What Were They Thinking?

Devon Layne

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online to: Elder Road LLC, ElderRoadBooks@outlook.com.

Cover photo by immfocus studio ID 147905009 licensed from Shutterstock.com

Second Edition

ISBN 978-1-939275-98-1

Living Next Door to Heaven

Book 1: Guardian Angel

This begins the coming of age adventure of Brian Frost, would-be chemist and aspiring cook. And loyal enough to his friends that they gather to him and become fiercely loyal. All because Jessica told them a fairy tale.

Book 2: The Agreement

Do whatever is necessary to protect and defend the ones you love. Treat others with kindness and respect. Keep your promises. Brian lived by those Life Rules. Having survived junior high, Brian finds himself in a troublesome position. His classmates, the crew he’s been hanging with for the past four years, are worried. Sex is looming on the horizon and hormones are wreaking havoc on their relationships. They ask Brian, who has proven he can be trusted and will protect them, to give them rules for dating that they can all follow. But it remains to be seen if twenty-two teens can date each other—mix or match—and maintain their friendships, boundaries, and virtue.

Book 3: Foolish Wisdom

The game changes as Brian and his dating group enter their sophomore year in high school. Some of the boys and girls can’t wait for the sixteen-year-olds’ rule that expands the limits on touching. Just no penetration. But how fast and how far does each teen want to go? They will scarcely have time to worry about it in the face of a wedding, a summer job, new school rules, a campaign against the school board, basketball, gymnastics, martial arts, shifting alliances, and broken dreams. And horses. It’s all in a typical teenager’s day. These kids are no exception.

Book 4: Deadly Chemistry

Most of the crew are juniors and seventeen. The rule against penetration has been eliminated. Who will be first to go all the way? Surprisingly, none of them are rushing. Maybe because they are waiting for Brian and Whitney to take the lead. Prom night will be something special. In the midst of their conjugal joy, disaster strikes again. “Do whatever is necessary to protect and defend those you love.” It was Brian’s mantra. It was all that kept him sane after a confrontation he could never mention to anyone. And Hannah understood.

Book 5: The Rock

Hannah has been hospitalized by her unstable boyfriend. Brian has had enough and vows to bring her home. When he faces the hyped-up, steroid and meth-driven boyfriend, he must become the rock that Whitney has taught him to be. Bringing Hannah home is only the first step. Injured, depressed, and near suicidal, Hannah believes she deserved what she got. Now Brian must become a different kind of rock—one that Hannah can cling to as she climbs from the stormy seas of her depression.

Book 6: El Rancho del Corazón

Brian Frost, one-time runt geek of the neighborhood, has gathered nearly 40 others into the Clan of the Heart. He has become the protector and leader, or Patrón, of the clan. Casa del Fuego comprises thirteen women and two men. Now, most of them are going to college, many to Indiana University in Bloomington. They have their love, their ambition, and a new home: El Rancho del Corazón. It should be smooth sailing from here on. Right? Until the ranch house burns down, they are accused of arson, a college pseudo frat decides the ranch is party central, and they have to produce Brian’s cooking show in the barn. Don’t forget college classes, social events, and lovers.

Book 7: Hearthstone Entertainment

Hannah has become the driving force of the clan’s video production company, Hearthstone Entertainment. And Elaine is launching her television career with a new talk show, Chick Chat. And guess who the premiere guest will be! Jessica, Brian’s Heaven, his guardian angel, has agreed to take time from her jet-setting model career to help the clan get started. It’s love all over again for Brian, but a rocky road to get Heaven back inside the clan and into their family. Nothing seems to work out right when it comes to getting the two into the position they’d both wanted as long as they could remember.

Book 8: Becoming the Storm

Tragedy strikes the campus and the clan. In the act of becoming a hero, Brian nearly dies and much of his past—the past he has kept hidden—is exposed. In the midst of PTSD and a perceived threat against his family, can Brian recover his confidence enough to become the storm and bring them safely to the other side? If it weren’t for the enigmatic Dani and her faithfulness, there would be no hope.

Book 9: Heaven’s Gate

In the wake of the tumultuous events in Book 8: Becoming the Storm, the crew deserves to have a little less stress in their lives. Of course, as they reach their mid- to late 20s, those nasty biological clocks start ticking and there is likely to be a population boom on the ranch. And along with births come the losses that we incur as adults in an adult world. People change. People move away. People die. People are born. People get married. In the long run, it is not about what you believe, but how you live. And Heaven is beginning to see that she might have a path back to the love she left behind. Is there anything that can actually bring her back to live next door?

Book 10: What Were They Thinking?

“Now look,” my friend said, “you and I both have daughters not long out of their teens. We can read this story and think ‘Where was this when I was in school?’ But if your daughter or my daughter came up to us and said, ‘Yeah, Dad, I’m spending the night at my boyfriend’s house with our ten other girlfriends,’ we’d have said, ‘Oh, no you aren’t!’ and we’d have made it stick if we had to sit at the door with a shotgun. What the hell were those parents thinking?”

Prologue: Memorial Day

THE STONES FELT COOL on their old feet. They’d slowly made their way to the River of Life in the early morning fog for their Memorial Day gathering. The sun was just beginning to burn through the moist air and in the next two hours would send the temperature from a pleasant seventy to a sweltering ninety.

They helped each other out of their shoes and across the boundary between the gravel path and the smooth stones of the River. Each picked up a rake and silently went about the motions of drawing in the stones, occasionally stooping to pick up a stick or leaf that had been missed when their kids cleaned the River on Saturday.

No formal ceremony marked their gathering, but the soles of their feet joined with the souls of their lost family and friends. None of them felt so old that they should have friends dying. Some still had living parents themselves. It was too soon to be burying their contemporaries. But it had always been that way. The living gathered and remembered the dead and those they had lost.

Marilyn and Anna slipped up beside Sly and lay a hand on his shoulder as he looked down at the stone that bore the names of his youngest daughter and her mother. Both were cut down way too young. Lily by cancer. Her teenage daughter by a gunman on campus. At the edge of the River, a black walnut tree dipped its roots into the stones. On its trunk was a plaque with Hayden’s name. Scarcely a day had gone by in twenty years that the women didn’t stand before that marker and weep for their lost love.

Dinita Kimes joined them. She’d felt the loss of Hayden almost as deeply as his wives. Angela’s first baby was stillborn and they brought her ashes to the River. Dinita cherished the memory of her granddaughter, even though she never drew breath.

Jim and Jill Swift shared a rake as they thought about their son, Doug. His fight with Hodgson’s ended his life way too soon. In the odd way that such tragedies have, it brought his parents back to Indiana—if not full time, at least enough to become a significant part of their grandchildren’s lives. More significant than they’d been in the lives of their children.

John and Bea Clinton were in the stones with the other parents. They’d not lost anyone directly but had inherited the tribal leadership when Hayden died and Brian began to look to John as a father figure. Once considered the most conservative and religious of the parents, the Clintons had mellowed over the years and had been there to support every step of the development of Corazón, Indiana.

“Shall we go to the bakery and get sweet rolls?” Sly asked. His somewhat expanded girth suggested that he went too frequently to the bakery, but his grandchildren were keeping him active.

“It’s a holiday. Brian won’t open today, will he?” Bea asked.

“Maybe not but come up to the big house and I’ll almost guarantee something is in the oven,” Marilyn said.

“Don’t you have guests?”

“Just one room. Teresa is taking them to Brown County for a day-long trail ride. Debbie came up to make them breakfast so Anna and I could come out here this morning,” Marilyn said.

“Your place it is, then.”

By the time they’d made the trek from the River to the house, the ranch was waking up. They waved at Teresa and Larry Irving, getting the B&B guests instructed on loading horses into the trailer. When they filed in the back door of what had once been Casa del Fuego’s home and was now a bed and breakfast, they were greeted with the aroma of baking cinnamon rolls.

“Sorry the rolls aren’t out of the oven yet,” Brian said. “We didn’t dare start baking them until the guests were out of the house.” Debbie and Dani were finishing up the breakfast dishes.

“They had fresh-baked bread,” Debbie said. “They can’t ask for better than that.”

“Our boy still bakes bread for his moms,” Anna sighed. “It was worth sacrificing my daughter’s virginity to him.”

“Believe me, it was no sacrifice,” Brian laughed. “There’s fresh coffee. Why don’t you all go into the family room where it’s cool and we’ll bring you rolls as soon as they’re out of the oven.”

“I simply never pictured him like that when he came to pick my daughter up the first time,” John sighed as he sank into one of the comfortable loveseats with Bea. “I was determined to protect her from him.”

“The first time I met him, it was already too late,” Anna said. “Jennifer and Courtney came back from the Girl Scout outing at the dude ranch and were smitten. All Jennifer could talk about was the boy who rescued her.”

