Chance Encounter

There is a sharp 'rap, rap, rap' on the window glass. I raise my head and open my eyes expecting to see a cop, with his gun loosened in its holster checking out some drunk asleep in his car with the headlights off but the motor still running. It is Caroline. She is holding a small suitcase. At some time in the midst of my misery I must have tripped the door locks. I release them and lean across to let her in.

She looks radiant, "How did I know you would still be here…?" She smiles as I take the case from her and put it on the back seat. She has changed her clothes, her outer garments at least.

Through the whirling fog in my mind I hear myself saying: "Your father?"

"Oh, he was totally out of it in his Lay-Z-Boy. I tried to wake him, but he didn't even recognise that I was there. I left him a note to say that I'm okay. But I doubt if he'll even know that I've gone."

We look at each other in silence for a long time. Finally she murmurs softly, "I am not looking for a sugar-daddy, or substitute for my father. I will pay rent. If it's not okay could you please drop me off at a motel?"

I can hardly speak from the emotion surging through me: "And I am not looking for a carbon copy of my wife. I loved her deeply, but she is gone. If it's alright with you, I'd like to take you home."

Caroline reaches and moves the automatic shift into 'Drive'.

She says that she will pay rent, but I know that I will not allow her to. I will find her work with people I trust so that she does not feel dependent on me. Yes, I know that our relationship will most likely come to an end when she starts her university studies and mingles in that hothouse environment with young, intelligent, sexy men of her own age. But until then I shall be in paradise. May God help me to behave like an adult when that time arrives!

Epilogue

Soft murmurs of passion, delight and love are the only sounds to break the silence. Two naked bodies, slick with sweat, coil and writhe in the dim light of the bedside lamp, couple, climax ecstatically, explore, discover, re-arouse then couple again. For the gallant knight and his princess, the rest of the world no longer exists.