This Side of Death

This Side of Death Ch. 7 Turning Point

I took Kendel Dawn up on her offer to spend the night. There was nothing in the fridge back home and she talked of steak on grill and then drinks down by the fire pit like we had experienced the night before.

We didn't talk about what if's or when's. She gave me a more in-depth tour of the house, pointing to the picture on the wall of the original which was in stark contrast to the elegance it had become.

It appeared that father, though a blue collar fisherman, had done quite well for himself. However, cancer did him in soon after Dawn finished getting her two year degree at the local junior college. Mother then raised Dawn and her sister till she herself had succumbed to cancer. Sister Lizzy got married right out of high school, pregnant and into drugs like most of her classmates. Husband got busted for drugs but was given the option of joining the military. He took it and off he and Lizzy went, rarely to be seen again. That was almost twenty years ago. Apparently military life had turned out good for the both of them and retirement was on the horizon. However, Lizzy had informed Dawn she'd never come back home. Then, like a good sister she was, Dawn offered the entirety of mother's life insurance money to Lizzy in lieu of the house. Hubby saw dollar signs and as they say, the rest is history.

Steak, potatoes and glazed carrots had made me feel half human again. It had been a long time since having a woman cook a meal simply for me. She drank wine while I settled for soda. Afterwards we headed down to the fire pit where I made a roaring fire that sent sparks flying high up into the towering pines before disappearing into the night.

I have to confess that during the night of rescue, the night of toweling her off before a warming fire, though I had taken inventory, the soberness of attempted murder had quite held my fleshy selfishness at bay. However, in our paddle back to Dutchess Harbor, having her arms around me, it was hard not to continually touch her hand and tell her all was going to be ok. Tonight I would once again be sleeping under the same roof as she. And despite what had occurred, she was still married and it would be entirely selfish of me to take advantage of her weakened condition. It would be all too easy. I could sense it in her. She wanted to be comforted despite her regaining a sense of normalcy about her. I knew that if I obliged her it would stain any future that I might imagine having with her. I was divorced. And though I had purposefully run away from society, finding the quietest place I could, the lie of wanting to be alone had not totally gone unnoticed by myself. Hope springs eternal as it is said. I wanted to find another woman who would slip her arm within mine and draw herself up close to me because I made her happy.

"So what am I to do?"

"I honestly don't know. What do you actually know of the man? Does he work alone? Is taking money from lonely women a hobby, something he just does on the side or is it a profession? Where did his wealth come from...really?" We both sat staring at the flames, lost in thought.

"Maybe I should go to the police. I've seen his dark side. It is cold and calculating. Even if he did agree to take what I gave back to him and leave without me pressing charges, I'd always be looking over my shoulder. And I don't think he would be one who would long endure having this always hanging over his head. What do I do, Chance? I'm scared of getting anyone else involved in this. Maybe I should just shoot him and dump him in the ocean."

"Hence my question as to whether or not he does this on the side and whether or not anyone would come looking if in fact he turned up missing. Maybe you should take it all to the police."

"But it would only be my word against his. They might question him but they wouldn't lock him up."

We both realized that this was more complicated than in the movies. It is hard to lay a trap for an animal that you are just guessing about how it moves and will hunt you down if you don't kill it first off.

"You don't know anyone in law enforcement up here? Anyone who might have some experience in this sort of thing?"

"If my daddy was still around, he'd know. But sadly his generation is but a memory."

With that our discussion on the subject came to a close for the evening. The fire was ebbing and chill had made its way up the cove. My host suggested drinks back at the house. In a surprise move, she took my hand, smiled and pulled me to my feet. With her arm deep within mine, drawing herself up close and looking up at me, she walked me to the house. Once inside she grabbed my collar and pulled me down into her kiss.

"Thank you, Mr. Chance Harper. Why couldn't you have come into my life and rescued me years ago? "

All the best laid plans of mice and men. The greatest curse laid upon men by God wasn't to earn his keep by the sweat of his brow. No. It was to make women a perpetual enigma to us men. I had been so careful, so calculating. Yet here I was, once again, captured by a woman.

The drinks were from a bottle that her daddy had stowed away years earlier when it was already older than the hills. It was smooth enough to take the edge off all our worries and concerns, about Max and otherwise. She had stored the bottle in the cavity opposite of the hidden nine millimeter. That too she had hidden from her about to be ex-husband.

Again, taken by the hand and dragged behind her like an erring child, Kendel led me into the master bath. She undressed me before removing her own clothing. Together we soaked ourselves beneath the warm, saltless water, lathering each other with playful delight. It was a quiet, adult sort of joy. Mostly it was a symphony of a lot of smiles, quiet, shy giggles, muted laughs and a few ooh's and ahh's. Together we put clean sheets on the bed before drawing the covers up over us. Then the prelude of serious silence, just staring at one another in unbelief, in gratitude, in appreciation and in hope of the future. She was the first to close her eyes. I compressed her naked body against my own as we, in lost passion and escape, swallowed each other whole in the most soul satisfying kiss of our lives. Then the deep exhaling hug as I drew her over on top of me.

There are some moments in life where your mind turns on the high speed cameras, recording every detail, all the minutia in ultra slow motion. The head on car crash. The time your child sent the glass of red wine flying off the table and across the white carpeting of your boss's living room floor. The time you are thrown off a bridge into the blackness below. The time her hands slides out your own as it disappears back into that icy cold blackness and you fear it is forever lost to that darkness. Then there are times when you try turning on that high speed camera but afterwards all that is seen in replay are bits and pieces, more emotional feelings than defined and definite, frame by frame archiving.

Together we danced to Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade." We were the young prince and princess entangled in a dream world of satin sheets and naked flesh. Her's was soft and feminine, with breasts equal to her kisses, perfectly matched to my mouth which electrified her lightening rod nipples, causing shutters and sighing moans to break the silence of the house. The crescendo of passion grew till we were an entanglement of arms and legs. Breathing became deep and labored as one thrust piled drove on to the next. The rat-tata-tat of harmonious descension of each into their own pursuit of the consummation of the act of orgasmic release. Then finally, her last door opened to me as I expelled my being across her threshold. With abandonment, she convulsed uncontrollably. Once again I had rescued this lithe beauty from a black sea. before we each sank off into the dark silence of a building that had been in her family for two hundred years.