“Well, I never considered that the baby I bore was going to become a famous chef and baker…” Marilyn began.

“Or leader of a clan and despoiler of young women?” Sly inserted.

“Or father of a baker’s dozen?” Dinita added.

“Or that he would introduce me to a woman who would change Hayden’s and my lives with more love than either of us knew existed in the universe, or that I would end up marrying a woman,” Marilyn finished as she kissed Anna.

“So, I understand you finally got married,” Jill said. “I never did get the whole story about how that got started. We were so remote when the kids were in high school. I regret it to this day. How did you and Hayden cope with it all?”

“It was a surprise,” Marilyn said. “And I guess that Hurricane Betts had worn us down a bit by the time we realized Brian was… different.”

Part I
Marilyn Frost’s Story

1
Mosquito Road

HAYDEN AND I were farm kids. Growing up in the fifties and sixties, that meant entertainment—as in dating—was limited to what we could do on the farm or what we could do at school and church. Hayden didn’t get his driver’s license until we were seniors and we still couldn’t do too much unless his father allowed him to use the car. We had our fun, but we were good kids and I wouldn’t let things go too far. It would have been so easy to just slip off into the woods and let nature take its course but I was desperately afraid of becoming pregnant. In 1966, birth control was all but unknown to us. We didn’t even have easy access to condoms.

I guess everything changed when Darnell got drafted.

If you visit the Viet Nam memorial in Washington, DC, you’ll find over fifty-five thousand names. Over half of the deaths were kids under twenty-one years old. Darnell was one. One summer when Betts was at horse camp and Brian was at science camp, we took a trip to the nation’s capital. I watched as Hayden searched the wall for the name of his best high school friend. When he found it, he sat in front of the wall and cried for nearly an hour.

The news that Darnell wasn’t coming home changed Hayden. Darnell was his best friend, a kind soul. He’d been drafted but went into the medical corps. It was so unfair that he was out there trying to save lives when his was taken. Hayden didn’t get drafted because he was a farm boy and was classified as II-C, an agricultural worker. It wasn’t a false claim. His father had depended on him since he was old enough to drive a tractor. Most days—at least during spring to fall—he worked on the farm from sunrise till sundown. Those were long days during the summer. I managed to get a job at the nearby Methodist Church as a secretary. It was only part-time, but I saved every penny I could. When Hayden asked me to marry him, I asked, “What took you so long? I’ve been waiting since we graduated.”

He said, “I didn’t want us to have to live in the basement at Mom and Dad’s.”

“What changed?”

He held out a piece of paper that looked like a contract of some sort, signed by him and his father. I didn’t get it at first. I’d never seen a contract for deed. Harlan had agreed to sell his son a parcel of twenty acres right across Mosquito Road from us. We were in debt to the tune of four thousand dollars. As soon as I said, “yes,” it seemed that Hayden went straight to work getting us a place to live. We were married six months later. It was the most difficult six months of our lives but I was a virgin on my wedding night.

Hurricane Betts arrived exactly nine months later.

Elizabeth Ann Frost was a handful from her first gulp of air. Hayden and I realized that we didn’t know the first thing about raising children. We were twenty years old. We wanted to go to bed and have sex. Instead, we went to bed and got up with the baby. Hayden worked the farm, taking over more and more of Harlan’s work load. His folks were older than mine because Harlan had been too busy farming for a wife and children. He married Naomi, who was fifteen years younger than him and popped out Hayden immediately. Harlan was stoic when he found out Naomi would have no other children, but he wept openly when she died in ’77. He said he didn’t want to live another twenty-five years without her. But what we want doesn’t always matter.

My mother showed me how to change diapers and fill a bottle with milk. She showed me how to squirt it on my wrist to make sure it was the right temperature and then shove it in the baby’s mouth. It never occurred to us that Betts was so fussy and unhappy because she didn’t get along with cow’s milk. It might have affected her temperament right through her teens because we’d been taught that milk builds strong healthy bones and made sure she drank three glasses a day until she left home.

When Brian came along, Hayden and I had had sex so infrequently that we considered the pregnancy a miracle. But by that time, we knew enough to feed him with the new liquid formula that was out. It’s funny that I had absolutely no concept that I had milk to feed my children growing on my chest! That was considered something gross and primitive that African tribes did, not Americans. Of course, by the time Brian was ten, the trend had started the other way as the big manufacturers were exposed for their marketing to third world countries and decreasing the nutrient value being received by infants using formula in comparison to breast milk. In so many ways, we were so stupid.

On the other hand, Brian was a peaceful baby compared to Betts. Hayden and I renewed our sex life and I thought for sure that we’d be having more children, but for some reason I didn’t catch again. That probably made us careless about sex education and teaching about birth control. I’m sure it contributed to later events.

One of the most significant things that occurred soon after Brian was born was that Hayden sold an acre of land next door. Harlan was furious. He’d just sold three ten-acre plots to the north, but he wasn’t happy that we subdivided what he’d sold us. The thing is that selling that acre to Ford and Ellen Barnes might have been the start of everything that followed after. With Ford and Ellen came their two children, Jessica and Drew. At last, our children would have playmates. Apparently, Ellen hadn’t had difficulty having sex soon after Jessica was born and Drew was only eleven months younger—what some people called “Irish Twins”. They were right between our children and we thought sure they would be a playmate for each.

How wrong we were.

2
Civil War

“ELIZABETH ANN, stop picking at your brother,” I yelled. I was doing a lot of yelling lately. I hated it. I hated who I was becoming. I wanted to be a good mother but I was so tired all the time. I looked at Hayden for help but he was talking to Ford and not paying any attention to the four children. Ellen, of course, was in the kitchen, so it looked like I was the parent on duty. I turned to yell at Betts again, automatically assuming she was still picking at the smaller children.

Drew was sitting four feet away from Betts in a stare-down. Jessica and Brian were gone.

“Betts, where is Brian?” I demanded. The little brat turned and gave me such a look of disdain that I almost cringed. Why did I let her get to me? Drew, looking at her, started giggling as only a three-year-old can. I just threw my hands up in despair and headed for the kitchen—the only door Jessica and Brian could have left through.

Jessica had been carrying Brian around since the day they met—when Jessica was three and Brian was one. We all thought it was cute. But after a year, it had already evolved to Betts and Drew versus Jessica and Brian with the latter always running away from the former.

“Ellen, did you see Jessica and Brian? They had to come this way.” I was looking frantically around the kitchen with no sign of them. Ellen smiled at me and pointed to a lower cabinet under the counter. I opened the door cautiously and saw the two little ones playing patty-cake in the cabinet. I quietly closed the door and went back to watch Betts and Drew fighting over a dump truck that neither of them wanted. I just let them go at it.

Ellen came out of the kitchen and handed me a glass of wine. “They’re something special, aren’t they?”

“Hayden, I don’t know what to do. I’m such a failure as a mother. Sometimes I just want to turn a child or two or three over my knee and beat some sense into them. They’re brother and sister! They should get along with each other,” I cried.

My Hayden. He was such a gentle soul. Thank God, Brian, at least, took after him. I’m afraid Betts got much more of her temperament from me. But Hayden, even having grown up on a farm with a stern and demanding father, had become the most kind and patient man I’d ever met. I loved him so much my heart was breaking. It wasn’t only my children I was failing, it was my husband. He wrapped me in his arms as we lay in bed and kissed my chin.

“We can hope first grade relieves a little of the pressure,” he said softly. “At least you will only have one at home.”

“Is that all I can do? I don’t want to be a terrible mother. I don’t want to be a terrible wife. I don’t want to be a terrible person.”

“A horse,” he said firmly. I pulled away from him and stared.

“What?”

“Betsy needs something to focus on that is her responsibility. We need to get a horse.”

“Wouldn’t a puppy be a better place to start?” I asked. “A horse?”

“Baby, would you really put a poor defenseless little puppy in Betsy’s hands?”

Well, there was that. It was hard enough to keep her from doing damage to a two-year-old brother. I could only imagine what she’d do to a puppy.

“Isn’t… Wouldn’t that be… I mean a horse be… dangerous?”

“Betts needs something bigger than she is. I’ll get some materials next weekend and build a little barn. I don’t have anything left in our fields but hay. All the cash crops are on Dad’s land. I’ll find a gentle horse and teach her to ride and care for him. Look at all her books and toys. Books about horses. Pictures of horses. A stuffed horse, for Pete’s sake.”

“That’s a unicorn.”

“Whatever. All she sees are four legs and a mane. It will keep her out of the house so she isn’t picking at her brother all the time and teach her responsibility.”

