My thanks to Grand Teton for taking the time and having the patience to unravel my scatter-gun approach to punctuation; that this makes any sense at all is due mainly to his efforts, so a big thank you. Also in there was my darling Lori, who first enlisted the help of her friend GT, she could see I needed help, she went and got me some, so thank you darling. Thanks also to OldkingClancy for his continued help and support, and as always, to Bonnie for being honest in her opinions and criticisms.
Part 2 is hard on the heels of this, I split it in two parts otherwise it would be far too long to read, but part two is more or less completed, watch this space...
As before, you should note that this is my world, not the real world, so things happen the way I want them to, not the way they happen in the real world; hopefully you won't spot any glaring differences, but if you do, please just grin and pass along, and hopefully enjoy the ride. If you needed reminding, all characters are over 18.
If you liked this segment, please vote for it, if you didn't, please tell me why; I can't promise I'll follow all your suggestions (especially the anatomically impossible/illegal/suicidally insane ones) but I will note them and possibly try to learn from them. I answer all emails, so if you would like a reply, don't forget to include your email address.
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Have fun, I did!
bb1958
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It felt good to have the space and freedom to consider what to do with my life, and to throw my lot in with my family (and now it didn't feel so strange to say that word...).
I think I'd finally started to become a better person; of course, the new me was still a lot like the old me; these things take time, there was a lot of garbage still stirring around inside me that I had to unlearn, and there were still social graces and nuances of interacting with other people that I just didn't get at all.
But now I had Shari, my new-found sister, to help me; for some unknown reason, she loved me; actually, she loved me more than it was proper for a sister to love her younger brother, but I didn't care, because I loved her the same way. Shari was truly lovely, as well as warm, kind, patient, understanding, organised, fiercely protective of her younger sister, Yaz, and loved my younger brother (and hers, too) Rick, who was in love with Yaz, and vice-versa.
Shari had shown me what it could be like to care for another person. It wasn't long after Rick brought Shari and Yaz to live at the house that I discovered he and Yaz were in love, stumbling on the two of them making love, brother and sister relationship be damned. Yaz was gorgeous; Rick was almost ridiculously good looking, so I suppose it was inevitable the two of them found each other, especially at a time when they so desperately needed someone. Shari had tried to engage me in a similar relationship, but I was too unsettled by what I'd seen, and what little I'd done with her had made me feel like it was somehow wrong and shameful.
Eventually I had seen what and who Shari really was, her vulnerability and her need, and finally understood it matched my own. To my amazement, I discovered what it was to actually love someone and need them, and to have that love and need reciprocated. She'd literally pulled me back from the lip of suicide, and showed me that life could have meaning, that finally I wasn't alone.
So now Rick and Yaz lived in one part of the house and Shari and I lived in another part of the house, although we still spent most of our time together. We'd split the house into two dwellings, for all intents and purposes: the upper floor for Rick and Yaz, the middle floor for Shari and me, and the ground floor as a family space, with the dining room, sitting rooms, and the kitchen. I had begun to feel a puzzling, and surprisingly deep attachment to Rick and Yaz; perhaps some of Shari had finally rubbed-off on me. Splitting the house the way we did was my way of ensuring my kid brother and my little sister stayed close and connected to me.
I'd had an epiphany over Nicky, where I realised just how I'd wronged him; Rick had shown me just how wrong I'd been, how much we'd hurt and abandoned Nicky, how alone we'd left him. If it wasn't for Barbara, he'd have had nothing in his life. He tried to be my big brother, and I slapped him away, we both did. We never knew that our father had abducted him from his mother when he was still a toddler and brought him to England; we always thought Nicky was Barbara's son, they'd been so close, and then that fateful night when he disappeared, my father had beaten him half to death. Barbara, my mother, had I but known it, had helped him to leave, but she'd left no clue where he'd gone, and she was dead the next day, murdered by that bastard now rotting in an American prison. Nearly four years after her death, prompted by Shari, we'd finally gone to visit her grave, to apologise for everything, and ask her forgiveness.
When we arrived at the cemetery, we were shocked to find the huge, ornate memorial covered in lies and hypocrisy my lying, despicable, psychopath of a father had erected was gone, and in its place was a small, dignified headstone with a simple, heartfelt message of love. I knew straight away that Nicky had done this, and my heart leaped; he was alive, he'd survived, dear God, our big brother was alive, and he'd come back!
I was still reeling from that revelation when Shari noticed something; there was a flower-holder set into the base of the headstone, and there was a handful of what I'd at first thought were weeds, but Shari bent down and pulled a stalk out of the holder, and I saw it was a flower. A few blue petals still clung to the stem in among the brown, curled petals, and when she bent the stalk, it didn't snap, it was still fresh and pliable. The implications hit us immediately; those flowers were only put there a little while ago, maybe only a week or so, and there was only one person in the world who'd come here to do that.