That Damned Blessing Ch. 01

And then came the rest, and with it the problems. She had always had an hourglass shape, with broad shoulders, chest and hips and a naturally narrow waist. But womankind had two implacable foes, time and gravity, and both of them had begun their dastardly deeds. When she was young, her boobs had been "neckbreakers" -- men would twist their heads to stare in awe as she walked by. She wore a 38F bra, and her breasts had been firm and gorgeous, with pink nipples that aimed up and out like searchlights. Time and gravity had taken their toll, and now her breasts sagged halfway to her waist and her nipples were getting lower and lower with every passing month. One of these days she was going to look in the mirror and see they were pointing straight down at her toes.

She'd always had nice arms, but they'd started going bad too. She didn't have to wear long sleeves, but she did need sleeves that covered her to the elbows. Anything less and those floppy bat wings were liable to put an eye out...which at least would mean that she didn't need to look at them anymore.

Things just got worse as she looked lower. Up until a few years ago she had never had a problem maintaining the 26-inch waist she'd had in college -- even after the kids, she'd dropped the weight and worn her old clothes. But her body's 40th birthday present to her had been persistent belly fat and a growing pot. She'd fought it tooth and nail, but she was losing. Paul's absence had made that battle harder, as the increased demands on her time and energy had meant that her six trips to the gym per week had become four, then three; nowadays she went there twice a week for yoga and cardio. So far it wasn't catastrophic -- 15 pounds, maybe -- and nothing that Spanx couldn't help with, but she had no illusions about being able to maintain that charade indefinitely.

In her college days, her hips had been 38 inches. She's gone up to 40 after the kids, and now they were 42. And that wouldn't have been so bad, because her big, sexy ass had always been one of her best features, except that cellulite was ruining the neighborhood. Her butt was now dimpled with it, and the problem only got worse on the Federal Cottage Cheese Depository that was her thighs. Her legs were still long, but now they had to be covered instead of revealed. Her calves were still good, at least, which meant she could wear sundresses and not frighten small children. Hooray for that..

And it wasn't even that Jessica McCullen was overly concerned with her looks most of the time. She had been beautiful and she had enjoyed being beautiful, enjoyed the attention it earned her and the little daily privileges that beauty conferred, but she wasn't conceited. She had always tried to look her best, but she had also always dressed fairly conservatively. She liked being looked at -- who didn't? -- but once she was with Paul, before and after their marriage, she had always cared most about being looked at by him. She had always tried to look her best for him, just as he had tried to look his best for her. And now he was getting better-looking and she was getting worse.

Well, her mother had always told her that age made men look distinguished and women look old. And wasn't it the truth, though? Paul was a gorgeous hunk spending every day surrounded by stunning brown-skinned Polynesian women in a tropical paradise, while her moon-white, freckled ass was five years away from being a Superfund site. Where was the justice in that?

Maybe it was time to start thinking about surgery. Breast lift, tummy tuck, maybe some cellulite reduction procedures. It was no crime. Lots of women did them.

Especially aging women who had beautiful, successful husbands to keep.

She frowned. She was being unfair to Paul. He had never once given any indication that he was dissatisfied with her appearance, and there was no evidence at all that he was even considering cheating on her, much less actually doing anything. But a wife worried. She had to. She had seen too many wives of a certain age blindsided by divorce, being dumped for a younger woman barely older than her kids. Not that Paul ever would...

No. Of course not.

With a last frown at the mirror, she turned to get dressed.

A little less than an hour later, Ryan stepped out of the shower in his room, The hot water was on the fritz again so he'd showered cold. He didn't really mind -- since he was barely old enough to walk, he had been almost impossible to keep out of any body of water deep enough to wet him all the way, and in Wisconsin that meant he was in cold water a lot of the time. He'd gotten used to it, even happily swimming in Lakes Michigan and Superior when he had the chance. All the hard work had paid off in a Boy's 100 Yard Freestyle gold medal at the state championships last year, possibly the proudest moment of his life. It would have been better if his dad had been there to see it, of course, but he understood how things were. He'd had a satellite phone call from Paul when he'd won, offering enthusiastic congratulations. It was just that it would have been better if it had been a big hug.

