The sunrise was casting long shadows on the sleepy neighborhood. The car pulled up to the curb and the young man got out. He went to the passenger side and opened the door taking the hand of the young lady inside. He walked her slowly to the door, taking the key from her hand and opening the door before handing it back to her.
Joey looked up at Andrew. “I wish that we could be together, but I see my folks car coming down the street. I think I may need to go prepare myself for an inquisition. I’m so sorry for all the bumps and bruises, Andrew, but I think I healed most of them.”
“It was an interesting weekend,” said the young man.
“..and in many ways…the best in my life, Andrew….at least…so far. But for right now I think I’d better content myself with a kiss good-bye.”
As she deepened the kiss, the connection formed, and he deepened the connection. She felt his mind probing her thoughts, and lowered all barriers to it, holding nothing back from him.
As the connection deepened Andrew felt warmth, need, desire, passion, impatience, longing, happiness and love, swirling throughout the aura of her mind, almost intoxicating him. As the kiss broke and the connection dimmed and faded out, he knew he’d seen what he wanted to see. She needed their closeness, needed it far too much to wait those two plus years to have everything she wanted. She would settle for what they could have now, and be happy with that. And although he searched her mind, searched it to the depths, he hadn’t found what he had feared he might find, he hadn’t found any doubt. Joey wanted him…..more than she had ever wanted anything else.
As they turned the corner, Michael saw his car at the curb and him opening her door. ‘His parents raised him to be polite….I’ll give him that much.’ It was ironic in a way, Michael thought, that he would see her safely to her door.
Michael doubted that there was anyone more capable with their powers than Joey, except for Max and himself. She was hardly going to get mugged walking 40 feet to the front door.
Of course, that hadn’t saved her from almost giving away the secret in Santa Fe….but Andrew had. He couldn’t be angry at Joey, he was too worried about her. He couldn’t be angry at Andrew. The kid had taken a pretty good beating…just trying to keep Joey quiet, although it looked like she had improved that a little somewhere on the drive. But Michael felt like he ought to be mad at someone.
He drove in to the garage as they were kissing on the front porch.
Finally in frustration he said, “Damn that Dr. Spock.”
“We’ll have to talk to her, Michael. This morning. Now!”
“I know, Maria. I know.”
Joey (AA/CC teen) [WIP]
Moderators: Anniepoo98, ISLANDGIRL5, truelovepooh, Forum Moderators
If you go 910 miles north of Roswell New Mexico you come to Mount Rushmore. As Maria and Michael came down the stairs from Joey’s room after twenty minutes with her they wondered if it would perhaps have been better to go to Mount Rushmore instead. Then they would have had their choice of four stone faces to talk to, rather than just the one…….
Oh, that probably wasn’t fair. She had listened, that was obvious. But that was because of the one thing she had said, the thing she had said when Michael had asked her to promise to talk to them before she went any further in her relationship with Andrew. She’d said she really didn’t know if promises could be trusted……because seven years previously she’d gotten a promise not to be hassled in precisely the way she was being hassled now.
Michael and Maria were feeling pretty defeated when they returned to their own room, where they lay awake beside each other, trying fruitlessly to catch up on their sleep after 12 hours of driving broken only by an hour of frantic damage control in the hotel in Santa Fe.
“Michael, what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know, Maria. I’m not sure what we can do.”
“Could we talk to Andrew?”
“Yes……even though the night they got engaged, I kind of told him I wouldn’t…that I never really ever wanted to know about their……romantic life…..their sex life. I could talk to him I suppose, but I’m not sure where that would get us.’
”Well if he just refused to…..well…cooperate with her….”
”Maria….. I realize you’ve never been a seventeen year old boy, but…..well, I’m not sure that you understand that what Andrew already did…..I mean, taking a beating to avoid……cooperating……with Joey when she was drunk……I mean, for a seventeen year old guy that’s already kind of above and beyond the call of duty. I’m sure that Joey would never use her powers on him while she was sober, but I’m pretty sure that Joey….well…”
“….that Joey wouldn’t have to?”
“Exactly. Or at least, not her alien powers anyway...the ones she got from me.”
“Well what if we talked to Barbara and Roger? What if we got them involved? “
”Involved how? We can’t control our daughter…..can you please control your son?”