I started to object some more but he silenced me by kissing me. In that kiss—something that had become less fervent over the six years we’d been married—I woke up. I’d always loved Hayden’s kisses. When we were teens, it was all I could do to keep from undressing when he kissed me. I missed it so much. He was offering me help. He was giving me something to hang on to. I let the kiss get deeper and could feel the stirrings down inside. Only they were different this time. It wasn’t just the sexual tension that I’d felt as a teen, though I still felt that. It was something that moved me to my core. I felt… I knew… how much he loved me. He loved me so much he would try to find a solution to my bad parenting. He loved me. And I loved him so much I ached for him.

I think Hayden was surprised that it was my tongue that first initiated contact that night. He was a little shocked when I pulled his hand to my breast. I was proud of my breasts—never let it be said that I didn’t have my vanity. I’d had two children and my breasts were still high on my chest, not sagging, even if they were a little softer than they’d once been. He squeezed gently. I heard him gasp when I grasped his erection.

I touched it! With my hand. I’d always—or at least usually—accepted his advances and willingly opened my legs when he indicated he wanted me. He always found me ready. I’d heard a girlfriend say that sex always hurt and it was just something she had to endure with her husband. I was thankful that Hayden never penetrated me until I was ready and receptive. But I’d never touched him and pulled him toward me.

And then, I don’t know what came over me. I sat up and pulled my nightgown over my head and stripped my panties down my legs. I popped two buttons on Hayden’s pajama shirt as I frantically scrambled to get it off of him.

“Marilyn?” he squeaked.

“Take your pants off, Hayden. I want you.”

I don’t think I’d ever said those words before. That night I became part of the sexual revolution. I knew women had burned their bras in the sixties. I knew all about women’s liberation. I’d simply never let it affect me. I’d been a proper farm wife. Not always as willing to have sexual congress with my husband, but always relenting. And I enjoyed it. But I’d never made the transition from a goodnight kiss to sex on my own initiative.

I’m not a dripper. My sexual lubricant wasn’t flowing down my legs. But I was wet and slippery and welcoming and the man I’d committed my life to thrust his penis into me as I held it and directed it to my opening. I hunched my hips up to meet his thrusts and began to feel something I’d never felt before. Six years of marriage. Six years of giving my body to my husband when he wanted. And never once realizing how much and how deeply he loved me and wanted me to enjoy our lovemaking.

Something burst inside me as I gave myself over to his love. And in that moment, I found something about myself. I experienced an orgasm. I gasped and giggled and cried and tried not to shout to the rooftop how happy I was.

A horse!

It was so ridiculous and so perfect that I couldn’t contain myself. I was going to do this again and again. Sex was no longer something I would give when my husband desired, it was something I was going to ask for. A lot.

“This is for you and this is for Brian,” I said, giving each of my children a fresh-baked cookie. I saw Betts eying her brother’s and knew she was going to wait until my back was turned and try to get as much of his cookie as she could. “Betts, if you touch Brian’s cookie, you will have no horse privileges tonight when Daddy gets home.” That threw my six-year-old for a loop.

I was a little skeptical about introducing a horse to my oldest child. But Hayden was right. She needed something bigger than she was and Silk was perfect. I guess as horses go, she wasn’t big. She was an eighteen-year-old Arabian and unlike their hot-tempered reputation, she was as gentle as an old grandma. Every day, Betts had a riding lesson with Hayden after he got home. With harvest coming in and school starting, that was sometimes in the dark, but she was developing quickly in her riding skills. It looked like we had found something she liked more than picking at her brother. The threat of losing her riding privilege had only been carried out once, but that was all it took. She shaped up pretty quickly.

She glanced at her brother’s cookie again and sighed.

“Mommy, he’s little,” she said exasperatedly. “Why does he get as big a cookie as I get?” My daughter was trying to use logic on me. Because I said so wasn’t going to cut it. I decided to take a different tact entirely.

“Well, my precious daughter, that is a good observation.” I placed another cookie on her napkin. Brian was happily chewing on his and never even glanced at hers. “Now, you have twice as many cookies as Brian. And you aren’t quite twice as old.”

“I’m six and he is three.”

“But he will be four next month and you’ll still be six. I’ll only be able to give you an extra half a cookie instead of a whole one. That will be fair.”

“But…” she hesitated trying to compute the problem. It was beyond her first month of first grade computational skills. I wondered for how long I’d be able to do math that was more advanced than my children’s. “I’ll still always be older so I’ll always get more.”

“And when you grow up big and fat, you’ll thank me for feeding you twice as much as your brother, even though Silk won’t be able to carry you around any longer.”

Okay. I don’t play the looks card often. Betts is a pretty child, but I try never to make any more of her looks than her brains. This child-rearing is so hard! Nonetheless, overeating just in order to have more than her brother could cause severe health and weight problems in the future. She put the half-eaten second cookie back on her napkin and pushed away from the table. She stared at her brother.

“Don’t let Brian have the rest of my cookie. I’ll be back.” Thirty seconds later, the back door slammed and she was gone outside. I wrapped the cookie in a napkin to keep for later. I knew she would ask for it, eventually. Maybe after six years, I had figured out parenting.

“I don’t understand what happened. Suddenly he stopped breathing. Then he started again but was gasping. Please help.” Hayden’s arm was around me and Brian was lying on an emergency room bed with oxygen being pumped into him. He was only four years old. How could this be happening?

“It appears that Brian is sensitive to certain types of particles in the air. This most closely resembles an asthma or allergy attack. Is there anything that he might have gotten into?”

“Oh, Lord!” Hayden whispered. “The insulation.”

“He was near an insulating material?”

“Fiberglass batting insulation. I’ve been insulating the attic before snow falls. We lost a lot of heat last season.”

“That could do it. He inhaled the dust and it caused his airways to inflame. Look. You can see hives on his skin as well.”

“You can help him?”

“Yes. We can get the swelling down and get his airways open, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he has continued breathing difficulty for anywhere from a few days to a few months,” Dr. Roberts said.

“What else should we do?” Hayden asked.

“First off, we should get you checked out, Hayden. If you’ve been working with that stuff and raised enough dust to affect Brian’s breathing, there’s a good chance you’ve inhaled a lot of it yourself. Secondly, I’d suggest that you get it sealed up. At minimum, stretch plastic over the insulated ceiling or wherever. I think they call the stuff Visqueen. But if I were you, I’d see about sheet-rocking and getting it truly sealed up tight. You’ll probably get better insulating value that way, too.”

They started treatment immediately, keeping oxygen flowing. I had to stay in the hospital. Well, I’m his mother. I wasn’t going to leave. Hayden took Betts home so she could go to school the next day. Before Betts left, she reached up and touched Brian’s hand. Hayden picked her up and carried her to the car.

It was a hard winter in more ways than one. Brian suffered from shortness of breath and could scarcely play outside in the snow at all. The cold air caused his lungs to seize up. He eventually started to gain some weight back, but he’d pretty much stopped growing. His pediatrician said it was normal for a child to grow and then stop growing and then grow some more so we shouldn’t worry. I worried anyway.

Betts seemed to have called a tentative truce with her brother. I won’t say the war was over, but it was more peaceful.

The hardest thing for us to adjust to was Hayden going to work in town. Buying the insulation, sheetrock, and plaster had been an unexpected expense, on top of the medical bills and the addition Hayden built the previous spring. The house had been under construction ever since we got that bit of land from his father almost nine years ago. It started as just a little box. We added on another two bedrooms and built the Cape Cod style attic room. Everything a little at a time. But finishing everything took all our money and put us in debt. There was no choice but for Hayden to get a regular job.

His father was even more unhappy when Hayden said he’d only be available to farm on weekends in the spring. Early that summer, Naomi passed away and Harlan never went back into the fields. He was sixty-eight years old and assumed his son would just keep farming. It was a spring of double-heartbreak for the old man and a time for us to adjust to a new lifestyle.

3
Overcoming Life’s Catastrophes

BRIAN’S BIRTHDAY was in October. The cutoff for starting school was September 15, so he spent another year in kindergarten. I tried to negotiate getting him admitted to first grade, but with his small size and somewhat sickly demeanor, the school wouldn’t budge. Even among children that were all younger than he was, he was the smallest in his kindergarten class. I worried about his socialization. For as small as he was, he was far more mature than his classmates and spent nearly all his time reading.

It was no better at home.

“Aaaah! Mommy!” I rushed into the kitchen to find my eldest with a bloody nose. “Ja-Ja-Jessica hit me!”

Oh dear. I thought for once we were going to have a peaceful spring. Drew was finishing first grade, Jessica was finishing second grade, and Betts was finishing fourth grade. At long last, Brian was going to get out of kindergarten. Unfortunately, I knew there was more to the story than Betts was giving me. Our sweet little next-door neighbor girl simply did not go around hitting people. She was the girly-girl of the neighborhood and in second grade already knew more about applying makeup than I did. Getting into a fist fight was not likely. Still, I resisted the urge to ask my daughter what she’d done to deserve getting hit. After she was cleaned up and the bleeding stopped, I took her back outside to investigate the crime.

