Page 42 of Heat Wave
“Yeah, Alley. He waited too. The first time I met your father was during a Christmas Eve sleepover with Terry when we were girls.”
I’m taken back to the night in question when I was home from college. I barely looked twice at my sister’s little friend, other than to learn her name and ask Mom why she was staying with us. Even then, I could tell Terry and Oakley were close.
“I thought he was so handsome and so…well, he looked just like a hero from a fairytale.”
I was a punk kid who was fresh out of the academy. I thought I knew a lot more than I did.
“Was he a dick-tective then, too?”
“That’s Detective Merry. Don’t listen to your Aunt when she tells you how to pronounce it, love.” Again, I have to fight back the bark of laughter that wants to pour out of me. “No, he wasn’t a detective yet. But he did wear a uniform.”
“Is it right that Daddy saved you from some bad people?” I move out of the room and down the hall on silent feet and make it to the door before she answers them.
“Daddy saved me a lot. He still saves me every day.”
“It was his love, wasn’t it? That saved you.” Merry, short for Mertle, is in love with love at the moment. I’m hoping that willget a little better when she gets older. I don’t mind watching every Disney movie two hundred and thirty-seven times, or the fact that I get the rundown on how they both fall in love with one another and the exact moment it happens. I just don’t want someone breaking her heart. Then I would have to break them!
“Yes, love. Daddy always saves me with his love!” My sweet wife is bending over to lay our sleeping son down in his crib. He’s just started sleeping through the night. She turns around and takes in the two upturned faces and then catches me out of the corner of her eye. Her smile lights up her whole face.
Her figure has grown fuller with the birth of our children, and it makes me want her even more. She's even more stunning now than she was when I first threw her over my shoulder all those years ago. I live for that smile.
“But when did you all find out you all loved each other?”
She gives me that beautiful smile, twinkling eyes bright with love and happiness, “During a heatwave one summer, when he came to rescue me outside Uncle Land’s bar. During a heatwave.”
The End!