Well hey, it could be worse. If his dad wasn't working out here, the family never would have come to visit this Pacific paradise. He'd be home at swim camp or some damned thing, seeing the same old people and doing the same old things. At least here he was making memories.

He dried his short dark hair vigorously, humming something that became a mashup of Drake's Back to Back and Big Sean's Control. He toweled himself off quickly, draped the cloth around his neck, and stepped out into his bedroom --

To see his sister Kim sitting on his bed with a smart-ass grin on her face and an oversized beach tee covering her body down to her bare mid-thigh.

"SHIT!" he yelped, leaping back into the bathroom. "Don't you fucking knock?"

"Don't you lock your door?" she countered.

"I thought I did! The lock sticks."

"Right. Soooo...is it always that small?"

"Oh shut up," he said miserably. He was never going to hear the end of this. "I just took a cold shower."

"What's the matter? That Spanish tween you've been screwing stand you up?"

"Tween? She's 18 years old! Why are you even in my room?"

"No she's not!" Kim scoffed. "She's like 13 years old, tops."

"She's two months older than I am."

"You sure?"

"Yes! Now leave."

"She looks 13."

"Oh for Chrissakes, she does not. She has boobs."

"She's 18 and she has those boobs? I had bigger boobs than that when I was 13."

"You were a bigger boob than that when you were 13. If you're not gonna leave, at least hand me the clothes on the chair."

Kim stood, took the clothes, and handed them around the corner of the bathroom where her little brother was cowering. "Been out to see the storm damage? That cabana bar down by the beach got blown away."

"I went the other way," Ryan told her, pulling on his underwear and shorts. "There's all kinds of crap up on the beach, trees and stuff. A rowboat."

"Well thank God the storm is over so I can get back to getting a kickass tropical tan." .At 21, Kim's body much resembled her mom's body at that age, though slightly less cantilevered, and she had her father's dark hair and complexion so she could actually tan. Among admittedly slim competition, she had the best body on the beach in Ranu Ratu and she knew it. Yesterday when the storm was raging had been the first day since their arrival that she hadn't been out styling one of the many, many small swimsuits she'd brought. And lo, how the men did mourn.

Ryan emerged from the bathroom wearing shorts and pulling a white #12 Packer's tee shirt down over his torso. "When we get back home, you're going to be brown and shriveled."

"Yeah, speaking of shriveled," she said dryly.

"COLD. SHOWER."

She snickered, then added, "I gotta say though, Mr. Shrinkage aside, that little Spanish girl is lucky. You have a slammin' bod."

He plugged his ears with his fingers and shut his eyes tight. "LALALALALA I do not want to hear my sister tell me I have a slamming body!"

She hit him in the stomach with a pillow. "Don't make it weird. Swimmers all have great bodies. You going to hang out with your senorita today?"

"Probably." Until the resort was finished a year from now, there was little to do here but tan, swim, eat, drink, and fuck, and damned few people to do it with.

Kim attracted a hell of a lot of attention, but everyone knew she was Paul McCullen's daughter and therefore off limits...though she had gotten together a couple of times with a hot Aussie bulldozer driver named Jerry, a fact that Ryan knew but Paul did not. Still, she was more interested in tanning and swimming than in dick this trip, so she was mostly content being an object of comedically plentiful unrequited lust.

She was just about to tease him again about his "tween girlfriend" when there was a knock on the door and Jess's voice called, "Ryan? Are you in there?"

"Yeah mom, come on in," he called. "Door's open. Apparently."

Jess stepped into the room. She had put on a pale green sundress that looked great with her red hair and topped it with a shawl, and she was carrying her enormous floppy sun hat. Her first day here she had mistaken the tropical sun for what she was used to back home, and her ginger's pale complexion had left her with a sunburn that had incapacitated her for two days until it peeled off and left her spitefully fish-belly white again. She did not plan to make that mistake a second time. "Oh, you're here too, Kim. Good."

"Hey mom," Kim said. "What's up?"

"Well I have a good idea!" Jess said. "How about we get in a jeep and drive up to the summit of the volcano? We can have a picnic lunch and have a great view!"

That actually sounded more interesting to Ryan than another day on the beach, so he nodded. "I'm in. Can I bring Lexy?"