Jessica was helping Brian learn to ride his bicycle. He was still so small that we’d only just found a bicycle this spring that we could adjust low enough for him. He flat-out refused to ride his trike any longer.

“Jessica? Did you hit Betts?” Jessica stopped Brian’s bicycle and made sure he had his feet on the ground before she turned to face us. She ignored me and ignored my question. Instead, she marched straight up to Betts, who cowered beside me.

“You push Brian off his bicycle again, I’ll bloody both your noses!” she screamed. Then she spun around to face her brother who’d just about made it to Brian with a look of mischief in his eyes. “That goes for you, too, brat!” she yelled. “I’ll make you cry.” Drew stopped and became intensely interested in a stick he found on the ground. Waving it around he ran off whooping and pretending to shoot.

I walked over to where my son was still straddling the bike frame standing on his tiptoes so he wouldn’t crush himself on the crossbar. I looked at his torn slacks and scraped knee.

“Why didn’t you come in the house when you got hurt?” I asked.

“Um… Betts got hurt.” He said that as if it explained everything. I suppose it did.

“Jessica, I appreciate you trying to protect Brian, but don’t you think we might find some ways that don’t involve hitting each other?” I asked. Jessica scowled at Betts. I’m not sure what she was going to say because Brian came up to us right then.

“Is your hurt better, Betsy?” he asked. She nodded and then hugged him. She was a full head taller than her brother but she permitted the familiarity. Brian turned around and ran back to his bicycle, followed by Jessica. He mounted up while she steadied the bike and he started pedaling with her running along beside him.

“Yuck! Boy cooties!” Betts growled. She stomped off toward the barn calling for Silk.

Let me see. Betts is three-and-a-half years older than Brian. I can’t get rid of either one until they are eighteen. That means I’ll have been a parent for twenty-one years before they’re both out of the house. That is not nearly enough time for me to learn how to raise children.

The summer was shit from hell. Excuse my French.

We were in a new world. Hayden got up each morning and went to work at the electronic components factory in South Bend. God knows we needed the factory. We all thought it would close by the end of the Vietnam War when the aviation parts they manufactured were no longer needed. The Studebaker plant closed three years before we graduated from high school. Ball Band had been purchased and the Mishawaka Woolen Mills name had already been dropped. We weren’t sure how our other industries would survive. Our whole area had been in depression for ten years. Classmates had found it difficult to get work and moved to Elkhart, Chicago, and Fort Wayne. We’d been insulated for the most part. Hayden had worked on the farm. His father shared the profit with him. I could do my part-time work as a church secretary even with a baby. Our social lives revolved around each other, our parents, the Barnes family, and the church. Those were all the people we ever saw.

I guess I didn’t realize how much losing his mother, stopping work on the farm, and going to work in a factory affected Hayden. I was so wrapped up in refereeing between our children that I didn’t take note of his problems. It just seemed that no matter how much overtime he put in, we were still behind on the bills. As much as I’d revitalized our sex life with my realization of how much he loved me two years ago, I was thirty-one years old and knew I wasn’t the pretty teen he fell in love with. I was always tired and I guess I complained a lot.

No guessing about it. I was becoming every bit as much a bitch as my daughter.

It was late at night—for us. Probably ten o’clock. In the summer, the kids stayed up until nightfall and we collapsed soon after. Hayden had to be at work by seven. I was nearly asleep when he spoke, nudging me awake.

“Marilyn, we need to talk.”

“Not now, Hayden, I’m too tired. I promise we can have sex tomorrow night.” I guess that had become a pretty standard response to his overtures over the past year. The truth was that I was ashamed of my body. I wasn’t exactly fat, but two babies had left my stomach soft and puffed out. My breasts were still okay because I never breastfed a baby, but they were beginning to soften and sag as well. I was too tired to shave my legs and armpits regularly. My hair hadn’t been professionally done in a year. I couldn’t see how Hayden could possibly find me desirable. It was easier to push him away.

“I had an affair, Marilyn.”

I lay there suddenly awake but unmoving. My husband? The only man I’d ever kissed? The father of my children? Rutting with some faceless bimbo when I thought he was working?

I couldn’t breathe.

I wanted to sob and scream and run and hide. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I gasped for air.

“I ended it, Marilyn. I never thought it could ever happen to me—to us. I swear it’s over. But we’ve been so… far apart. I never should have quit the farm and gone to the factory. I’m… I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry!” I exploded. “We took wedding vows! I gave you everything. And you’re sorry? What did you do? Accidentally run into her on the assembly line and decide to put some parts together? How could you do this to me?”

I rolled out of the bed and grabbed my pillow. I went to the sofa in the living room and then went back to grab the sheet off the bed to wrap up in, leaving Hayden in his pajama bottoms uncovered on the bed. His hairy chest was heaving with sobs. It’s funny how the thing I noticed at that moment was that he had more hair on his chest than on the top of his head. I curled up in a ball on the sofa with the sheet pulled over my head and cried the rest of the night.

I considered taking the children and moving across Mosquito Road to my parents’ house. But I was too ashamed to tell anyone that I wasn’t a good enough wife to keep my husband at home.

He got up in the morning and went to work. He was home promptly after work. It went on like that for several days with neither of us saying more than “Here’s your lunch bag,” or “How were the kids today?”

Summer hours at the church were cut to Saturday mornings when I typed up the bulletin and ran it on the mimeograph. Once a month, I typed the stencil for the newsletter, ran it off, and mailed it. It was simply one day after another. An existence that I survived.

We were old. I was old. I wasn’t a young pretty girl any longer, so it made sense in my screwed-up brain that Hayden would want someone younger. Prettier. More willing. Someone who didn’t push him away every time he reached out to her.

I noticed he was home more. No overtime, so he said. He’d planted twenty acres of his dad’s farm for hay and got two cuttings in to feed the horse over the winter. I didn’t think poor old Silk could eat that much over the winter, but the horse was his and Betts’. It was a Friday afternoon before dinner that Betts came running through the door screaming, “Silk! My Silk!” She was crying and ran into her room and slammed the door shut.

It would be like Betts to cry over Silk if there had been an accident. Hayden could be dead and she’d yell about Silk. I ran out the back door and headed to the barn. I stopped short when I saw Hayden in the pasture leading the white horse around with Brian in the saddle. He looked so tiny up there, for all that he was six years old. Well, Betts was going to fume over this forever, that was for sure. But what I saw in that field…

I saw a loving and devoted father with his son. I saw a man who cared for his family and worked hard to provide for them. I saw the man I fell in love with and rejected so often that he found another. I saw the man… the man I wanted to hold and grow old with.

I kept walking toward the pasture and leaned on the fence. I imagined what I must look like in a scruffy housedress and my hair under a bandana. I should have gone back to the house and got prettied up, but I couldn’t let it go another minute.

Brian had a grin across his face a mile wide as Hayden led Silk up to the fence.

“I’m learning to ride, Mom!” he exclaimed. “I love Silk.” I looked up at Hayden’s face, eight inches above mine, and he smiled.

“You’re going to have to buy another horse,” I said softly.

His smiling lips dropped down to mine and lingered there a moment.

“Maybe we should talk about that tonight,” he said.

“In bed.”

It wasn’t smooth sailing from that point on. We’d both hurt each other deeply. I started taking better care of myself, got a haircut and perm. And color. I couldn’t help but notice that there were gray hairs creeping into my dark brown locks. Not after the hairdresser pointed them out to me. I was way too young for a blue rinse.

I was thrown completely for a loop though when I found that Hayden’s affair had not been with a teen or twenty-something. She was ten years older than we were. It turned out that he didn’t need someone younger, he just wanted someone who was interested.

And she did prove to be interested. She didn’t want the affair to end. She even called the house one evening. I was shocked at her brazenness.

“Mrs. Frost… Marilyn, I’m Eugenia Dennis. I know you already know about my affair with your husband. I’m terribly sorry I hurt you. It wasn’t my intent. I didn’t have any intent. I didn’t plan to have an affair, and certainly not with a married man,” she said when I answered.

“What do you want, Eugenia?”

“Genie. I wish I could put me back in a bottle,” she said as she heaved a deep sigh. “I fell in love with your husband. I’m sorry but it’s true. We live in an age where all kinds of things are possible. We’re pretty sheltered here in Northern Indiana, but in California there are couples that are actually threesomes. There are queer people who are openly with each other. There are…”

“Forgive me for interrupting, but could you get to the point?”

“Can we both be with him?”

There it was, right out front. And I had to admit that I’d thought of it already. I might be a farm girl, but I’m pretty well informed. I read the newspaper. We subscribed to Life and The Ladies’ Home Journal. Even National Geographic and Readers’ Digest. I’d heard of the sexual revolution that was going on all around us, even in parochial Indiana. But to actually share my husband?

