The Second Generation Ch. 02 - Finale

I went down to the first floor. All of Yvonne's books were gone from the shelves we'd recently placed them on. Emile's books, which we'd boxed up, were back on the shelves. I went into the dining room where we'd left the photo albums containing the pictures of Emile and Anna. Those were gone. Cassie had followed me. I turned to her. I was getting upset and panicked. "She took the photo albums," I said. We'd shown Cassie the albums, so she knew what was in them and what the pictures meant.

Cassie seemed puzzled too. "Maybe she just put them away."

"Away is in Emile's cases up in the attic," I said.

"Go look," Cassie suggested.

I'd never gone into the attic nude, but I did that morning. Cassie followed me up there. Emile's cases were right where I'd left them. Opening the cases, I saw that Emile's albums were placed neatly inside. I looked at Cassie. I was speechless.

We came down from the attic and brushed dust and cobwebs off each other. I went all over the house. All of Yvonne's things were gone. I couldn't understand why, and I couldn't understand how Yvonne got her stuff out of the house without me knowing. I couldn't believe she gotten everything into her car. It was more like Yvonne had vanished than that she'd moved out.

"Call her," Cassie said. That was a problem. Yvonne and I had never called each other on the phone. I sheepishly admitted that I didn't have Yvonne's phone number. "I'm sure there's an explanation," Cassie said. "Yvonne wouldn't run out on you. She'll call. Let me fix you some coffee."

Of course, my imagination came up with several explanations for what Yvonne had done. None of them made much sense. I was crushed. Think of how you felt when a lover dumped you and multiply that by one thousand: that's how I felt. Cassie stayed with me, naked not that I noticed, until she had to go to work in Athens.

I spent the next few days waiting to hear something and growing more despondent. I wasn't swimming. I wasn't eating. I wasn't reading. I was just waiting for something to prove this was just a bad dream and that Yvonne was really lying naked beside me. It wasn't a dream.

Cassie had been checking on me daily, although I wasn't responsive to her. That Friday, Cassie grabbed me by the shoulders. "Harry, you've got to eat! You must live! You're a lawyer. You know how to do these things. Investigate. Find out what's going on." That was a better plan than what I'd been doing. The problem was that I had no real starting point.

I knew where Yvonne said she'd gone to school. I also knew that the educational privacy laws barred schools from giving out personal information about students or former students. I concocted an elaborate story about Yvonne having rented a house in Ohio, having left without leaving contact information, and having left behind a bracelet that looked valuable. I said that I was contacting the schools because she'd also left behind alumni mail from Brown and Johns Hopkins. I think both schools suspected I was a stalker. I got nowhere.

I tried an Internet search. I found about 60 Yvonne Charets just in the US. I looked at each one and none seemed close to my Yvonne. In a rare moment of insight, I searched Anna and Francois Charet. That produced some material in French that I had to run through a translation program. What I found that mattered were death notices for Francois and Anna. Both had died when Yvonne had said they did. As Yvonne had said, Francois lived in Paris and Anna lived near the town of Beziers in the south of France. Francois and Anna had, according to the death notices, been married to each other.

What was shocking about the death notices was that they mentioned only one child of Anna and Francois: a woman named Sophia who was in her forties and now lived in Guadeloupe. I showed the translated death notices to Cassie. "Did Yvonne even exist?" I asked.

"She existed," Cassie said. "I saw her daily. We swam together. You made love to her. Mom saw you two walking naked in the woods."

"Is the answer that she wasn't really Yvonne?" I asked. "Did she, whoever she was, simply invent Yvonne?"

"But," Cassie said, "she knew a lot about Emile when she first showed up here, didn't she?" I nodded. "She didn't get that information from you. Who else would it have come from but Anna? I'm sorry. I don't have any rational explanation. Call the woman in Guadeloupe."

It took some work, but I found a number for Sophia Charet, now Sophia Dufour. Madame Dufour was, to say the least, irritated by my call. Yes, Anna and Francois Charet were her parents. No, she did not have a sister, much less one named Yvonne. In fact, she had no female relatives named Yvonne. Please do not call again. If you do, I must report you to the authorities.

I'd thought the disintegration of SHR and of my legal career had been my low point. At least, then, I'd known I hadn't personally done anything wrong. In this case, I'd not only lost the woman I'd become infatuated with, but I'd been played for a fool; a pretty big fool I thought.

I had to give Cassie a lot of credit. She was the safety net that kept me from going completely over the edge. I also realized that Cassie was a much more intelligent person than I had initially credited her for.

By early August, Cassie had finished cleaning up the vineyard and was just tending it. I was still very down from the sudden disappearance of the woman I knew as Yvonne Charet. Around noon on the first Friday in August, Cassie came into the house wearing her vineyard clothes. I was slowly getting back to exercising. She found me nude in the workout room.

"Harry," Cassie said, "the wine store is having a tasting tonight from 6:00 to 8:30. The only times you've been out of the house since Yvonne vanished were to go to the convenience store in Eden. You must get out. I'm ordering you to come to this winetasting tonight!"