To her credit, Jess did not frown at the mention of the girl her son had been spending so much time poking. She didn't mind Lexy really, most of the time; today, though, she'd hoped for a family outing. Her eyes were unhappy when she said, "Certainly, that would be fine."

Ryan knew his mom's expressions well enough to pick up on the vibe. "Actually, um, now that I think about it, I think she mentioned doing something with her mom today."

"Like what?" Kim asked, enjoying making her little brother twist in the wind a bit.

"You know, I didn't ask."

"Oh, well that's fine too," Jess said brightly. "Kim, what do you think?"

"You know...I think I'll pass," Kim said. "I wanted to hit the beach today."

"Oh come on, honey," Jess cajoled. "You've been on the beach every day that we've been here."

"Not today," Kim corrected. "Or yesterday, for that matter. My tan is already fading. And we only have another week and a half here."

Now Jessica did not hide her disappointment. "But don't you want to go to the top of a volcano?"

"Technically it's been an extinct volcano for like half a million years," Kim observed. "So really it's just a hill. And it's not even a huge hill. We have hills back in Sconny, but we don't have the ocean."

Jess sighed in exasperation. "Ryan, talk some sense into your sister."

"Smarter men than me have tried and failed," he said, holding up his hands in a warding gesture. "That's a volcano I can't climb."

Jess exhaled. "Are you sure you won't change your mind?"

"Positive. Besides, the bar got wrecked, so maybe that cute bartender will be giving away storm-damaged stock."

"Dream big, Kim," Ryan said. "Anyway, mom, you've got me. I'll be your consolation prize."

"You're not a consolation prize, sweetie," Jess assured her son with a bright smile. "Come on, we'll have fun without your bummer of a sister."

"Bummer?" Kim asked, wrinkling her nose. "That's a fine thing to call your daughter."

Jess turned her sweet smile to Kim and said, "I wouldn't have called you that if you hadn't passed up a trip to a volcano to lie on a beach like a total load."

"Worst. Mother. Ever," Kim moaned, and then hugged Jess. "You have a great trip. Try to keep dumbo from falling in the lava."

"There's no lava," Ryan reminded her. "The volcano's been extinct for half a million years."

"You'll find a way," Kim said with a grin. She leaned in and whispered into his ear, "I'll find Lexy and tell her you won't be around this afternoon."

Ryan smiled and squeezed his sister's hand, then said to his mother, "Well, I'm ready. Let's get out of here."

Twenty minutes later, Jess and Ryan drove out of the small capital town in a rented jeep, Jess behind the wheel and Ryan watching the scenery. In the back was a hamper with a small roasted chicken, potato salad, a salad made of fruits grown on the island plantation, and bottles of Beloka sparkling water. It was a typically gorgeous day, with the sun high and dazzling and the deep blue sky dotted with cottony clouds. There was obviously some storm damage, but for the most part the island seemed to have come through alright. They crossed several streams that normally were calf-deep trickles but today were swollen almost out of their banks with runoff from the previous day's downpour, heading across the coastal plain toward the low volcanic cone that loomed ahead.

There wasn't much chatting in the jeep, which was fine with both of them. Ryan and Jessica got along as well as could be expected, but they spent so much time together that they had already made most of the idle chatter they could make long before they came to the island. Sometimes one or the other would make a comment and they would talk for a minute or so, but soon enough the comfortable silence returned.

The ground began to rise as the mountain approached, gradually at first but quickly getting steeper, and shortly thereafter they topped a rise and came in view of the Nawoka River. They had crossed it once before a week after they'd gotten to the island, and then it had been little more than a glorified stream that gathered the runoff of the daily rain showers from the mountain and sent it to the sea. Today though it was a whitewater torrent. A quarter of a mile up, a slight bend in the river had corralled much of the debris from upstream, but there was still a pileup against the bridge. As they watched, a crew of workers on the other side hauled a log away from a piling and up onto the bank with a tow truck.

Jess eased down the dirt road to the river. The workers -- natives all -- waved at her cheerfully. She called, "Is the bridge safe?"

"Yes it is, ma'am," one of them called back. The English spoken on Ranu Ratu was Australian-accented, as it had originally been taught in mission schools by Australian nuns. "No problem at all."

Looking up toward the mountain, she saw there was a dirt road on each side of the river. "Which road goes to the top?"

