It’s a Place of Beauty

I really didn't have anything else to say. I thought I'd have volumes to say to her when I had the chance but this nastiness with the video and her revelations concerning how she accused me left me void.

"I really do love you, Theresa, but there's nothing left of the two of us now. You need to file. You burned us to the ground and I didn't even know it until it was done."

In years past her moist eyes would have pulled me without speaking to an embrace. That morning I was just dull.

"Darrell, will you hug me one more time, please?"

I stood up and we embraced, hugging each other tightly. I meant it when I said I still loved her but her destruction was so thorough and complete the foundation itself was in ruins. I kissed the top of her head.

"Darrell, I will always be so sorry for what I did to you, to us. Please forgive me someday. Kelsey wants to stay with you for a while before returning if that is OK."

I nodded my approval and she hugged me one last time and grabbed her bag and headed to her car. I stood there for a long time watching her drive away up the gravel road and I felt broken. Kelsey was still hiking and Sally hadn't returned from Early's yet so I grabbed my jacket and pushed off the gravel bank and dipped my oar into the water to take the canoe up the shoreline.

I stayed out for a couple hours and when I returned, both Sally and Kelsey were making lunch and engaged in conversation. Both looked at me when I returned and Kelsey ran to my arms. I assured her everything was fine, that she was staying here for a while, as long as she wanted, and that her mom was returning to Charleston. I didn't share with my conversation with Theresa with her. She already knew what was important, that I loved her in every way.

With Kelsey using the loft, Sally and I were a lot more subdued that evening. We didn't tear the sheets up with rambunctious loving. For the most part, we just lay there talking softly. Sally had shared with Kelsey that we were occasional lovers but that she didn't want to intrude on Kelsey's time with me. My daughter didn't skip a beat. She informed Sally that if she left on her account she would hitchhike to Bangor on her own and catch a flight home. That settled it. Sally spent the night in my bed.

Over the next several days, Kelsey joined in completing the final close up of Sally's cottage up the lake and helped me wrap up my preparations for the long winter that was coming. I had 5 cord of split firewood and a couple cord of tree length I could fall back on if I needed it. I always kept a couple cans of gas available for either the 4-wheeler or the snowmobile so I would be able to get out when I wanted. Early had already agreed to let me keep my truck out in his barn behind the store in case I wanted to go anywhere. I wasn't up to plowing several miles of winter roads once the snow started falling.

Kelsey and I travelled to Calais to have Thanksgiving with my Dad and some of the family. Sally was invited but she wanted to travel to be with her sister in Dexter. It was a good time and I was able to reconnect with folks I hadn't seen in a long time. When we returned to the cottage, Kelsey packed up some things and we headed for Bangor for her flight back home. On my return, I ran into a serious downeaster', a large winter storm.

This was a bit earlier than expected and the forecasters initially thought it would have pushed off further out in the Bay of Maine. By the time I arrived at Early's, there was already a foot of snow with another 12-14 inches expected. I offloaded the 4-wheeler and parked the truck in the barn and headed off to the cottage. My Maine winter experience was about to begin.

I ended up with 26 inches on the ground the Monday after Thanksgiving and within a week half of it had melted away and then real winter set in. Temps dropped and another blast hit us, this time freezing the ground and there was no melting. Sally joined me during Christmas break just in time for the first Christmas blizzard in years. By the time the skies cleared we had 3 feet of fresh snow on top of 2 feet already there. With no Kelsey around, the rambunctious loving returned full force. We stayed camped in for three days with plenty of good wine, a pile of good eats and the wood stove and water heater going full blast.

Eventually the fun had to stop and Sally ran the snow sled out to Early's in time for the start of classes in January. For me it was back to writing in the dead of winter and trying to build up additional freelance work. I was having some decent success with a couple magazines and then out of the blue I got a reply back from an agent I had been going back and forth with. He had a syndication offer starting with 14 different newspapers. It wasn't huge but when added to the work I already had, I now had a decent working income and a good measure of success with what I was doing.

So I stayed busy through the winter with the occasional therapeutic bump and grind with Sally on the weekends. Kelsey was emailing me regularly with updates on her schooling and social life. She had patched things up with her mom with my urging and was living with her while going to the College of Charleston.

Of course, nothing stays the same for long. I heard his snowmobile coming down the drive, muffled by the falling snow. When Early dusted off his boots and pulled his cap off he had a solemn look on his face.

"Darrell, it's about Sally. She's been busted up pretty bad in an accident down around Bailyville. A pulp truck hit her dead on and I know they took her to Calais. It didn't kill her but she's about beat up as a woman can get. You didn't have your radio on so I couldn't reach you but I was thinking you'd want to get over there and see how she's doing, you know."

I thanked him, bundled up and grabbed my travel bag and followed him out to his store on my snowmobile. The truck started up and the two of us headed to Calais. It was about a 30 minute ride to get there and they informed us they were getting ready to airlift her to Bangor. Apparently there were complications they weren't equipped to handle. They did let me in real briefly to see her and I nearly cried when I saw her. She was busted up bad, bruised from head to toe. I told her I'd call her sister and let her know and that I'd drive to Bangor as soon as I dropped off Early. I don't know why I said it but I did.