I know what I said, but what was I thinking?

“Have you ever been with another woman?” I asked. I was greeted by absolute silence. “You have to know that any woman I share my husband with is going to be shared with me.”

“That’s… perverted.”

“Well, think about it. Don’t call again unless you’re ready to put your face between my legs.” I hung up.

I was absolutely giddy. What on earth had I done? Hayden and I had indulged in oral sex on occasion. Not often. Usually, if we were going to have sex, I would be on my back with my legs open or, after my own sexual awakening, on top of him. But always with his penis in my vagina. And here I had just suggested oral sex with a woman!

Before Hayden got home that afternoon, I’d showered, shaved my legs and pits, and had even trimmed my pubic hair from around my lips. Then I spent ten minutes with a soft hair brush, brushing said hair until I was certain there would be no loose hairs to get in Hayden’s mouth. And in the process found my own vaginal fluids running rather freely.

I called in a favor from Ellen and asked her to watch the kids for a few hours. She agreed to feed them.

When Hayden got home, I pushed him toward the bathroom.

“Shower,” I said. “Don’t bother to dress afterwards.”

His eyes popped open in surprise, but he hustled himself into the bathroom. I was pleased to hear his electric shaver as well. We’d made love since reconciling, but if I had my way, Hayden was going to have the ride of his life tonight. And so was I.

He came out of the bathroom and found me naked on the bed. In broad daylight! His generous cock… God! I called it a cock! It was rising quickly. It sprang to full attention when I pulled him into my mouth. Yes, I’d given him a blowjob before, but in eleven years of marriage, it was always considered foreplay. Not that he needed much. This time he was gasping and pushing at my head, trying to warn me that he was going to come, but I stuck to his cock like a vacuum cleaner and for the first time ever he filled my mouth with semen.

I hadn’t thought it through very well. It started dribbling out of my mouth while he was still spurting and I reflexively swallowed. In my mind, I had just become a wanton whore for my husband. I jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom to rinse my mouth and brush my teeth. Then I pranced back into the bedroom, swaying my hips and my breasts as Hayden watched transfixed. I crawled over him onto the bed, dragging my nipples through that deep hair on his chest. Electric! I flopped down beside him and spread my legs.

“Your turn,” I said.

“I don’t think I’ll be up again for a while,” he sighed.

“You have a mouth,” I replied. The dawn came rapidly over his face and he scrambled around to face my newly barbered crotch. Hayden didn’t have much experience in this but he was enthusiastic and in my current state of arousal, it only took about ten minutes until I lost control of my senses and climaxed.

As we cuddled in the afterglow, I told Hayden about Genie’s call and what I’d told her. At first, I thought he was mad at me but he was hard again in record time and I wasn’t going to let it go to waste. I mounted him and he pounded up into me.

“I didn’t even know she had our phone number. I can’t believe she called you.” Still, something had gotten his engine running. “I’ll call her and tell her again that it is over and to never call my home again. You are it, Marilyn. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m never going back.”

“It excited you, Hayden. I can feel it inside. You weren’t this hard before. The idea of two women excites you, doesn’t it?”

“Please, Marilyn. Don’t make me confess to every man’s fantasy.”

“Well, we’ll just have to see if she calls back.” I could feel his penis flare inside me. If he was this excited and came, I could end up pregnant again!

“Would you do that? Really?”

“I can think of some things that two women could do to you.”

“But the other?”

“Having her give me oral sex?”

“And giving it?”

“Oh! Uh… Crap! I didn’t think about that part. Would you want to see me…? See me eating another woman’s… um… pussy?” I rasped.

Hayden came.

Damn it! So did I.

4
Jessica Says

EUGENIA NEVER CALLED AGAIN.

I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed. One thing was for sure, though. I was determined.

Having Brian finally in first grade gave me more time to myself. I had visions of a life of leisure. Ha! I finally got the oven cleaned. I sewed slip-covers for the worn-out sofa and armchair. I got the last of the hard water stains out of the bathtub. But most of all, I got a shower each afternoon before the children came home. I got a good meal on the table and served my family. And once the children were in bed, I fucked my husband.

I never use words like that! But that doesn’t mean I don’t know them.

If Hayden had languished for lack of sex with his wife so much that he’d been driven to the arms of another woman, now he was more likely to be worn out. On nights that he seemed too tired to make love to me, I sucked him. On nights when I was slow to get things started, he ate me.

We slowed down some as the winter progressed, but our sex evolved to lovemaking and neither of us was ever left unsatisfied. Every month I waited for the news that I was pregnant again, but my monthly visitor always came.

I was wearing down as a full-time Susie Housewife. I didn’t mind the work of caring for the home—it was pretty much all I’d known my adult life—but I was lonely. I searched the want ads and eventually found a part-time job in the circulation department of the newspaper. It wasn’t difficult work. Mostly, I took subscription information over the phone, listened to customer complaints, and changed order quantities for the paper carriers. But it got me out of the house. It complicated matters a little for transportation, but we found a good deal on a used Chevy station wagon. It wasn’t elegant, but I was getting called on more often to take a few kids places. And even our family had difficulty fitting in the pickup.

“Since he’s the smallest child in our class, I’ve tried to keep an eye on Brian,” Mrs. Chapman said. My son’s first grade teacher was meeting with the parents of her students to give us an end-of-school-year evaluation of their progress and explain their placement in the next grade. “Small children often have difficulty socializing with much bigger children. They tend to get… pushed around a little.”

“Bullied,” I said flatly. Twice, Brian had come home from school with skinned knees or elbows and said he’d fallen on the playground. Sad though it was, I was used to Brian being bullied, first by his sister and then by Drew next door.

“Yes. We tend not to use that word unless there is a sustained act by a single individual. There are some older children who seem to relish picking on younger ones, but Brian doesn’t seem to get an unusual amount of their attention. I notice an older girl—a third grader who is very popular in her class—seems to have some influence, extending her protective wings, as it were, over Brian.”

“That could only be Jessica,” I sighed. Brian, Drew, and Jessica were in three different grades but only sixteen months separated the ages of Jessica and Brian with Drew sandwiched between. “I wish his sister had taken on that role.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say she was completely absent. Though Elizabeth’s temper is probably more of a deterrent than any active protection of her brother,” Mrs. Chapman said. “I just wanted to let you know that Brian has excelled academically, due in part to the fact that he was already an advanced reader when he entered first grade. This year we have selected thirty students for an accelerated curriculum in second grade. I believe Brian will fit well with this group. They tend to be bright and a bit more pacifistic than some of the others. It should be good for him.”

“Thank you. I’m glad he’s progressing well,” I said. “I appreciate your efforts.”

I didn’t give much consideration to the role Jessica played in Brian’s life. As far as I could see, school had changed things. She was two years ahead of him and that put her in a different world. I seldom saw them together when the children played, Jessica was more likely to be indoors and Brian had made friends with a new neighbor, Geoff Hopkins. The Hopkins family had moved in the previous fall and the boys seemed to hit it off well together. They often played, sometimes in our attic where Brian’s electric train was set up.

I absorbed two things from the teacher meeting. My child was still alive and he was doing well in school. I checked them off my list.

Time sped by.

Sadly, the hoped-for end of school bullying did not come but Brian seemed almost oblivious to it. He came home with his share of scrapes and bruises but nothing we could pin on a single bully. I cornered Betts in the spring when she was in sixth grade and Brian was in second. Brian had come home with a bruise on his right cheek and said he got it playing football on the playground. Football! He was still the smallest in his class and I wasn’t sure he could lift a football much less play the game.

“Betts, do you watch out for Brian at school?” I asked. “What was he doing playing football.”

“Um… He’s okay. Jessica says.”

“Exactly what does that mean?”

“He was playing with some first graders and they were too close to the sports field where the older boys were playing touch football. It was just a stray pass and a boy got pushed into him. Jessica says it won’t happen again,” Betts said.

“And how would Jessica know this?” Betts shrugged and went out to brush and saddle her show horse, Paprika. She’d pretty much abandoned Silk and Brian adopted her. Unfortunately, Brian was still too short to saddle the smaller horse, so he didn’t get much riding time in.

I went off to visit Ellen and find out what was going on with Jessica.

“Oh, Marilyn. You know Jessica has always been protective of Brian. You don’t see them together much, but she gets her friends to watch out for him.”

“How does she do this? She can’t be everywhere at once.”

“Like you, I have an angel and a devil for children,” Ellen sighed. It was only four in the afternoon but she always seemed to have a bottle of white wine chilled and she poured me a glass. I agreed that we each had one easy child and one problem child, though I didn’t think Betts was anywhere near as devilish as Drew. “Each of my children have become friends with like-minded children. Drew’s friends are large and stupid. Jessica’s are smart and gregarious. And they’d do anything for her. Jessica says, ‘watch out for Brian,’ and they keep an eye on him.”

