Fifty Dollars a Night

Well, after a lot of Sandy's looking after me, my neck and leg healed up. After a lot of therapy, I could walk almost as good as before. The Captain was right though. The review board declined to put me back on duty. I filed for medical retirement that summer.

I had to do something or I knew I'd go nuts, so I started working with a private investigator in the area. A couple of years later, I got tired of working for someone else. After scouting around, we moved to Indianapolis, and I started my own investigative office.

Sandy stayed by my side through all the healing and therapy, and through the period when I wasn't working. As soon as I started at the PI firm, I asked her to marry me. The wedding was in October, almost a year after I'd picked her up on Hayworth. I took a lot of ribbing about robbing the cradle from the guys at the station, but I knew they were all a little jealous. They gave us a set of pots and pans because I'd told them about Sandy's cooking.

Little Jeanne Elizabeth was born a year later and Tommy Martin two years after that. Jeanne will graduate this year and is headed off to college to study music. Tommy decided he liked cooking when he was ten, and he wants to be a chef. Sandy and I are proud of them both. Neither one is around the house much anymore. They have their circle of friends and only come home to eat and sleep. That leaves Sandy and me alone again after all these years.

She's in the kitchen now, putting the icing on a cake for Tommy's birthday party tomorrow. She'll join me a bit later and we'll probably end up in bed making love. Since the kids were old enough to know about sex, we've had a code we use. I'll ask her if she's going to spend the night, and she'll ask me if I have fifty dollars.