“It’s not about control really….I almost wish it were. I mean, I’ve watched other mothers go through the thing with their daughters….the thing where their daughter does any stupid thing she can to show her independence, her defiance…..failing school, tattoos, body piercings, drugs, going out with boys that are the scum of the earth…..yeah, sex too I guess. But this isn’t about that, Michael. It really isn’t. Sure, she wasn’t very talkative tonight, but she wasn’t defying us either. Even that one comment about the promise…she seemed more hurt than mad that we were breaking it. “
“She has to understand that we don’t want her sexually active this soon……that’s defiance.”
“Or maybe it’s simply that she has decided she’d rather make herself happy….make Andrew happy, than make us happy. That’s pretty much what we did when we started having sex in high school.”
“Maria, you can’t compare us at eighteen with Joey at ….well, not quite sixteen.”
“I don’t know, Michael. Either way I’m scared. I was scared to death for the last four or five years, scared she’d never grow out of the brooding loner Xena warrior-princess thing and actually engage in life. And all that time…..even in seventh grade when she blew off his invitation……all this time she’s been wishing for him…thinking it could never be. Mom told me that she was going to all the freshman football games last year. Nobody goes to freshmen football games, unless you’re a parent or girlfriend of one of the boys on the team, but she did. I wonder how many of those years she just watched……wished…..fantasized.”
“I can live with her fantasizing. Making HIS fantasies come true….well, that’s another issue. “
“If only this could have happened a few years from now……I really wouldn’t mind. I’d really just be glad they had each other. They’re such good kids, Michael, and Barbara and I have talked…..she’s been so good for him and …..you’ve seen her Michael, she’s never been happier in her life.”
“I know, but they are still too young…”
“Yes they are. They are too young, and we need to do something……but I just don’t know what, Michael. I don’t know what….”
Michael pulled her head to his shoulder and felt the tears trickle down his chest. He softly ran his fingers through her curls, comforting her. Then he said quite softly, “ I don’t know either, Babe…., I just don’t know.”
Now before you get too tearful over Michael and Maria being scared shi……..well, let’s make that scared spitless, over what Joey is planning, you need to understand this.
They’ve got a pretty good life, and it’s going to get even better. Right now little Michael Junior is growing fast, and the hormones his placenta is producing is part of the reason that Maria is so tearful. Pregnancy is a beautiful thing, but it does get you a little emotional. But in only seven months or so, they are going to have a new son, Joey is going to have a little brother, and the endorphins are just going to be sky-high in the whole fam-damnly.
Not only that, but Karla is going to trap Mark in the very near future, and only a couple years after that, Michael and Maria are going to have their first grandchild (which undoubtedly is going to give Joey’s midbrain all sorts of ideas…..hopefully she won’t get drunk and let it do any of them), and whatever happens, it’s not like Joey has decided to become a groupie for some rock band or something.
Andrew seems to be a reasonably bright guy, a gentleman, good student, industrious, showers frequently, and most of all he really does care deeply about their daughter…..Hell, Michael and Maria could have done a lot worse for a future son-in-law.
And eventually Joey and Andrew will have kids too, and every Christmas is going to be an absolute joy for tham as they remember their own kids happiness as they see their grandchildren grow. And don't forget...in only about sixteen years Michael Junior is going to come back from the rock climbing trip that his schoolmate's parents (girlfriend and soulmate, actually, but the parents wouldn't know that at the time) invited him along on for the weekend with some real interesting news......
But right now, it’s been a long LONG day, and they are grieving the loss of their little girl. Yeah, they may be just laying in bed trying to sleep, but what’s keeping them awake are memories floating through their minds of a gangly little girl with no front teeth riding Mark’s bicycle, even though it is way too big for her, Joey all dressed up for her first day of kindergarten, and for Michael a trip to Disneyland with a four year old Joey and a nine year old Mark when he took Joey on It’s a Small World fourteen times in one day while Mark shook his head in disgust at the two of them, making Maria take him on Thunder Mountain and the Matterhorn while Michael and Joey went on “the baby rides.” Right now they are grieving the loss of their little girl, even though it’s not a loss at all, just a transition to a different phase of her life.
So let’s leave them right now, curled up in each other’s arms, a little melancholy…..well, maybe a LOT melancholy, but they are going to get through this. Joey loves them, they know that. It’s just going to take them a little time to adjust to the fact that…she loves Andrew even more. But that’s OK, because that’s how it should be. And they’ll realize that eventually. And until then, well, they still have each other, and that’s great too.