I sighed. Betts would be out of elementary school at the end of the year. Jessica would be there only two more years. Then where would my boy be?

I met a woman at the newspaper office.

Hayden and I had fueled our continued fantasies over the years with one of us occasionally pointing out an attractive woman to the other and whispering, “How about that one?” If any of our friends had known about our little fantasies… well, we probably wouldn’t have had many friends. But that night we would have sex and whisper to each other about what the ‘other woman’ would be doing to us.

“I dreamt we were in a spa,” I whispered.

“What kind of spa?” he asked.

“It was like ancient Rome. We had a long soak and then a very oily massage.”

“I’d have gone to sleep.”

“Not with the woman who was oiling you playing with your balls the whole time.”

“Marilyn!” I squeezed some baby oil into my hand and began massaging him as I continued to tell my little fantasy.

“I was getting the same treatment. I thought it was the same woman but maybe they were twins.”

“Twins?”

“Either that or she was using one hand on you and the other on me. But it felt so good. I was close to the edge but she wouldn’t let me have an orgasm.” I felt his cock jerk and pressed down hard on it to prevent him from bathing my hand. He moaned. “Then she wrapped us in towels and took us to a feast where we were served fruit and wine.”

“Instead of coming, we went to dinner?”

“Yes. But our little lapdog—that’s what our woman was called—sort of ate with us.”

“That’s nice of her.”

“Yes. She crawled beneath the table and put her head between our legs to lick us while we ate our meal. That’s what makes me think she was twins. How could she be licking us both at the same time?” Hayden moaned again. I pinched. He whined.

“Did they ever let us come?” he cried. His fingers were in my greasy slit and I was nearly as ready as he was.

“They led us to a bed and stretched us out. They kept teasing, rubbing their nipples across our lips. They put our fingers in their pussies,” I whispered. I still seldom spoke that word aloud. It seemed so dirty. “They rubbed our sex. I thought it was the end. But just then, they disappeared in a wisp of smoke, like in the Arabian nights.”

“They just left us high and dry?” he moaned as I removed my hand from his cock and pulled away from his fingers. “Marilyn…”

“That’s when I had to take matters into my own hands,” I said. I swung my leg over him and in one long, satisfying move, sank my vagina onto his penis. The whine he made—we made—was so loud I was afraid we’d wake the children. If it weren’t for the frantic kiss we shared, the orgasm that hit us both a few seconds later definitely would have awakened them.

We lay gasping in each other’s arms. His penis continued to pulse inside me and I squeezed and released until he finally softened and slid out of me. I lay beside him kissing for a long time before I whispered, “I met a woman at the office. She could be the one.”

“Is she twins?” he sighed.

“No, but I like her.”

“I don’t want anyone who isn’t as beautiful as my wife.”

“Oh? You have a beautiful wife? Maybe she’d be jealous of someone who was better looking.”

“She would have to offer something that my wife didn’t. I don’t know what that would be.”

“Variety? Entertainment?” I nipped at his chest and pulled a hair from between my teeth. “She has a very sexy voice. I heard her on the phone taking classified ads. I’m going to invite her home to eat.”

“Dinner?”

“No. Her.”

Joyce Bennett did have a sexy voice. Sadly, that was the only sexy part of her. She was shorter than me and weighed more than Hayden. She had a mustache that I wanted to shave off her. But she was nice and we often had lunch together. She became my project.

It started by suggesting we go for a walk to the river to eat in the park. She was puffing by the time we returned to the office but agreed to walk with me the next day as well. I started suggesting recipes we should try for lunch that were healthy instead of the typical bologna sandwiches and bags of potato chips that she consumed. We started sharing recipes and lunches. I started talking to her about family life and men. I learned she was single and expected to die that way. I convinced her to join me for a girls’ spa day that was really only having our hair and nails done, but my hairdresser suggested Joyce have her lip waxed.

That almost ended the friendship, but once she felt how smooth her lip was and what a difference it made to her looks, she kept it up. Once every six weeks, we would go to the hairdresser. She progressed from having just her mustache waxed to having her eyebrows shaped as well. And as she dropped weight, the shape of her face changed and revealed a woman who, if not a beauty, was quite pretty.

I was beginning to think my little project might ultimately bear fruit and was seriously trying to determine the best way to broach the topic of coming to dinner when she began canceling our lunch dates. I was a little hurt. For nearly two years we’d been enjoying each other’s company and I’d grown quite fond of her. Then on Monday she burst into my little cubicle radiating joy. I could tell she had been to the hairdresser—without me—and had applied her makeup with newly acquired skill. She looked… yummy.

“Look!” she squealed. My mouth dropped open as I saw the diamond on her finger. “Cary asked me to marry him and I said yes! Oh, Marilyn, this never would have happened without your coaching and encouragement. I love you so much and am so thankful for our friendship.”

I was speechless. My boss had asked my friend to marry him and I’d had no idea they were dating! That was why she had skipped so many of our lunches together. I tried to be happy for them. I was happy for them. But a tad bit disappointed as well. Cary should have left her to me a little longer. I’d been on the verge of suggesting she get a bikini wax.

Brian’s fourth and Betts’ eighth grade schoolyears came to an end. Betts had come along far enough with her riding that we sent her to a horse camp for the summer with Rika. Well, for four weeks. Brian was happy that he’d be an only child for a month and that he’d have Silk, though he still couldn’t saddle her. Everything looked fine until we found that Jessica was also going away for the summer.

What a beautiful girl! If I hadn’t known how much she cared for and protected Brian, I’d have thought she was an incredibly vain and self-centered child, as her mother sometimes painted her. I just hate it when people talk about how beautiful their child is, as if that was some life quality that meant they were a good person. Ellen’s constant talk about Jessica’s beauty sort of drove a final wedge between us, solidified by Drew’s animosity toward Brian. Finding out Jessica would be gone for the summer to a modeling school left me a little worried that Brian would be a victim of Drew’s bullying. My son was ten years old but still the smallest boy in his class.

I took the summer off work to try to keep a lid on things. There was gardening to be done and I was still stinging a little from losing Joyce. Once she and Cary were married, she quit work and was pregnant with their child in short order.

I was working in the garden when I saw Brian stumble out of the woods. He didn’t see me and headed straight for the barn. It looked like he was crying. I knew he’d been visiting his friend Geoff and stepped into the barn to see if he was all right. He was brushing Silk and sniffling but didn’t sound badly injured. I could hear him, though.

“Damn rat bastard. I hate him. I’m never going outside again. Damn him!”

Well, there was no doubt in my mind what that was about. When Hayden got home, we had a long discussion and started researching summer camps that would be appropriate for our small but tenacious boy. All that week, he stayed in that sweltering attic doing science experiments with his chemistry set. I was worried he’d die of heatstroke, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was the rotten eggs experiment. By Sunday, we had the boy on a bus to science camp for two weeks.

And we had an empty house to ourselves.

I pounced on my husband. I didn’t even let him get to the bedroom. He’d gotten a big recliner as a combined birthday and Christmas gift and I crawled into his lap. Naked. Something just snapped in my head and I was a wanton woman. I don’t think I’d ever been naked outside our bedroom. It had taken six years for me to get completely naked inside our bedroom. Hayden didn’t have a chance to get naked. I opened his pants, sucked his cock hard, and jumped on, right there in the chair.

Monday morning, Hayden initiated sex. In the shower! I’d been startled that he was still at home and couldn’t think of a time that he’d ever stepped into the shower with me. When he’d lathered me up and stroked all the important parts until I was moist, he bent me forward and pushed into me. It was such a shock and surprise that I came! And when Hayden came, we went back to washing each other again, dried ourselves, and made love again in bed.

“What are you doing home?” I asked as I recovered from an earthshaking climax.

“I’m on vacation,” he answered. “After last night, I realized that we hadn’t taken a vacation together in… Marilyn we’ve been married for almost fourteen years and other than the night we spent at the Holiday Inn for a honeymoon, we’ve never taken a vacation. I didn’t even realize that I was accumulating time off at work. We never got any on the farm.”

“How long?”

“Ten days.”

“I’ll pack. You get the car ready.”

“Where are we going?”

“Pick somewhere when we pull out of the driveway. I don’t care!”

Of course, it wasn’t quite that quick. We had to contact Mr. Baron up the way and see if he’d stop in and check on Silk each day. But we were out of the house and on the road at sunrise on Tuesday. We went east and traveled from Boston to Washington, DC and back across southern Pennsylvania and Ohio. Most nights we slept in the back of the station wagon. About every third night we found a Days Inn or Motel 6 and stood under unlimited hot water in the shower. And when we got home, we still had two days with the house to ourselves. We made love in the bedroom, the family room, the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen. I was more determined than ever to keep the spice in our lives.

