly very much in love with her and, to be honest, Dave was sort of smitten by her, too. No, he didn't want to steal her away from his boy, so he kept those feelings locked in a box within a box within a box. Under some concrete for good measure.

They got married, Dave got on very well with Sally's parents. However, they heard nothing from Tegan. Oh, whoops! Did they forget to inform her that her only son was getting frickin' married? Meh. Maybe the invite got lost in the mail or something? Oh, they forgot to post it? How sad.

Everything was perfect, right up until the moment the happiness fairy was replaced by the troll of ultimate misery.

As they sat side by side, basking in the evening sun, Sally looked at Dave and said: "Dave, if we do take our relationship any further, things between us will change forever. I know we have made out a couple of times, but if we do end up in bed together, well, that'll be a whole new level that we would have to deal with."

He patted her hand and squeezed it, gently. "Yes, it would, honey. It would indeed." The term of endearment he used felt right on his tongue and from the way she had leaned into him, it had obviously felt good in Sally's ear, too.

"But... but... I don't want to, like, you know... cheat on Harry. That'd be wrong. I feel that very deeply. In my heart, my soul, even." She was tearing up a little.

Dave nodded, he felt tears pricking his own eyes. "Yes, I agree. But what are you suggesting, Sally?"

"Well, what if we tell him, if we ask his permission before our relationship goes that far, well... that wouldn't be cheating really, would it?"

Dave pursed his lips, thinking, before he replied. "You know, I think you are right about that. I don't see how he could object. After all, we really can't control who we fall in love with, can we? When should we go ask him?"

"Now! We should go ask him now, before I lose my nerve!"

Dave hugged her, gave her a kiss on the cheek and said "Yeah, I agree. Maybe some people will raise objections with you and I getting together, but if we are okay with it and if Harry is okay with it, what's it to them? They can go pound sand!"

They left the house and went to, in effect, ask Harry for permission to take their relationship to the next level, as the euphemism puts it.

Thirty minutes later they stood in front of Harry and poured their hearts out to him, how Sally would always love Harry, as her first and one true love and her husband first and foremost, but that she now had needs that he could no longer fulfil.

Dave told Harry that he hoped that he would not feel that a deeper, sexual relationship between Dave and Sally was in any way belittling Harry and that he, Harry, would always be his son. He even apologized for what Tegan had done to him, but he wasn't sure why he even bothered.

They asked Harry for permission to continue their relationship as they hugged, tearfully looking down at...

"Harry Dawson, aged 35, died May 1st 2022, after a short illness. Beloved husband of Sally, and dearest son of David Dawson. Much loved, deeply missed. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."