But right now, well....they really need some sleep. They'll still be a little stressed this afternoon when they wake up, and Maria a little tearful....the pregnancy thing mainly, but they'll be coping a little better, realizing that Joey hasn't gone rogue or anything, she loves them and all that, she's just making one decision, albeit a significant one, somewhat different than they would have wished.
And they will decide to keep their promise. Maria will call this afternoon and set up an appointment for Joey to get those pills. She won't like it, but she'll do it. And she probably would have liked the alternative even less....
Oh, that probably wasn’t fair. She had listened, that was obvious. But that was because of the one thing she had said, the thing she had said when Michael had asked her to promise to talk to them before she went any further in her relationship with Andrew. She’d said she really didn’t know if promises could be trusted……because seven years previously she’d gotten a promise not to be hassled in precisely the way she was being hassled now.
Michael and Maria were feeling pretty defeated when they returned to their own room, where they lay awake beside each other, trying fruitlessly to catch up on their sleep after 12 hours of driving broken only by an hour of frantic damage control in the hotel in Santa Fe.
“Michael, what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know, Maria. I’m not sure what we can do.”
“Could we talk to Andrew?”
“Yes……even though the night they got engaged, I kind of told him I wouldn’t…that I never really ever wanted to know about their……romantic life…..their sex life. I could talk to him I suppose, but I’m not sure where that would get us.’
”Well if he just refused to…..well…cooperate with her….”
”Maria….. I realize you’ve never been a seventeen year old boy, but…..well, I’m not sure that you understand that what Andrew already did…..I mean, taking a beating to avoid……cooperating……with Joey when she was drunk……I mean, for a seventeen year old guy that’s already kind of above and beyond the call of duty. I’m sure that Joey would never use her powers on him while she was sober, but I’m pretty sure that Joey….well…”
“….that Joey wouldn’t have to?”
“Exactly. Or at least, not her alien powers anyway...the ones she got from me.”
“Well what if we talked to Barbara and Roger? What if we got them involved? “
”Involved how? We can’t control our daughter…..can you please control your son?”
“It’s not about control really….I almost wish it were. I mean, I’ve watched other mothers go through the thing with their daughters….the thing where their daughter does any stupid thing she can to show her independence, her defiance…..failing school, tattoos, body piercings, drugs, going out with boys that are the scum of the earth…..yeah, sex too I guess. But this isn’t about that, Michael. It really isn’t. Sure, she wasn’t very talkative tonight, but she wasn’t defying us either. Even that one comment about the promise…she seemed more hurt than mad that we were breaking it. “
“She has to understand that we don’t want her sexually active this soon……that’s defiance.”
“Or maybe it’s simply that she has decided she’d rather make herself happy….make Andrew happy, than make us happy. That’s pretty much what we did when we started having sex in high school.”
“Maria, you can’t compare us at eighteen with Joey at ….well, not quite sixteen.”
“I don’t know, Michael. Either way I’m scared. I was scared to death for the last four or five years, scared she’d never grow out of the brooding loner Xena warrior-princess thing and actually engage in life. And all that time…..even in seventh grade when she blew off his invitation……all this time she’s been wishing for him…thinking it could never be. Mom told me that she was going to all the freshman football games last year. Nobody goes to freshmen football games, unless you’re a parent or girlfriend of one of the boys on the team, but she did. I wonder how many of those years she just watched……wished…..fantasized.”
“I can live with her fantasizing. Making HIS fantasies come true….well, that’s another issue. “
“If only this could have happened a few years from now……I really wouldn’t mind. I’d really just be glad they had each other. They’re such good kids, Michael, and Barbara and I have talked…..she’s been so good for him and …..you’ve seen her Michael, she’s never been happier in her life.”
“I know, but they are still too young…”
“Yes they are. They are too young, and we need to do something……but I just don’t know what, Michael. I don’t know what….”
Michael pulled her head to his shoulder and felt the tears trickle down his chest. He softly ran his fingers through her curls, comforting her. Then he said quite softly, “ I don’t know either, Babe…., I just don’t know.”
Now before you get too tearful over Michael and Maria being scared shi……..well, let’s make that scared spitless, over what Joey is planning, you need to understand this.
They’ve got a pretty good life, and it’s going to get even better. Right now little Michael Junior is growing fast, and the hormones his placenta is producing is part of the reason that Maria is so tearful. Pregnancy is a beautiful thing, but it does get you a little emotional. But in only seven months or so, they are going to have a new son, Joey is going to have a little brother, and the endorphins are just going to be sky-high in the whole fam-damnly.