"The one on the right," the worker answered. "The bridges upstream are washed out, so you need to come back down here if you want to cross."

With thanks and a wave, Jessica drove across the bridge, turned, and began to ascend the mountain. Within a couple of minutes the road had become steep enough and was muddy enough that the four-wheel drive was engaged, and shortly after that they hit their first switchback.

"It's steeper than it looks from far away," Ryan offered. "It's a real mountain, not a hill."

Jessica nodded. "Everything is so lush and verdant too. It's a real jungle up here."

"Yeah, it's crazy to imagine that this whole thing is basically lava and ash. Half a million years ago, this was erupting --"

A brightly-colored tropical bird swooped over them, missing the windshield by a couple of feet. Jessica jammed on the brakes, then grinned self-consciously. "Sorry. That was the yellowest thing I've ever seen."

They shared a laugh and then drove on, passing through a small village of ramshackle wooden buildings. The people there were friendly, and a child stopped their car to give them a large papaya and to point out that the bridge that normally crossed there was gone. They thanked her and drove on.

A few minutes later they reached a small plateau, a table of land that couldn't even be seen from below. They parked, got out, and took pictures and video of the gorgeous vista the ledge provided, with the steep mountain leading down to the broad, peopled plain, and then beyond that the blue ocean swept by lines of breakers and dotted with islets.

"So," Jess asked after a couple of minutes, "was this worth the trip?"

"Definitely!" Ryan said, turning his phone camera on her. "And we aren't even at the top yet. Tell Kim what she's missing by washing up on the beach like a dead seal."

"Oh no, I don't want to rub it in," Jess said demurely. "She'll feel bad enough when she sees the video and realizes she skipped the best thing on the island!"

Ryan turned the camera to face himself and added cheerfully, "Hear that, Kim? Mom doesn't want to tell you you're a dummy. I, on the other hand, have no problem with it...dummy."

Jessica covered her mouth to hide her smirk -- a mother shouldn't laugh when one of her children mocks another, even if the other passed up a trip to a volcano to lie on a beach again -- and they were back on the road a couple of minutes later.

They spotted the crowd first. Forty or so natives of all ages were clustered on the opposite bank of the river, and a second glance showed they were in distress, frantically waving their arms and shouting words that couldn't be heard over the roar of the stream in flood.

"What's that about?" Jess asked with a frown, slowing the jeep to a crawl.

"I dunno," Ryan said. "They look pretty upset though."

"They do. Are they pointing at the river?"

"Why would they point at -- SHIT! STOP THE CAR!" Ryan's cry was so fierce and so sudden that she slammed the brakes hard before she even knew her foot was moving, and the jeep was still rocking when Ryan hurled himself out the door and took off toward the river at a sprint. For a moment Jessica couldn't see what the problem was --

And then she did see. A small child was in the river, clinging to a fallen tree with nothing but a red shirt, a single brown arm, and a terrified little face poking above the whitewater. The perch the child was clinging to looked like it would be swept away at any instant.

Ryan never hesitated. His shirt and shoes hit the bank an instant before he plunged into the water and he struck out fearlessly, powerful strokes carrying him through the swirling eddies and past rocks and debris that had lodged there, swimming less like a man than a creature born to the water.

After an awestruck instant, Jessica felt a stab of cold terror for her son -- this was killing water, the kind people drowned in. It was a raging flood on the side of a mountain and Ryan was taking his life into his hands and --

And then she was moving too, running to the front of the jeep where the tow cable lay on its coil. The cable was thin and light, but strong enough to drag a medium-sized tree out of a road -- and certainly strong enough to drag two people out of a river. Her son could reach that child, but he was going to need help to get both of them out of the water alive.

In a short span of rapid heartbeats Ryan was there. At the last instant an eddy sucked him under and threatened to dash him against the log that the child clung to, but he threw out an arm to ward the blow and somehow -- he never knew how -- wound up clutching the tree trunk. He looked to his left and saw the face of the child -- a boy, he thought -- wide-eyed in fear and staring at him. The current was still threatening to pull him under and sweep him away, but he took a moment to solidify his hold and then began working his way toward the boy, hand over hand, fighting with everything he had to stay above water and hold on.