Inhibitions out the Window Ch. 03

{It took me a long time to get back into this story. I wrote it once before but it got mixed up with another and posted in error with someone else's text. Here is my attempt at the conclusion, sorry, there isn't any sex in this one. And I don't think there needs to be.}

Life on the road, it's always something new around the next bend. I didn't need to be on the road, but there was that loss in my life that filled my mind with pain each and every day.

That loss? A woman named Katey. I had thought I loved her but I wasn't sure, I let myself get distracted, I guess the term was obsessed.

Rich people, Cary and Darla, they thought that they could do just about anything they wanted to and most of the time they were right. It was a stupid accident that I even met them, an inch or two one way or the other, a second in time difference and I would never have even known that they existed.

So I found myself with a broken leg, being more or less kept and taken care of, just like a pet that got hurt. I also found myself doing things that just was not me.

The day I went up to Cary's office and found Amiko, the woman that I had thought I was falling for there, it was obvious that they had been having sex. That was a shock. It took me awhile to understand that this was just Cary's way of letting me know who was in control, who had the power. He even suggested I go up to the house and be with his wife Darla.

Even that was with his permission, and totally in his control. Darla was the same way, to her sex and money was a means to control, too.

I couldn't stand it, I loaded up my Van and drove away. Then in a few months came the next surprise, an inheritance from my Uncle. I was suddenly rich by my standards. Suddenly Cary was in the picture again, trying to take what was mine, to show me that he had the power.

I came to realize that he had known all along about the property next door, and he had made plans to take it from me, put me in my place. The one thing he just could not stand was anyone defying him.

Adverse possession, it seemed to be a silly law to me, but it was the law. Cary had me removed from my own property, that made me furious. I had to fight him in court to prove it was still mine.

There was that long battle over my inheritance, I had no chance in court and they knew it. Except I spent over a year teaching myself, by the time we finally got the case to court I was an expert in the field of real estate law.

In the end it all came down to some simple photos. My Uncle had posted the property, and he was smart. He took some photos to prove it, I found them in the stacks of documents he had left.

Normally I would have simply looked at them, they were just photos. But I had studied the laws, and I knew what they meant. I will always think my Uncle left those for me, figuring I would understand.

It was as close to perfect as it could be, Cary's lawyers entered their photos into evidence, showing the property and the open gate, tracks where Cary had ridden his bikes for years, they said.

Open and continuous and notorious, they said several times. I just entered my own photos, date stamped, showing the sign reading "No Tresspassing" clearly, both of them misspelled.

His lawyer's photos showed the same scene with no signs. But the holes where the sign had been were clear as a bell. Not over seven years as they had claimed but just three.

I saw the Judge try to stifle a smile, kept a straight face myself. Then he banged his gavel and said adverse claim is dismissed.

I won that day, all by myself against probably a quarter of a million dollars of the best legal team money can buy.

I should have been overjoyed, as I walked out of the courtroom it hit me that I didn't even care. I wanted to be back at that tiny cafe, back with my Katey that I had neglected for so long. I drove down there expecting one thing, arrived to find her lost to me.

Married to someone else.

I left the house I inherited vacant, I left the land, over 100 acres of fine property to just lie there and I became a tumbleweed. It is tough to describe my world other than to say that nothing much mattered during that time.

Looking back, those times were just a blur of faces and places.

I seemed to be able to always find work, the time I had spent at Katey's little cafe had made me into a fine short order cook. Every little town seemed to have a small cafe that wanted me. I would stop, work for a few months, then hit the road. I also worked for a few weeks in a Gas Station, once I worked stacking boxes of something on top of other boxes of something. There were a lot of those boxes, too. A week of that and I was on the road again.

There were women, not many. I found them here and there. All of them were moments, all of them became hazy memories when I left for the next place.

I never had a clue where the next stop would be or why. I spent several years doing just that, belonging nowhere, needing no one.

I did keep up with the taxes, I noticed the taxes on the house I owned kept climbing but the bare land always stayed about the same. I would drive back to the town where I kept a post office box a couple of times a year.

There would be the bills, and some junk mail, not much since I never wrote any letters or subscribed to anything it was mostly just boxholder junk.

I pulled up to the post office to check for the tax bills I knew were due. The house was up again but not much, the bill on the land made me blink.

It was up by around 2000 percent. That had to be a mistake so I drove down to the assessor's office.

The bored looking old lady pulled the files, then told me that had all been rezoned as residential, annexed into the city.

I figured I had better drive out there and take a look, it had been over four years.

The first thing I noticed was the road was wider and freshly paved. I passed row after row of homes, all new. They were all paved driveways, to expensive looking homes. When I got to my property, It all looked pretty much the same except for stakes with flags all over it. It hit me that someone had mowed it, too.

I pulled in, looked around. Then I walked down by the creek and sat down to think. I was there for about an hour when a car pulled up and two men got out and walked over to me.

"Mr. Magnusan?"

"Yes, that is me."

"We are happy to find you, we need to talk to you."

"About what?"

"We want to buy this property from you."

"I don't want to sell it."

"It might be to your benefit, the city is going to take part of it for a school up there." He waved his arm towards the fenceline bordering Cary and Darla's place.

"The rest will be mostly homesites."

"How can the City just take it?" I asked.

"Imminent Domain, for the public good."

"Oh." I knew about that from all of the research I had done. But never really thought that it would affect me, or that the City would want to come way out here. But I also realized that "way out here" had become a bit close in the four years I had been gone.

Another long drawn out court battle to hold onto the land? No way could I deal with that.

I gave up. They both were looking at me oddly, I had tears in my eyes. I brushed those away with my sleeve.

"What is the offer?" I asked.

"We can offer $10,000 per acre...cash." He smiled.