Cassie's timing was good. I was starting to feel claustrophobic in the house. I just hadn't had the energy or desire to do anything. I cleaned up, shaved, and put on a decent shirt and slacks. I even grabbed a sport coat. I drove up to Athens.

I hadn't been in the wine store in a while. They had renovated it and expanded their inventory. They had also built a nice area in the back, including an outdoor patio, for tastings.

What really caught my attention at the winetasting was Cassie MacDowell. I said she cleaned up well when she went to work. That night, she had cleaned up spectacularly. A red/orange sundress highlighted the red in her hair and showed her voluptuous figure to excellent advantage. The dress was short enough that, coupled with her heels, it provided a very appealing display of leg. A few minutes on her hair and a slight bit of make-up were the finishing touches that produced a Cassie MacDowell I'd not seen before.

Along with the manager, Cassie was clearly in charge of the tasting. She was very knowledgeable about the wines and had a warm, friendly manner that made the "there are no stupid wine questions" platitude seem sincere. Of course, all the men at the tasting paid her a lot of attention.

I wasn't drunk, but I'd had a couple of glasses before I had the opportunity to talk to Cassie. That probably caused me to say something I ordinarily wouldn't have. After we'd chitchatted for a moment, I told Cassie, "You really look fantastic." Cassie stopped talking and just looked at me. I thought I'd just screwed up and tried to salvage the situation by adding, "That's a really great dress."

"You like it?" Cassie asked. "I thought you liked my swimsuit better."

I had only seen Cassie swimming nude. It took me a second to pick up on what she'd said. I smiled and said, "Well, the swimsuit I've seen is definitely your best outfit."

Cassie smiled and said, "I'll have to wear it around you more often if you like it that well." She turned away to answer a customer's question about a wine.

I left the tasting about 8:00. Fortunately, I was ok to drive. I got home about 10:00 p.m. I stripped off and started reading a new book I'd ordered. About 11:30, I heard a car come up my driveway. I went to the door. I couldn't imagine who'd be coming here at that time of night. I waited behind the closed door, expecting the car to turn and leave. After a longish time, my front doorbell rang. I was so used to being nude at home that I opened the door without thinking that I had no clothes on.

Cassie MacDowell was standing on my front porch, nude. She smiled. "You said you liked my swimsuit," she said, "and I thought you might like to see it tonight. I see you have your suit on too."

"Come in, please," I said. Seeing her standing nude in my foyer, I realized that it wasn't the dress and make-up that had transformed Cassie. She was simply a very beautiful woman. I had failed to realize that before. "May I get you something to drink?" I asked.

Cassie laughed. "I had a glass of merlot after we closed the tasting. That's all I need." She stepped to me, close enough that we were almost touching. "You know, Harry," she said, "there's something we can do in these suits besides swim laps." Cassie put an arm around me and kissed me on the lips. I put my arm around her and pulled her into me.

Cassie's erect nipples poked my chest. I moved my hand from the small of her back onto her bare ass. I could feel the muscles in her hips. We both opened our mouths and let our tongues become acquainted. I reached my other hand up and took her right nipple between my thumb and forefinger.

Cassie began stroking my balls with her right hand. My dick pressed into her belly as it became hard. Cassie broke our kiss and said, "I like the feel of that against my belly." She took a small step back and looked at me. "Harry," she said, "you look wonderful naked."

I led Cassie upstairs to the bedroom. I'd thrown out all the sheets I had when Yvonne was with me and got new ones. Cassie pulled back the cover and lay down on her back with her legs over the edge of the bed. I knelt on the floor, pushed her knees apart, and began licking her pussy lips. Then, I sucked on her clit.

I'd only been giving Cassie oral for a short time when she said, "Harry, I want you in me." She swiveled around so that her legs were on the bed. I got on the bed above her. My dick was above Cassie's mound. She took it in her hand and said, "Please?" I lowered myself down and slid into Cassie.

I started thrusting into Cassie with the pace I gotten used to with Yvonne. After a few seconds, Cassie said, "Slow down. Let's not come for a long time. This is so nice."

I moved in Cassie just fast and forcefully enough to keep us both aroused. Cassie was right, it was very, very nice. We didn't talk. We just looked into each other's eyes.

It seemed like we stayed at our low intensity lovemaking for half the night. I later figured that we probably only took an hour, still longer by far than I'd done with any other woman. Something unspoken passed between Cassie and me during that time. Part of it, for me, was purging the painful memory of Yvonne; but it was more than that. I was letting Cassie into a place in my being where no one else, not even Yvonne, had gone. It was a place in me I hadn't known about until Cassie MacDowell showed it to me.

Cassie finally said, "Ok, make me come." I picked up my pace as did she. Sex with Cassie was different from anything I'd done with a woman before. She was the biggest woman I'd had sex with and, although it wasn't that visible, she was very muscular with very little body fat. There was something very arousing about feeling her taut abs beneath me and her powerful thighs wrapped around me. Cassie was strong enough that she was pushing me every bit as hard as I was pushing into her.

I thought I'd shared the ultimate orgasm with Yvonne. I was so wrong. When Cassie came, she locked her thighs around me and dug her fingers into my back as if to pull my whole body inside her. It was extraordinary. I came inside Cassie, hard, just as her body convulsed and she arched her neck and back.

