Author's note: This is a long story, some 68,000 words in total. If you don't like lengthy stories, please pass this one by because you will not enjoy it. The story is being posted in 4 Parts submitted one day apart.
Thanks to Blackrandl1958 for her editing skills. I would also like thank Harddaysknight for taking a lot of time and energy to beta-read this tome and show me where to improve it. Both have helped me immensely and any errors that still exist below will be there because of mistakes I alone have made. I sincerely appreciate the sacrifices the two of them have made to help me get back in the game—after all, it's only been twelve years since I last posted a cheating wife story.
The following is not a stand-alone story. You will need to read Parts 1 through 3 for this Part to make any sense.
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Flyover Country, Part 4 (of 4)
By Longhorn__07
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sharon was dying. She'd been dying for almost a year, a little more every day. The cancer was an aggressive one; it was literally eating her alive. She'd hung on for almost four months longer than any of the doctors thought possible. But when I brought her back to the hospital this time, we both knew she was never going to leave it.
Her breath was coming in short gasps. The morphine drip wasn't enough any longer. She was hurting badly, but fighting hard to stay alive for just another minute to be with me and her two babies. But the suffering ... oh my God, how she was suffering.
I got up from the straight-backed chair the hospital allowed next to her bed and leaned over my wife of only a very few years. I kissed her lips. I didn't think she was still enough with us to know what I did, but maybe... Her breathing evened out for a few seconds, then resumed the hoarse gasping, but it was weaker now.
I bent closer to whisper in her ear. "Honey, I'll always love you. Your son and daughter know you love them, and they love you. We'll all love you forever, honey. You don't have to fight any more, baby. It's time to let go. I'll take care of Tommy and Judy for you, and they'll take care of me, darling. Don't worry anymore, we'll be okay..." I kissed her forehead and her lips again and stood where I was, leaning over her and stroking her wasted arms and face.
After a few seconds, she exhaled softly and simply never took in another breath.
The monitoring instruments began to keen a loud, warbling tone, but they were announcing something I already knew. My Sharon was gone.
Wearily, I stood erect, then bent forward again to kiss her lifeless lips one last time. I patted her hand and backed away from the hospital bed to let the doctor and nurses in.
I bit my lips and turned away to face Sharon's mother and father. I embraced Judy and then Bruce I embraced Judy and then Bruce. I slipped to the side so they could step to the side of the bed and say goodbye to their youngest daughter.
I searched for the door through my tears. I went out, on my way to find my son and daughter. I had to find some way to tell a three-year-old girl and her four-year-old brother their mother wasn't ever going to hold them in her arms ever again—that she was a with the angels now and would watch over them for ever and ever...
* * *
I drifted for a time, lost in my grief but trying to be the best father and mother to two small children. That meant I had to help them past their grief while trying to get through mine at the same time, and not letting the grieving overwhelm us.
I found myself hating Anchorage, and by extension, the whole state of Alaska. My in-laws lived there, and I had an amazing relationship with them, but there were just too many memories there—memories of places Sharon and I had gone, and things we'd done together.
Like wounded animals, seeking their burrows to heal from injuries, my children and I moved home to Texas where we wouldn't be reminded every day of what we had lost. Bruce and Judy, my father and mother-in-law, and my children's grandparents, weren't happy with my decision, but they understood. They were wealthy. They could fly to Texas any time they felt the need for a visit.
A trust fund a great-aunt set up for Sharon matured the year after Tommy was born, and the money it represented came to me after Sharon passed. I didn't want it; I tried to give it back, but my in-laws wouldn't take it, and the great-aunt was deceased. So I became a multi-millionaire overnight. I put it to good use and established two trusts, one for each of my children for college or whatever they decided to do with their lives. The excess sat in a bank and made more money for my children and me than we'd ever be able to spend.
Back home, Mom and Dad had decided they didn't need to be driving around the country any longer, searching endlessly for that perfect RV camp site. The current plan seemed to be just doing the vagabond thing during the spring and autumn. Winters and summers were considered seasons where travel was just not fun enough. They welcomed me and their two grandchildren home with open arms. Mom and Dad already had a two-bedroom house on the north side of the city and a getaway cabin up in the hill country. They sold that house and moved to one with four bedrooms, hinting broadly Tommy and Judy might want to come visiting sometime.
Mom and Dad were about as happy as I'd ever seen them. They got to see their grandchildren often and started a campaign to spoil the little ones terribly. They said that was their job—it was what grandparents were supposed to do.
* * *
I'd just turned thirty-six. I didn't worry about my advancing age—I had no feeling that time was passing me by or anything like that. I had my son and daughter and I was working hard at taking care of them.
Thomas Bruce Singletary, was five, and Judith Lea almost four now. Times had been rough just after Sharon passed, but she'd been sick for so very long. The length of her illness was a kind of grieving even before her death. The kids hadn't comprehended much—how could they?—but they understood their Mom wasn't hurting any more, and that was a good thing. It didn't make up for the loss, but it was something.
I owned a business. Well, I was a partner in a business. Sharon's friend, Teresa Cunningham, and I had performed similar functions in the business world and I flat stole her away from my father-in-law. Together, Teresa and I formed a consulting firm that would essentially inspect every aspect of a business enterprise and prepare a report for the owners or board of directors that identified weaknesses in any part of their enterprise.
Teresa ran most of the day-to-day executive functions, only bringing me in when some problem might mean a shift in policy or direction. I'd seeded most of the startup from the trust fund Sharon left me. I owned fifty-one percent of the company. Teresa and her husband, Carl, owned the remaining forty-nine percent. Eventually, I was going to make it easy for them to buy out my interest because I just didn't want to work very hard, and I wasn't going to do much work for the rest of my life. It wasn't that I was that lazy—I just wanted to spend most of my time raising my two children. And that's just what I did.
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On a bright, sunny, Texas kind of day, my son and daughter conned me into taking them to one of those places offering a high grade of cardboard that masqueraded as pizza. As compensation, they had many, many dinky little games and rides for young children to enjoy. Even at not-quite-four years of age, Judy knew exactly how to fit a game token in the slot and would pause gleefully at the startup routine while clapping her hands. Only when that was over, would she climb aboard the ride or begin playing whatever the "game" required. At times, I wasn't entirely sure what the game wanted a player to do but my two children seemed to have an instinct for those things. Whatever! They had fun and that was what was important.
I sat in one of the semi-circular booths and watched my two children only a few feet away from me on one of the rides, a four-foot wide merry-go-round that rotated at a pace that seemed to me to be excruciatingly slow. I'd have been incredibly bored riding it myself. They seemed to like it though.
I'd helped them climb aboard and then come around the barricade to sit back down for a while. I was armed, of course. My .45 caliber Glock 38 and I took our responsibility to protect the children against any and all bad guys very seriously. I looked all around at the other bored parents and waited for a specially made pizza I'd ordered as a substitute for the buffet table version. I hoped it would taste a little better than the ones set out on the warming tables under those heat lamps.
