******** CHAPTER TWO
The years passed. While in college, I found a girl named Miranda that I was fond of and was 98% in love with, married her, produced a lovely daughter named Clara, and then we drifted off into divorce after a few years. I was already making pretty good money right out of school, but my ex couldn't resist the urge to have an affair and attempt to trade up to a slightly better model. It was 'my fault', she said, for working all of those long hours and not giving her enough attention.
I was bitter about it for about ten or fifteen years, but I got over it and we're reasonably friendly these days, for our daughter's sake if nothing else. Miranda is on husband number five now, but I think this one might last. She traded down for a man with half the income of her latest ex, but chose a good man who treats her like a queen instead. Money isn't everything.
Another old saying is that it is true that you never forget your first love. I never did.
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Naturally, I didn't quite give my entirely too smart and precocious daughter Clara the full play by play of our only sexual experience. I just insinuated that we had been intimate, but left the details for her very fertile imagination. She's totally shameless and would at the drop of a hat tell me all of the details of her couplings, as if I were one of her university girlfriends. I have to be firm with her and say 'too much information' and hold my hands over my ears a lot, but despite this fault she is still a delight to be around.
Still, it took four or five direct orders to her to stop her from making a full-frontal direct approach to Candice upon my behalf. Grudgingly, I did allow her to use her own personal account to make an end-run into find out more information.
Back up in Austin for the semester at the University of Texas, my daughter successfully tunneled her way into Candice's life via every electronic backdoor she could find. The big break in the case was finding that Candice apparently had a daughter at UT also, and my scheming but adorable daughter had ferreted her out and made personal contact with her. Quite quickly the two of them met for a drink after classes and quickly hit it off, becoming close friends. There was a hint that the two of them had rumpled a few blankets or bed sheets together themselves, but I invoked my 'Way too much information' clause, and held the phone away from my ear until she changed the subject away from the juicy gynecological details. I gathered that Aurora, Candice's daughter was very beautiful (and cuddly) in a girl next door sort of way.
I don't mind the concept of 'Lesbian until Graduation' (LUG), or that my tall and curvy daughter prefers this method of birth control and to prevent other male related 'relationship' distractions from her studies, but I just don't need to hear the juicy details... it makes my pants too tight in the front.
In her triumphant phone call home a few weeks later, Clara gave me the lowdown on what she had learned about Candice. It actually wasn't a whole lot, as her daughter Aurora was a bit estranged from her mother at the moment. She didn't even know who her natural father was and there had been no recent step-fathers. Aurora was smart, pretty and extremely independent, having earned two different scholarships to fund her university education -- and she was more than a bit of a free spirit. Reading between the lines I could tell that Clara was very smitten, maybe even in real love for the first time.
"Good for you!" I assured her. I couldn't blame her one little bit. Even if our daughters each had only inherited half of Candice's and my magnetic connection to each other, they'd be lucky to ever separate either, once joined together.
About Candice, Clara could find out relatively little. She apparently lived in a tiny run down efficiency apartment, didn't own a car, and worked for near minimum wage doing something at some local shopping mall. Getting by somehow in life, but not really doing too very well.
It was also unclear as to exactly what the disagreement was between mother and daughter, but it probably involved Aurora's disapproval over a recent boyfriend of her mother's, and now that he was gone their relationship was slowly mending again. Apparently, Candice had been divorced at least once and had trouble maintaining any sort of romantic relationship since. Candice did love her daughter, regularly sending her any money that she could spare, but she was apparently living on the knife edge of utter poverty.
All very interesting, but none of this helped me to locate her very much. Assuming that I was willing to throw myself out the door and drive for four hours to track down a girl I'd once had sex with over twenty years ago. Darn tooting I was!
I send Clara back to work to at least pry the name of the shopping mall that Candice worked at out of Aurora's tight and secretive (but apparently very kissable lips). It took another three weeks, but a week before the Thanksgiving holiday I was armed with the name of the mall and some vague map instructions on how to find the place and off I went. The driving weather was lovely, it was bright but a little cool, ideally suited for a long road trip, but the miles seemed to stretch endlessly.
*******
Would she even remember me? I doubted it. It had been over twety years, nearly exactly.
Could I even recognize her today? Once my eyes had captured her from far across a crowded room, but now I wasn't nearly so keen of sight. I needed glasses now. Well at least I still had all my original hair, and mostly the same color. Just a little silver in with the golden red. I wish I could say the same thing about my waistline. No one is the same weight they were at seventeen... but I began to wish I hadn't added quite as much extra stomach padding.
Even if she remembers me and recognizes me, would she even care? I'd probably be some pimply teen who had banged her decades ago. There would first be the look of shock, then embarrassment. She'd exchange pleasantries and talk in general terms about the past, but in the end she'd hugged me goodbye as though my body were wrapped in electric barbed wire. She'd leave without even a hint of a look back.
Besides, there's an unpleasant term for men who do what I've just done. It's called stalking. Most women don't seem to find this sort of attention appealing.
During my drive I must have thought of a hundred reasons why this trip was a really stupid and bad idea. Many of the reasons were even good ones. On the other hand, I had just one reason on the plus column -- I just needed to see her again. I just felt that I'd never be complete in my heart until I had found her once again, just one more time, even briefly if necessary. Somehow, one bad reason seemed far more compelling to me than a hundred good ones.
So onward I went to face my doom.