5
Meeting the Love of Our Lives

BETTS BECAME MORE ALOOF as she moved out of junior high and started high school. In some ways, it was a relief. I’m sure Brian still suffered from her tantrums, but they both kept it out of my sight. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. Brian wasn’t growing much, but he was maturing. And it seemed that he had friends. The party invitation he’d had at the end of fifth grade seemed to be more than a passing thing. I didn’t hesitate to give him permission to go to the sixth grade year-end party. Nor did I think twice about it when he asked if we could pick up Cassie Clinton.

We knew the Clintons, though not well. He’d moved into the old Eberhardt place about six years before and built a small grass airstrip. He was an avid small aircraft pilot. The airstrip wasn’t really open to the public, though occasionally other planes landed there. All the neighbors had been invited to tour the little airstrip one Sunday afternoon and I found John and Bea to be gracious people. I wasn’t as enthused about his minister and John seemed to think that everyone should abide by his particular set of religious dogma. As long as you ignored that aspect, they were fine people but we never really became closer.

“Young man, you don’t wait in the car for a girl, even if you are just giving her a ride. You always pick up a girl at the door and walk her back to her door. No matter what. Get out and go to the door. Cassie’s parents are conservative and will want to know you are a gentleman.” Perhaps I was a little harsh with my son, but I’d seen some of the boys that Betts liked to hang out with and my son was not, by God, going to be like them. If that was who Betts wanted to date, she’d be gone to college before she ever went out. I scowled again at Brian when he reached for the front door and he jerked back to open the back door for Cassie then slide in beside her.

Everyone knew we were just offering a ride and this wasn’t a date between two twelve-year-olds but I noticed Cassie didn’t slide all the way over. Kids seemed to grow up so much faster these days. But when did I first know I was in love with Hayden? First grade? We’d had our ups and downs, but there was never a doubt in my mind that Hayden would be my forever man.

I stopped to visit a few minutes with Amanda Lenox and just check to see if she needed any help. I wasn’t very experienced with giving parties and assumed parents were all as frazzled as I would be. Amanda smiled and said she made her daughter organize everything and aside from making food, she and Paul had little to do. She led me to the back door and I saw about twenty kids—a little overbalanced on the girl side, but several boys as well. Paul was at the grill and the kids were wolfing down food as only newly-minted seventh-graders could. That was when I saw something that made my heart jump to my throat.

My little boy. Brian and Cassie were holding hands as they ate chips and drank their soft drinks. My mouth went dry and my first instinct was to rush out and break them apart immediately.

Like any mother who does her children’s laundry, I knew Brian had discovered the pleasure of self-pleasure. Just this week, after finding a crusty sock stuck to a pair of his underwear, I’d rummaged around in Betts’ room until I found the old book I’d given her at puberty. I’d left it on his bed with a box of tissues, never thinking that Betts might have been reading it one-handed.

But seeing the reality of my son holding a girl’s hand and being so completely relaxed with her, laughing and even joking with their friends, threw me for a loop. I excused myself from Amanda and hurried home.

“Was he being impolite or pushy?” Hayden asked as we cuddled in bed that night and I told him what I’d observed.

“No. He looked like a perfect gentleman and attentive boyfriend. But Hayden, he’s too young!”

“Did he look guilty after the party? Like he was trying to hide something?”

“No,” I moaned. “They got in the back seat and didn’t even try to hide the fact they were still holding hands. And the Clintons are picking him up for church tomorrow morning. But Hayden, he’s too young!” I repeated.

“Now that worries me more than his holding hands,” Hayden laughed. “I don’t suppose they teach anything immoral over there, but I hope he doesn’t become a Bible-thumping evangelical. That could make the next few years miserable.”

“Hayden…”

“When did I first tell you I was going to marry you?”

“What? Uh… No. You didn’t tell me first. I told you.”

“And?”

“Seventh grade.”

“Just because Brian is little, we think of him being much younger than he is. Twelve? Thirteen? Boys start noticing girls and as long as they aren’t behaving inappropriately, I don’t think we should interfere. I’ll just make sure that occasionally we have a conversation about proper behavior.”

I just sighed. He’s just too old for his age.

Getting Brian through seventh grade and Betts through her junior year in high school wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. Betts seemed to have tamed her wild side a bit and I overheard her telling Doreen in no uncertain terms that she planned to be a virgin on her wedding night. As long as that wasn’t tomorrow, I was fine with it.

We were playing cards with Dennis and Abby Hopkins one night when they mentioned the expanded circle of friends the boys had in junior high. I’d just assumed that things were about the same in junior high as they’d been in elementary school but failed to take into account kids from three different elementary schools fed into the junior-senior high.

“Well, we’ve always tried to teach the boys not to be prejudiced but they’d really never had a chance to interact with anyone of another race. We live in such a white bread neighborhood!” Dennis said. “Farmers.”

“I volunteered at the school when one of the cooks got that awful flu. What I saw in the cafeteria told me they’d taken the lessons to heart. The boys were with a group of about twenty or twenty-five in the middle of the cafeteria. It was a fully mixed crew of boys and girls and of black and white. Some of those boys have gotten really big. They are much taller than Geoff and tower over Brian,” Abby said.

“And they all get along together? You know I always worry about Brian being forced into things because he’s so much smaller than the others. He’s barely five feet tall.”

“From what Geoff told us, Brian organized it all. He invited the black kids to their table and several of them work together in study hall. Geoff says it’s mostly so they can borrow Brian’s notes from class,” Dennis laughed. “Brains wins over brawn.”

If only that were always the case. It had been a year since the bigger boys pushed Brian off his bike and stole his collection money. Hayden and I debated the issue all that night. I was ready to have him quit the paper route. And all through the incident, Brian refused to accuse the boys, holding that it was a dog that ran him off the road.

Some of the neighborhood women occasionally bake an extra casserole or batch of cookies to share with our neighbor, Mr. Henderson. That poor old man is a hundred years old and almost completely deaf. It’s nothing official or organized, but I saw my mother take him a casserole a few times and I just started doing it as well. I stopped by with a casserole not long after Brian’s incident with the dogs and he told me all about chasing away the boys who had pushed Brian in the ditch and robbed him.

We gave Brian a defense. It was an old remedy that we never considered was cruel or inhumane. Back in the day, there were always dogs getting hit because they were chasing cars. The accepted method of training them was to drive by and when they gave chase, spray them with ammonia. The dogs found the mist from a squirt gun to be unpleasant and soon stopped chasing cars. We figured it would work the same way on people and gave Brian a squirt gun filled with ammonia. We never heard another word about it.

Until two large boys attacked Jessica at school. Brian heard the ruckus and moved into action. He squirted both boys in the eyes with ammonia.

I didn’t even know he was still carrying it! It had been over a year since the bicycle incident and there was certainly no reason for him to carry the squirt gun in the winter. I’d seen it lying on a shelf in his room when I gathered his laundry. Because the school had a no-weapons rule in effect with severe penalties, Brian had switched to a small plastic bottle for his ammonia. We discovered that he never went anywhere without it.

He saved Jessica. The boys were both partially blind. If only Brian’s big friends had been with him in that hallway. We had a long talk with Brian, encouraging him to find ways other than violence to solve conflicts, but my son was still small and bullies were bullies.

Things seemed to change between Brian and Betts after that. We never talked about his role in saving Jessica, but Betts treated Brian more respectfully. I think it had more to do with Betts truly discovering her sexuality and being scared out of her wits by it. Or perhaps it was Brian discovering her sexuality that scared her. I was never quite sure what had passed between those two, but despite still being a bitch at times, there was almost a truce between the two. I’d have to pay attention to that.

I wasn’t aware of any problems in school in eighth grade but there were interesting developments.

There was no longer any denying that Brian had a girlfriend. The fall when he entered eighth grade, Hannah Gordon had claimed him. Betts was a senior and appalled that I’d let Brian date, but after that first surprise and Hannah showing up to ride bikes with him, I had a long chat with Rev. and Mrs. Saul Gordon. I hadn’t really been back to the Methodist Church since I quit my job as secretary to go to work at the News. What I found in my chat were two delightful people who were only too happy that their daughter had finally come out of her shell and made friends. Even if one of them had been declared her boyfriend (by unanimous vote of two to zero).

We agreed to observe and not attempt to step in or interfere unless we saw questionable behavior. What we saw were two kids who had fun playing together and became best friends. It was apparent that Hannah had no concept of a boyfriend being more than a friend who happened to be male. And as smitten as Brian was, he wasn’t going to let anything endanger their friendship. He was as happy as I’d ever seen him. We also discovered the Gordons enjoyed playing cards and often had six-handed games with the Hopkinses and Gordons together.