I didn't need to think very long, that was a million bucks. Sure, there would be taxes and all of that but the appraisal was $500 per acre as farmland.

It was just three weeks later when the deal completed. I did the math in my head and knew that the buyers would probably make a mint, I didn't care.

I also looked at the name of the company that I had just sold to, I didn't recognize it.

I drove back to the old house I had in town, it was cleaned up again and livable. There had been lots of dust when I arrived earlier and a half hour of work to get the door lock unstuck. I had decided to sell that too, anyway.

I turned on the old computer, it still worked fine. I started searching, it didn't take very long. The corporation that owned the 2nd Corporation that owned the company that bought my property?

Cary and Darla. They had beaten me after all. I sighed, there was no way to get away from those people.

I called a broker, listed the house and lot. I gave him my PO box number and a message machine phone number I rented. It rang the very next day, the house was sold. More paperwork, I just signed where they pointed. They handed me the check, I put it in the bank with the rest.

I was now a very rich man.

I went out and climbed in the new van I had bought, started the engine and once again I just drove away. I was tired, so very tired. I had no fight left in me. The dreams I had, but never had acted on were gone now.

I just did not care.

I drove for hours, not really even having any plans of where I was going or even why. For several years it had been like that anyway, just down the road, something around the next curve, perhaps.

And perhaps not, if not then on to the next spot in the road.

Now I was rich by the standards of most. The dreams of being rich when I wasn't? Meaningless now. There just was no satisfaction in it, hard to explain, I know. If anything, it depressed me. I think I had been suffering from depression for quite a long time.

I saw the motel sign, familiar, realized where I was. Where I had ended up, without even thinking about it, so much other stuff on my mind.

I pulled in and stopped, one place was as good as another. There was a younger lady on the counter, the old man was not around. I asked about him. She looked at me, told me he had passed away the year before.

I told her I was sorry, he was a nice old man.

"You have stayed with us before, then?" She smiled.

"Yes, it seems like a million years ago, though."

She handed me a key, I looked at it. The same room, once again. I nodded and unloaded my suitcase. Then I drove on down to the tiny town.

I pulled up in front of the Cafe, it looked exactly the same. I tried to push the door open, realized, then pulled.

"Sign says pull, you must be from the city!" The familiar singsong voice said.

"Hi, Katey." I said.

She looked up at me in shock, then she set down the plates she had in her hand and literally flew across the room into my arms.

"Dan! Oh my God! It is so good to see you!"

I hugged her back, finally she let go of me. I looked at her closely. She wore the same shapeless uniform, the same hair pulled back tightly. I spotted the few traces of grey, knew my own showed that too.

"Hungry?" She asked. That was Katey, always thinking of food.

"Yea, a side of Horse and a sack of spuds to start...and that pot of coffee.." I grinned.

"Coming right up!" She picked up the two plates she had set down and served them, then vanished into the kitchen. She was back in what had to be record time, with a steak and some hashbrowns and coffee. She set them in front of me and then sat down in the other chair.

"So where have you been, what have you been doing?" She asked.

"On the road, just from one place to another. Nowhere, really. How are things with you...and your husband?" I asked.

"He isn't with me anymore."

"Oh. Sorry to hear that."

"Don't be, I'm not."

I figured it was best to let that be so I dug into my steak.

"What are you doing later?" She asked.

"Nothing, I am staying out at the motel. Then who knows, back on the road, I guess."

"Why don't you come over to the house tonight? We need to talk."

"What about?"

"Not here, come on by the house." She got up and went back into the kitchen.

I drove up to her house at 6 PM. The red Camry was still parked out front, it was almost like everything in this town always stayed the same.

I knocked on the door, an older lady I didn't know answered.

"You must be Dan, come on in." She smiled.

I walked in just as Katey came into the living room. She gave me a hug.

"Thanks for coming." She turned to the woman and said something I didn't catch.

The woman nodded and left.

"Who is that?" I asked.

"That is Nancy, she is my babysitter."

"Babysitter?" I asked, confused.

"Yes, come on. I have someone for you to meet." She reached out and took my hand, led me into the back room which she had used as a storage room before.

There was a young girl sitting there, a half dozen dolls strewn about. She looked up at me and shyly smiled, her eyes as big as half dollars.

"Hi!" I smiled at her.

"Did you and your husband...." I turned to Katey.

"No. Her name is Danielle, Danny."

"Danielle? Why would you....oh!" I looked at the little girl and back at Katey who had tears in her eyes.

"You never told me."

"I found out right after you left and wanted to wait until you got back, then you weren't calling. I thought you didn't want me."

"I came back and you were married."

"I met Charles and thought Danielle needed a man in her life. He asked me to marry him so I did. It just didn't work out, though...." She let her voice trail off.

"So what do we do now?" She asked.

"Well...can you use a pretty good cook?"

"Yes, I can!" She smiled.

"I can do dishes, too."

"I don't know about that, how many years of college do you have?"

I laughed and reached out and hugged her.

"Are you going to stick around this time, Danny?"

"Yes, I am. I will if you want me to."

"I would like that. OK. Then we can see how it goes?"

"Sure, but I notice you have some grey hairs." I laughed at her.

"I can fix that, but I notice you have a pot belly."

"I can probably fix that, too." I grinned, as she leaned in and kissed me.

Full circle, I was home. With all the time in the world.

We went out and sat on the porch, holding hands. The Sun was fading out over the ocean, splashing the sky with streaks of red. I could hear Danielle singing softly to herself inside as she played. I knew I had a lot of catching up to do, a lot of things to make up for.

Katey put her head on my shoulder, I slipped my arm around hers. The world suddenly seemed right after so long that it had been all wrong.

I decided I would tell her about all the rest of it later.