Not only that, but Karla is going to trap Mark in the very near future, and only a couple years after that, Michael and Maria are going to have their first grandchild (which undoubtedly is going to give Joey’s midbrain all sorts of ideas…..hopefully she won’t get drunk and let it do any of them), and whatever happens, it’s not like Joey has decided to become a groupie for some rock band or something.
Andrew seems to be a reasonably bright guy, a gentleman, good student, industrious, showers frequently, and most of all he really does care deeply about their daughter…..Hell, Michael and Maria could have done a lot worse for a future son-in-law.
And eventually Joey and Andrew will have kids too, and every Christmas is going to be an absolute joy for tham as they remember their own kids happiness as they see their grandchildren grow. And don't forget...in only about sixteen years Michael Junior is going to come back from the rock climbing trip that his schoolmate's parents (girlfriend and soulmate, actually, but the parents wouldn't know that at the time) invited him along on for the weekend with some real interesting news......
But right now, it’s been a long LONG day, and they are grieving the loss of their little girl. Yeah, they may be just laying in bed trying to sleep, but what’s keeping them awake are memories floating through their minds of a gangly little girl with no front teeth riding Mark’s bicycle, even though it is way too big for her, Joey all dressed up for her first day of kindergarten, and for Michael a trip to Disneyland with a four year old Joey and a nine year old Mark when he took Joey on It’s a Small World fourteen times in one day while Mark shook his head in disgust at the two of them, making Maria take him on Thunder Mountain and the Matterhorn while Michael and Joey went on “the baby rides.” Right now they are grieving the loss of their little girl, even though it’s not a loss at all, just a transition to a different phase of her life.
So let’s leave them right now, curled up in each other’s arms, a little melancholy…..well, maybe a LOT melancholy, but they are going to get through this. Joey loves them, they know that. It’s just going to take them a little time to adjust to the fact that…she loves Andrew even more. But that’s OK, because that’s how it should be. And they’ll realize that eventually. And until then, well, they still have each other, and that’s great too.
But right now, well....they really need some sleep. They'll still be a little stressed this afternoon when they wake up, and Maria a little tearful....the pregnancy thing mainly, but they'll be coping a little better, realizing that Joey hasn't gone rogue or anything, she loves them and all that, she's just making one decision, albeit a significant one, somewhat different than they would have wished.
And they will decide to keep their promise. Maria will call this afternoon and set up an appointment for Joey to get those pills. She won't like it, but she'll do it. And she probably would have liked the alternative even less....
It was five days later when Andrew showed up early one morning at the Guerin household. He left his car at the curb, and Joey opened the door just before he knocked on it.
*I sure missed you*
*We were dreamwalking only 45 minutes ago, Joey..*
*Maybe so,…but it was a long 45 minutes*
“Good morning Mrs. Guerin…..Mr. Guerin.”
“Uh, Joey, …aren’t you going to invite Andrew in?”
“No Mom, we’re just going out the door now.”
“And where would that be, Joey?” asked Michael.
“We’re just going out on a walk…and a picnic lunch. Andrea and Enriquez will be picking us up any minute.”
Michael looked at the two standing there with backpacks and a lunch. He was getting more uncomfortable with this by the day. “Well, don’t stay out too late,” he said sullenly.
“We’ll be back before dinner, Daddy.”
“Well see that you are…”
As the old Jeep drove up and Joey and Andrew got in, Maria shook her head. “You can’t act like that, Michael. You’ll just drive her away.”
“Well I can’t pretend I’m happy about it, Maria.”
“Michael, I’m not happy about it either…but we set the terms of that promise, not Joey. And we have to live up to it. She doesn’t need you trying to pick a fight with her, not if you want her to open up and talk to us again. She tried to talk with us on that ride home, Michael, you know she did. And we are the ones who ducked it.”
“You think I’m in a bad mood? What about her….last night? What about her attitude.”
“I don’t think I even blame her about that. God, Michael, if you’d been there to see…no, that would have even made it worse.”
“You mean the appointment? Well she got the pills, isn’t she happy now?”
“Michael, stop it. Stop it right now. Yes, she got a prescription from the nurse practitioner….that has to have been the most humiliating thing that has ever happened to her.”
“Well she chose to do it. “
“Well she didn’t choose to get the reception she got. I’m surprised she didn’t powerblast the nurse. If I could, I probably would have.”