"I love you, little lady. I'll be there as soon as I can get there."

I had never said that before. Neither of us had. Early insisted that I go on without him, that his wife would come down and pick him up, so I headed out on the 3 hour ride to Bangor. If you've never ridden it, Rt. 9 or the Airline as it's called locally is a bitch to drive in bad weather.

Three hours turned into six real quick. Luckily I had a couple snow plows go through before me clearing the way. When I arrived at the hospital they had already taken her into surgery so I settled down the best I could in the waiting room, asking every 10 minutes for an update.

Finally, the nurse called me over and told me Sally was in the recovery room and would be going up on post- surgical in just a few minutes. I could see her once they got her settled into the room. Shortly after that, one of the doctors approached me. Apparently, Sally had me listed as her emergency contact and they regarded that as next best thing to next of kin.

She was busted up pretty bad and they had to go in and patch up some internal stuff I knew nothing about but he informed me that the baby was fine.

It would be nice to say I was all over the place with happy joy and excitement but instead I was simply confused. What baby? Nobody ever mentioned a baby. Hell, it had been over 19 years since Theresa told me after work one day that we were going to have a baby. I never heard the words again until now. I thanked the doctor for the update and headed upstairs to wait until I could go into Sally's room.

Some people sit and try to calculate life and its options. I suppose I am no different. Did I want to be a father again at the age of 45? Hell, was I even the father of the child? I dismissed that thought rather quickly but I knew that Sally would have to at least make that acknowledgement. I ran through all the options and there were several. I could propose and marry her. We could just live together or we could continue as we were. Maybe she wouldn't want any of it. I didn't know what to think. For now though I decided to push all of that to the back of the mind and focus on Sally's health and recovery. They let me in a couple hours after she came upstairs.

"You are looking real attractive tonight, Sally?" I stated trying to break the air with humor.

She looked up at me with a mixture of amusement and pain or rather discomfort. She was doped up fairly well after her surgery and on account of her injuries.

"I don't think I'll be entering any contests soon." She smiled. "Come here, Darrell."

I got closer to her and she squeezed my hand.

"Thank you for being here. You don't know how important that is to me."

She weakly pulled me down to her and kissed me on my lips before she whispered.

"I do too, love you that is."

I smiled at her and held her hand. We discussed some of her injuries, well, as best we could in her condition. I never broached the pregnancy because it was a discussion that needed to be had after her recovery. She didn't mention the baby. After a while she started to drift off to sleep so I made myself comfortable on the couch in the room with the nursing staff providing blankets and pillows.

It was a rough night with the nurse waking her up, and me by the appearance, to take vitals and give meds. The next morning we discovered she would be in the hospital for at least the next three days, maybe longer. Her sister arrived from Dexter later in the morning and I excused myself to go find a place to clean up and maybe check into a room somewhere.

Four days later she was off to stay with her sister for a week and I headed back to West Grand. We still had not talked about the baby and that made it a bit difficult to concentrate on what I needed to get done when I got back. Eventually I found a sense of normalcy and by then Sally was hobbling about in her apartment on the reservation.

I heard Early's snowmobile long before it arrived. When the air is crisp, clear and cold, sound travels unimpeded in these woods. I can hear the din of snowmobiles on the lake miles away some days. When he came into view, he was towing a sled behind him and I watched as she waved at me. We walked his package along with her baggage into the cottage and got her settled into an easy chair.

"You sure you can handle her out here? If you need something, you just need to give me a holler on the radio and me or the missus will run right out." Early was earnest.

I assured him all was well and after feeding him and plying him with hot coffee he was on his way back to the store.

"You know I'm going to have to hold your hand to the outhouse every time, don't you? When do you have to go back to the doctor?" I asked her.

She just stuck her tongue out and told me she had to pee.

Somehow we got into a routine and I ran her into Calais when she had her appointments or to her apartment on the reservation when she felt like enjoying the modern conveniences of civilization. A couple weeks after she showed up, we had our talk.

"Darrell, I need to tell you something. I'm going to have a baby and you are going to be a daddy, again."

Well, it was more of a pronouncement than a talk and I told her I already knew and how I found out.

"Did you mean what you said to me in Calais?" She asked with just the slightest trepidation.

"Did you mean what you said in Bangor" I asked in response. She nodded in reply and I did the same.

It's funny how sometimes you just don't have to say a lot of words to understand fully what two people are trying to convey among themselves. This was one of those times. We just held each other for a long time and she moved my hand to her belly being careful not to let me touch her healing scars from the surgery.

"She's almost three months old in the belly now." She looked up smiling.

I knocked her up over Christmas break when we were hibernating in the cottage.

Sally took a leave of absence from the school for the rest of the school year and she healed under my care through the rest of the winter. By spring time she was showing and pretty much healed up from her injuries. She was a tough girl, insisting on staying at the cottage and being with me. I tried to get her to stay out at the apartment even offering to go with her but she knew I wanted my Maine winter experience after all these years.