Cassie held me for a moment with more pressure than I'd ever had on my body. When she relaxed, she took a deep breath and kissed me. "I know you came," she said, "I felt it."

"Did you come?" I asked.

"Oh, god, yes!" Cassie took another breath. "Don't pull out," she said, "I like having you right where you are." I was in no hurry to pull out.

Of course, Cassie stayed the night. We got up in the morning and walked nude down two floors to the pool. We swam our laps, although I'd swum so little since Yvonne left that I was barely hanging on at the end. We showered together and went to the kitchen nude.

Cassie opened the refrigerator, looked in, and said, "Harry, you don't have shit here to eat. If I'm staying here, we need to get some food." We hadn't talked about her staying, but I wanted her to. We fixed coffee, dressed, and made the long roundtrip to Athens to stock up on some decent food.

It was Saturday, so Cassie was off from the wine store. When we got back from Athens, we undressed and put the food away. It was already late afternoon, so I lit the grill. We had a simple meal of chops, corn, and salad which we ate nude on the patio. As we were finishing dinner, Cassie looked off into the east. "I owe you and Yvonne at least one thing," she said.

"What is that?" I asked.

"Well, except for the time I was at Kent," Cassie said, "I've spent my whole life in this area. Until I saw you and Yvonne, I had never taken all my clothes off and gone outside. It's much nicer around here when you are naked."

Cassie took a sip of wine. "I guess there's a couple of other things I owe you for too," she said.

"And what are those?" I asked.

"Well," she said, "if Yvonne hadn't gotten the three of us swimming together nude, I'm not sure I would have realized how much I like you and I'm not sure you would have noticed me."

I looked across the table at Cassie. She was very different from Yvonne, which I now considered a good thing. I now appreciated that Cassie was every bit as physically beautiful as Yvonne and was a much more beautiful person inside. "I'm pretty sure I would have noticed you," I replied.

"Harry," Cassie asked, "is it possible that Yvonne was some supernatural force, or maybe some shared delusion, that was meant to bring us together?"

"I don't know," I said, "but, whatever caused it, I'm glad it happened."

"I am too," Cassie said.

Cassie and I didn't have sex that night. We just cuddled in bed nude until we fell asleep. The next morning, after coffee, Cassie said, "Let's walk in the woods."

"Nude?" I asked.

"Of course, nude," Cassie replied as if I'd asked a dumb question.

Hand-in-hand, Cassie and I walked up the hill from the house. We reached a point where the trees were close enough that we had to walk single file. I let Cassie lead because she seemed to have a destination in mind. After a bit, I realized where we were going.

I followed Cassie out onto the outcrop. It was a bright, sunny morning. You could see the valley clearly, including people moving around outside the few houses. "This is a great spot," Cassie said. "I know you and Yvonne enjoyed it. I want to claim it as ours."

I was surprised. I didn't think anyone had seen Yvonne and me fuck on the outcropping. "You saw us up here?" I asked.

Cassie smiled. "Yeah. I followed you two on a few of your nude hikes." She pointed further up the hill. "There's a place up there that's screened by evergreens, but you can see this outcrop very clearly. I'd watch what the two of you were doing and get myself off up there."

I stepped to Cassie and took her in my arms. "From now on," I said, "if you want to get off, you tell me. I'll be happy to help."

Cassie smiled. Any time, any place?" she asked.

"With you, yes," I replied.

"Be careful," Cassie said. "I might take you up on that. They might arrest us and throw us in jail."

"If we're naked and sharing a cell, I'm fine with that," I replied.

"Even with everyone walking by seeing us?" Cassie asked.

"Even with," I answered. I started playing with her nipple.

Cassie thought for a moment. "You know, doing it with other people watching sounds like it might be fun."

"I don't think the folks in the valley can see us," I said.

"I don't care," Cassie replied. "I want it here and now. Besides," Cassie giggled, "there might be someone like me up the hill watching."

Because Cassie wanted to think we were being seen, we made love standing up. It was a strain because Cassie wrapped her legs around me and I had to hold her while she got us off. She was worth it. They weren't our best orgasms, but we had fun with each other on the outcrop that day.

We were walking through the woods back to the house when I heard movement on my right. "Probably my mom," Cassie laughed. A couple minutes later, we saw that it was, indeed, Rose MacDowell. "No hiding from her now," Cassie said. Instead, Cassie took my hand and led me in the direction of her mother.

As we approached Rose, I was very conscious of the gun I knew she carried. I was, frankly, fearful of her reaction on meeting her daughter and me in the woods completely nude.

Cassie knew her mother much better than I did. Cassie walked right up to Rose, tugging me behind her, and said, "Hi Mom. Nice day for a walk. You remember Harry Stone?"

Rose looked up. She didn't say anything. She just looked both of us up and down. I'm not sure any lover ever gave my body a more intense visual inspection. Cassie seemed relaxed and kept smiling. After a long silence, Rose went "humph," and started walking again. She took maybe five steps away from us, turned, and said, "Bout time one of them Stone men hooked up with a really good woman."