The Light and The Fire Ch. 03

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This was over twenty years ago, and we've all grown into so much more.

I still live in Omaha and work as a CPA and tax preparer; in light of some of my -- shall we say -- less savory clients, I even took up private investigation. I've been shot at a few times, but always by punks with bad aim. That's still been helpful to land the triggermen in the joint for a while, and keeps me here to tell things.

Melanie's travel business suffered a little after 9/11 and the grounding of flights. When this pandemic slowed international travel, it suffered that much more. Domestic travel, however, still keeps going -- and that keeps her going. She's still got that Ashwood energy level about her, which helps her drive her business.

Senior trip packages are her stock in trade; this notwithstanding, Sara didn't get one with her class. Then again, the Villa Vista class of 1998 had north of three hundred kids; no way anyone can corral all that lot. This, however, was no problem for someone with a travel agent for a mom; They took a week off, one-upping us forty-six Vikings (who, in 1979, went to Chicago for four and three) by spending a week in New York. I'll have to do that someday.

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When I married Caroline, back in 1987, she weighed one-sixty; she's now pushing two hundred. She carries it, however, on a five-eight frame, with gray-streaked brown hair which hangs to the small of her back when let down. This gives her a gravity and -- dare I say it -- a regal grace, commanding both the respect and the love of her students. She's fifty-eight, but finances notwithstanding, her only plan of retirement is "feet first." She is, in short, the living embodiment of "Find what you love to do, and you'll never work a day in your life."

My boys are both Kansas Jayhawks, having gotten involved in their music program; both even marched and played trumpet. They may not have made careers of that, but they have a love for it still. Joe especially enjoys busking over his day-job lunch breaks in downtown Kansas City; he's thirty, single, and happy to remain so for the time being. DJ, meanwhile, got into IT and lives in central Tennessee; he's thirty-two, married to a full-blood Florida Cubana named Viviana García, and they have four-year-old Olivia, the granddaughter I share with Caroline.

I don't see as much of Caroline, the boys, or Olivia as I would like to do, but social media is truly a godsend; we keep up with each other most every day that way. It's been especially good in helping Melanie and Caroline build a decent friendship; while they'll never really look at each other as the sisters they never had, each has embraced being stepmothers (after a fashion) to the other's children.

As for my Sara -- after her graduation in 2002, she got right into a good job as a physical therapist in Lincoln; she's now the office manager of that clinic. While working there, she took an interest in a year-older coworker who had also been a classmate in her program -- Kyle Rochdale, who had taken this path after learning to walk properly again following a car accident when he was seventeen. They hit it off, as young people will, fell in love, and were married in the summer of 2005. I didn't feel I had the privilege to walk her down the aisle, so Melanie did that, solo. I did come by myself, but had Caroline and the boys up as well. It's an experience I will treasure forever, as it represents the only occasion ever in which Melanie, Caroline, the boys, and I were all in a single place together with Sara and with all four of her grandparents; of the four, we lost the last of them, my father, in 2019.

Kyle had been a top baseball and basketball player in his high school, and now coaches those in a small town whose population is now about forty-five hundred to five thousand people. He's also something else -- he and Sara, by having twins named Abigail and Addison, made grandparents of Melanie and me. The girls turned twelve in August, and are almost taller than their five-two grandmother; Abbey, as that spelling of her name suggests, is the quieter, more studious, more introverted of them. Addie, on the other hand, is no slouch academically, but is the athlete of the two, with basketball being her big thing. I just hope she doesn't blow her knee out, or something like that. And where do the Rochdale family live? You guessed it -- they're Ashwood Vikings; they have a soccer program now, too.

We're not really what you'd call "one big happy family," but we're close enough and happy enough not to care.

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On June 18, 2021, Melanie and I met for dinner out, to celebrate both of us turning sixty this year. We'd had something of a party earlier that week in Lincoln, with Sara and her family, but this Friday night -- Melanie's actual birthday -- was just the two of us. Afterward, I was planning to simply walk to her door and be seen off -- but instead, on impulse, I reached for her hand; she didn't take it, but put her arm around me, and we went to the door together. We then faced each other.

"I need to tell you something," she said, both her hands threaded into both of mine.

"I'm listening."

"My heart felt it the day we conceived Sara, but I was too emotional to say it -- and it would have set everything wrong for forty years if I had."

"That's how I feel, about what I wanted to say."

"But we're not those kids anymore, and we have all the richness of those years now -- so who wants to go first?"

"Doesn't matter," I smiled.

She leaned up and kissed me with exquisite tenderness, her arms sliding around my neck. "I love you, Daniel John Everton. Always have, always will."

We both sniffled together. "And I love you, Melanie Dianne Clayton. I, too, always have and always will."

I hadn't set out to plan on such a thing, but it's always good to be prepared -- that is to say, I remembered to bring condoms this time.