And Betts, though still trying to get him in trouble occasionally, had seemed to calm down and was no longer dating boys we considered risky.

There was a new confidence about Brian that I’d seen only in his brief relationship with Cassie and his ongoing friendship with his guardian angel, Jessica. I became aware of it most when I picked him up at the dude ranch after a weekend spent celebrating his fourteenth birthday. I discovered he was the only boy with an entire Girl Scout troop that weekend. What a recipe for disaster!

Instead, the troop leaders regaled me with what a gentleman Brian was, how helpful he’d been with the girls in their riding lessons, and how he’d even saved one from serious injury when she fell from her horse. I watched with my mouth hanging open as the leaders and every girl in the troop gave him a big hug before they got on their bus to depart. The last two—I have to say the most beautiful of the troop—seemed to linger in their hugs longer than I thought was really merited. Thank God these girls all lived a hundred miles away from us.

Brian and Hannah often rode the paper route together and she’d even delivered his papers the morning he was at the dude ranch. Everything seemed fine, so it came as a shock when he was knocked off his bike and brutally beaten while delivering papers just after Easter. When I discovered that it was part of an ongoing bullying campaign that was well-known around the school, I flew into a rage.

“I want them arrested and charged with assault and attempted murder!” I screamed at the sheriff’s deputy who handled the case. “This is unacceptable.”

“Mrs. Frost, believe me, I want to put them in jail and throw away the key. Unless Brian can positively identify them, there is nothing we can do. Brian identified the car, but it had been reported as stolen only a few minutes before the incident occurred. It was recovered in a ditch down near the river. The gang professed to have all been late for school because Moore’s car had been stolen. We are all positive that they are the perpetrators, but we have no proof.”

That wasn’t good enough. I went straight to the leader’s house and pounded on the door.

I backed off the porch as soon as I saw the leer on the face of the man who opened the door. And smelled his breath. There was no sense talking to this brute.

I was almost as angry that Brian’s friends didn’t take things into their own hands to get revenge on the boys. Does that make me a bad person? They beat my son! And his friends did nothing! Except Hannah, the dear sweet girl delivered his papers. We kept an eye out. Both our families spot-checked her route to make sure there was no sign of anyone watching her. We didn’t see anything that would make us believe she was in danger but we saw the sheer joy she had in riding her bike and delivering the papers. The child glowed.

The sheriff’s office called one day near the end of the school-year and told us the gang had been arrested. It looked at first like they would be released again despite the number of students who heard them confess and their second attempt on Brian in the school parking lot. The saving factor was that one of the original members of the gang, the leader’s girlfriend, had become frightened and transferred to a different school after the incident. Hearing that her boyfriend’s gang was arrested and afraid that they would point her out, she went to the sheriff, confessed and witnessed against the other five.

It took much longer to find out that my son had orchestrated the whole affair. “You should have seen him, Mom. He was awesome. He scared me so badly I almost killed him. Can I have another waffle, please?” Betts was so focused on her graduation that it took me a threat to not let her attend before I finally wheedled the whole story out—at least as much as my sometimes air-headed daughter knew.

That was all overshadowed, though by Brian’s breakup with Hannah, giving her his paper route, and deciding that he’d cook for us.

It was no surprise that Brian wanted to go to the dude ranch again. I figured it was probably about the last time he’d make the trip. He’d be going into high school in the fall and was no longer delivering newspapers, so not earning free trips. He had one more trip earned. We agreed. Maybe too enthusiastically.

It had been a difficult summer. Not that we were in conflict with each other, but it was difficult to get together for any intimate time. Betts was on the road doing horse shows, so Hayden and I carpooled to work. That gave us slightly longer work days as he reported earlier than me and I stayed a little later than him, but when we got home, our son was there. We tried to be circumspect with our son in the house, but both of us were about to burst. Hayden took Brian to the ranch much earlier in the morning than we’d normally go. When he got back, I was naked and waiting for him in bed. We pretty much stayed there the rest of the weekend.

Perhaps that was why picking Brian up on Sunday afternoon was such a shock.

He was putting luggage in a car for two beautiful teens under the watchful eye of their mother. Their heart-stoppingly beautiful mother. Oh, my God! I looked up at Hayden and he tore his eyes away from the vision to look at me.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Just took me by surprise.”

“Hayden,” I whispered. “I’m wet.” His eyes opened farther than I thought possible and we didn’t wait for our son to introduce us. We marched up to Anna Pratt and said hello.

Anna’s smile left us both breathless.

“We should talk,” she whispered. We stepped away from the car. The three teens were still so caught up in each other that I’m not sure Brian realized we had arrived.

“I don’t know about you, but my girls put one over on me,” she said. “I had no idea they were meeting a boy here this weekend. I apologize.”

“No need. Our son has been here several times and it never occurred to us to ask him if he was meeting someone. Were your daughters here at the Girl Scout weekend?”

“Yes. Only the taller one is actually my daughter, Jennifer. Courtney might as well be, though. The two are joined at the hip. I thought they might be joined other places, too, but it seems they are interested in boys after all.”

“Brian was rather circumspect about the weekend with the Girl Scouts, but their leaders couldn’t stop singing his praises and Jennifer seemed to be quite interested. I hadn’t really heard much about her since other than a letter at Christmas and I’ve spotted a couple since,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about our children. I wanted to talk to Anna. Well, this was a start.

“Oh, I got an earful after that weekend. ‘Brian was so nice.’ ‘Brian is a hero.’ ‘He was so loyal to his girlfriend.’ I thought at that point the subject was over, but since the Christmas card he sent, there has been a near weekly correspondence among them. What changed this summer that brought them here together?”

“That I can answer,” Hayden said. “He broke up with his girlfriend. You wouldn’t notice it since they’ve continued all summer to play and ride their bikes together, but I’ve noticed he’s talked to other girls and met them as well. Still, if it was loyalty to his girlfriend that kept them apart, that is past.”

We continued to talk and get to know each other better. I didn’t want to stop, but we noticed our three children were watching us. We exchanged phone numbers and hugs, much to the surprise of the teens. But having broken the ice, there was no hesitance on their part to have a final hug and little kiss.

Hmm. We didn’t get the kiss. But I thought about it.

6
The Unexpected Agreement

WE DIDN’T WANT to have a heavy discussion in the car about Brian’s relationship with the two girls from Kokomo. He had obviously been communicating with them far more frequently than I was aware. Thankfully, they were a hundred miles away and none of them had a driver’s license.

Of course, if Brian wanted to visit, I could probably be persuaded to drive. The memory of Anna’s soft bosom pressed against mine when we hugged made me rub my legs together in the passenger seat of the car.

There was no chance of a confrontation with Brian over his weekend at the ranch, since our return home was synchronous with Betts’ return from her summer on the horse show circuit. At that very minute, the countdown began. We had two weeks to get her packed and shipped off to Purdue. It sounds like a long time, but time has a way of collapsing in the presence of Hurricane Betts.

What Were They Thinking?

Devon Layne

Living Next Door to Heaven

Book 1: Guardian Angel

Book 2: The Agreement

Book 3: Foolish Wisdom

Book 4: Deadly Chemistry

Book 5: The Rock

Book 6: El Rancho del Corazón

Book 7: Hearthstone Entertainment

Book 8: Becoming the Storm

Book 9: Heaven’s Gate

Book 10: What Were They Thinking?

Prologue: Memorial Day

Part I
Marilyn Frost’s Story

1
Mosquito Road

2
Civil War

3
Overcoming Life’s Catastrophes

4
Jessica Says

5
Meeting the Love of Our Lives

6
The Unexpected Agreement

That was a preview of What Were They Thinking?. To read the rest purchase the book.

Add «What Were They Thinking?» to Cart

What Were They Thinking?

Devon Layne

Living Next Door to Heaven

Book 1: Guardian Angel

Book 2: The Agreement

Book 3: Foolish Wisdom

Book 4: Deadly Chemistry

Book 5: The Rock

Book 6: El Rancho del Corazón

Book 7: Hearthstone Entertainment

Book 8: Becoming the Storm

Book 9: Heaven’s Gate

Book 10: What Were They Thinking?

Prologue: Memorial Day

Part I Marilyn Frost’s Story

1 Mosquito Road

2 Civil War

3 Overcoming Life’s Catastrophes

4 Jessica Says

5 Meeting the Love of Our Lives

6 The Unexpected Agreement

That was a preview of What Were They Thinking?. To read the rest purchase the book.

Add «What Were They Thinking?» to Cart

Part I
Marilyn Frost’s Story

1
Mosquito Road

2
Civil War

3
Overcoming Life’s Catastrophes

4
Jessica Says

5
Meeting the Love of Our Lives

6
The Unexpected Agreement