For those who have been with me all the way, I am most grateful for your very kind words and encouragement. It would not have been possible to get through this without you.
If you haven't read it up to now, it would help you to please give the preceding chapters a look first, as nothing will make much sense otherwise.
For those interested in a sexually oriented story, please visit some of the earlier chapters, as there is no sex in this final offering. All this chapter is, is the end.
*
That winter was a particularly nasty one as they go in these parts, and that's saying something. Snow seemed to fall nearly everyday, and the temperatures were bitterly cold. The only bright spots were my times with Becky. When I was with her I was oblivious to the elements, and just about everything else.
Valentine's Day came, and I brought up the idea of marriage again to Becky. While she managed to dance around the subject again, that time she seemed to be more receptive to the idea becoming a reality at some point in time. That ray of hope alone was enough to keep me warm at night.
March arrived, and with it came an absolutely ferocious storm that began early while I was coming in to work. As the day went on you couldn't see five feet out the windows as the snow came down relentlessly. I had taken the bus to work as usual, since parking was a real problem downtown even under the best of conditions. Snow merely made a bad situation worse.
Quitting time finally rolled around and I got on the elevator for the slow trek home, and was most delighted that Becky was on it when I hopped aboard. Unfortunately there were other people on there with us which prevented me from attacking her, as I would do when we found ourselves on one alone.
Becky took the opportunity to make faces at me when no one was looking, which made me giggle and probably confirmed my status as a total idiot to our unsuspecting fellow passengers.
I got to walk out with Becky into the storm, which was far worse than it looked from behind the glass. The wind was making the snow fall sideways, and the wind chill had to be at least thirty below. Knowing that the buses would be running late, I walked Becky down to her parking space and helped her clean off her car, which had almost a foot of snow on it.
"Sir Galahad, you're so thoughtful" Becky yelled into the gale as I brushed the snow off her headlights. "Want a ride home Davy me lad?"
Taking me home would take Becky a considerable distance out of her way, and I hated to see her driving in this weather at all. The thought of making her commute even longer was out of the question.
"I've got a better idea!" I said as the wind threatened to take my breath away. "Why don't you come to my place and stay there tonight? It's a helluva lot closer!"
"No clothes!" Becky screamed while getting a windblown mouthful of snow in the process.
"We could wash what you're wearing in the laundry room" I suggested, trying to shield her from the wind, which threatened to sweep us away at any minute.
"And show up at work tomorrow wearing what I wore today?" Becky said. "I think the cat would be out of the bag around here if I did that. Besides, Kelly's calling me tonight so I have to be there when she calls, that is if I get there in time in this mess."
Becky's daughter was coming home for Easter and was going to let her know when she would be flying in, so I knew how important that was to her.
"Alright, be careful" I told Becky, and gave her a little kiss after checking to see that no one was around. Just a tiny peck shared between two people with cold noses and chattering teeth, and Becky got in the car and drove off.
My bus ride was interminable, with the bus was so crowded to the gills it took forever for people to squirm out when it was their stop. Combined with the road conditions, it made the usual half hour ride take almost two hours.
Home at last, I tried to call Becky to tell her of the horrors of my commute, but discovered the phone was dead. The cable service was out as well, so I watched a movie on the VCR, grateful that at least the power was still on.
I fell asleep on the couch, and when I woke up in the morning, it was plain to see that I had lost power sometime during the night. I lit a candle to find my watch, and discovered that I was going to be late if I didn't step on it.
I hoped that the power had only gone off recently so that I would have enough hot water to take a shower. I did, just barely, and the bracing end of the shower reminded me of the ones I had taken with Becky.
Overcoming the many obstacles, I managed to leave the house at the usual time and stomped through the snow to the bus stop. The paper boy must have slept in, or didn't get his delivery yet, which meant I wouldn't have anything to read on the way down to work.
As it turned out it didn't much matter, as the bus was jam packed, which made reading impossible anyway. People that usually drove to work would always opt for the bus during bad weather, since the parking situation was impossible with the snow. I wished that Becky lived on a bus route, so she would have the option of not driving, but that was the price she paid for living in the sticks.
I arrived at work only a little late, which was more than most of my co-workers could say. The place was very quiet, and the people that were there seemed very sullen. Over in the corner there was a girl from another unit crying, and for a moment I was afraid that the long-rumored layoffs had begun. Just what the morale of this place needed was a thinning of the herd, I figured glumly as I turned on my computer.
While I waited for the thing to kick on, I saw my only real friend in the place approach my desk. I started to give him our usual greeting, which was the HELLLOOOO! from the Seinfeld episode with the talking belly button, but caught myself when I saw his ashen face.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he asked in a quivering voice before his mouth fell open. "Oh God, didn't you watch the news? Don't you know what... Shit!"
I had stood up at this point, totally confused, as he took my arm and hustled me into the men's room, which was empty.
"God, I can't believe you don't know" he said while starting to choke up. "I don't want to be the one to tell you this man, this just isn't fair."
He did eventually tell me. I don't really remember much after that. I remember feeling like a trap door had just opened up beneath my feet, and I was falling, and falling fast. Feeling like I was suffocating and unable to breathe. I recall losing my breakfast in a failed attempt to reach the toilet. Everything else was just a blur.
**
Becky was dead. Driving home in that storm the evening before, she had apparently come around a curve near her home and lost control of her car. Not a lot, just enough to fishtail a bit and clip the blade of the snow plow traveling in the opposite direction, which caused her car to spin around and crash into a telephone pole. The blessing, so the authorities claimed, was that it was over in a second. Painless.
Maybe driving too fast, trying to get home in time to get the call from her daughter. Maybe a particularly slick part of the road. Who knows? Who cares at the point? All I knew was that Becky was gone, and my life was over too.