I got the experience. We had 134 inches of snow that winter and the lake froze up to 18 inches thick in some spots. You can drive a snowplow on that kind of ice. I nursed a pregnant accident victim through the end of winter. I even wiped her ass in the outhouse a couple times. Not many men can claim that experience.

By the time mud season ended and I could drive my truck out, Sally had a good baby bulge and we were ready to get out to civilization for a while. I called Kelsey and let her know Sally and I were going to fly into Charleston for a visit. It would be early May and I asked her to find us a rental on the beach for a couple of weeks, Isle of Palms preferably. She did just that and we flew into town in perfect weather. I stayed lathered up on 50 sunscreen the whole time and still managed to get a bit of a burn a couple times.

"Daddy, Mom wants to see you." Kelsey told me one afternoon on the beach.

"Did she say what she wanted?" I asked knowing I shouldn't have. She just indicated it wasn't her business although there was a bit of melancholy with her response.

I agreed to meet with her that evening.

"You are looking good, Theresa." She did too.

"Thanks, Darrell. A lot of good it does me, I don't get out much." She replied and continued.

"I asked your attorney if I could give these to you instead of him and everybody agreed. I filed the papers like you wanted and this is the final decree. I know you would want them." Her eyes were moist.

"Darrell, I know you didn't want to hear it back at the cottage last fall but I need to tell you, if only for my own health. I am truly sorry for what I did to you. I don't think I fully realized the enormity of my betrayal until I came back and had to struggle to restore my relationship with Kelsey. For whatever reason I had this false expectation and hope that I could somehow put everything back together again and we would be a whole family."

Theresa had steeled herself for this confession and she continued.

"I need to confess everything I did to you, Darrell. I have been so ashamed of what I had become, what I did and why that I can hardly live with myself until I reveal what a miserable unfaithful cunt of a wife I was to you. James was just the last of them. There were others before him, ever since I went to work for the firm. There were a couple of men in the company and a few clients. The truth is I became a whore prostituting myself for career advancement. That is the simple truth as horrible as it is."

Thinking back on it I knew there had to be more than just Riley. Her demeanor and attitude had changed during those three years of working there. I beat myself up over it early on before I realized it was never my fault. If I had been paying more attention I might have been able to nip it in the bud but at the end of the day the bitch was responsible for her own whoredom, not me.

"Darrell, on that morning when I drove away from the cottage, I saw Sally at Early's. She and I talked for a good while, Darrell. She is a good woman and I know she cares deeply for you. Kelsey loves her too so if the two of you make something happen, I hope you will be the happy man I always knew."

I hated what she had done to us but I couldn't hate her. I held her for a long time. I caressed her hair, kissed her forehead and said my goodbyes. We still had Kelsey between us and our paths would always cross but today, more than at the cottage last autumn was a final goodbye and I did it with forgiveness in my heart.

"Theresa, find a man you can love again and grow old together and look forward to the grandchildren that Kelsey might bring us someday."

With that, I left my former wife with the final decree in my hand.

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They don't spank babies' bottoms anymore if they ever did. The midwife merely cleaned the air passage and the little girl screamed out a blast that brought all of us to tears. She was a healthy 7 lb. 10 ounce, blue eyed, likely golden haired duplicate of her mother. She was set on her mom's bosom until gently picked up and cleaned off before being returned swaddled in a soft pink blanket. Her name was Samantha Jade Carson.

Sally's sister was there along with Kelsey, me and the midwife. There was a doctor available if needed but that wasn't necessary. Mrs. Sally Carson held her daughter and looked up at me, being her husband, and thanked me for loving her. There was no need for thanks. I would love her regardless.

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Epilogue

Sally and I married on July 4th, the anniversary of our meeting the prior year. I almost had her wearing those green fishing waders she showed up in on that day. Kelsey flew up for the occasion and was the maid of honor. My Dad was the best man and Early gave the bride away. It was a simple affair and we honeymooned in Bar Harbor for a week before returning to the cottage.

When it was time for the baby to come I took a chunk of savings and bought a house along the St. John River. With the earnings I was getting from the freelancing and syndication along with Sally's teaching job, we could live pretty comfortable Down East.

Eventually, Kelsey finished her schooling and moved to Portland, Maine and went to work for an Architectural firm where she met her future husband. No kids yet.

Theresa never did find another love. She has never remarried and she has a little place in the old village area of Mt Pleasant across from Charleston where she started up a local Realtors office. She suffered a bout with breast cancer but appears to have beaten it or at least it's in long stage remission. Somehow through it all we have been able to become friends and we exchange cards during the seasons and I occasionally talk with her just to see how she is doing. She has always reminded me that she has had only one real man in her life. The rest were just a bunch of xy chromosomes.

Does the story end here? That is hard to say. It would be nice to think that Darrell and Sally live forever happy on the banks of the St. John raising little Samantha. It's always possible that Sally finds herself seduced by some wiry Canadian prick that crosses the border to cuck some unfortunate American stiff. Maybe Theresa finds full redemption in life and finds her own new adventure in the Holy City. Whatever the case, every story of an adventure is always just one set of points in time.

MFH