“What happened?”
“It’s a long story, and you’d have kind of had to have been there.”
In the cold back seat of the old Jeep, Joey snuggled next to Andrew, wishing that Andrea and Enriquez weren’t there. Then she could use her powers to warm Andrew up, rather than just snuggling up against him. This was nice too, though, she decided quickly.
She was angry with her father. He was acting like a jerk. It had been THEM …..her Mom and Dad, that had forced the promise from a naïve nine year old Joey who hadn’t believed herself that any such thing would ever come to pass. So when she keeps her promise….the one THEY made her make…What happens? Do they keep theirs? NO. But worse than that, worse than reneging on a solemn vow, her father was being rude to Andrew, and if it happened just one more time, there were going to be sparks flying.
Maybe she shouldn’t feel that way, but she did. She was starting to believe the whole damn world was against her….her and Andrew. ‘I should have powerblasted that damn nurse,’ she thought to herself. She knew she really would never do that, she was just mentally blowing off steam. But it had been bad enough when she’d gone to the clinic with her mother and the woman had hardly spoken to her, acting like her mother was the only other thinking being in the room. Every instruction had been given to her mother, ……as if her mom was going to have to give her each pill, each day. As if she were two years old. And then she’d said those words, that the pill was only backup…..that ‘your daughter’ should still insist that her 'sexual partners' use condoms, because the pill didn’t protect her from anything but pregnancy, not the ‘sexually transmitted diseases she will otherwise get from her partners.” ‘Partner,’ Joey had said. ‘Just one.’ The nurse had rolled her eyes skyward and looked at her mother, a knowing smirk on her face. ‘Well, if you say so Miss Guerin. But even if YOU restrict yourself to the one partner, you’ll also be having sex with everyone he ever had sex with…that’s how it works.’ She’d told the nurse that he’d never….that neither of them had ever….that neither of them would ever…again the eyes had rolled skyward, and she’d given Maria that look. At least she’d given them the prescription without making her go through that exam. Joey hadn’t been looking forward to that.
OK, she understood….it wasn’t just her mom and dad, ...the whole damn world thought they were too young. But they weren’t.
Maybe if Dad had connected with Mom sooner……the mind connection, she was pretty sure that they’d…done IT years before that. Something she’d heard Grandma Amy say one day many years ago, something about if they hadn’t been together that night….if he hadn’t come back, all of the alien-hybrids on earth wouldn’t even exist. Something Grandma Amy had read in Aunt Liz’s journal, back when the Special Unit was chasing them. And what about that period of time?
Her mom and dad had been chased by the Special Unit for almost two years, living together on the road. Who were they trying to kid, pretending that they’d been saints….or that they hadn’t needed each other? Their wedding anniversary was only ten months before Mark’s birthday. Who were they trying to kid? But maybe if his dad and mom had used the connection back when they were first dating...then they'd know...know how certain she was of his love....why she didn't want to wait anymore.
It was starting to feel, more and more, that Andrew was the only one she COULD trust, the only one she could feel truly comfortable with. She’d been hesitant at first…..uncertain. But more and more Joey realized that it was going to be the two of them….that it would ALWAYS be the two of them. No matter what condescending nurse practitioners or promise-breaking parents thought.
Andrew enjoyed the feeling of Joey snuggled up to him, but he could sense…along the edges of a connection, how troubled she was. Family had always been important to Joey. Before there was a ‘them’, it was all she had. It made Andrew real uncomfortable that Joey and her parents were upset with one another….particularly when he figured that he was pretty much the reason. ‘I suppose I can get them mad enough at me, they’ll forget about being mad at her….’ He’d have to think about that a little bit….
There seemed to be a fair amount of angst in the Jeep.
In the front passenger seat was Andrea. Now Andrea isn’t angry at Enriquez…..quite. What are you when you love someone too much to be angry with them, but if you didn’t love them that much, you’d damn sure be angry with them....?
Oh yeah, vexed.
Andrea is vexed with Enriquez because they started going together two years ago, got fairly serious in the last year, and for the last several months have been having sex. And it isn’t that she doesn’t enjoy Enriquez, and even enjoy the sex……but she’d like a little commitment here. Her ring finger really hadn’t seemed QUITE that empty, before she’d known that Joey and Andrew were engaged….and they’d only been going together since football season. And while she really, REALLY, did love Enriquez…she was really REALLY getting vexed. And if Enriquez didn’t do some committing pretty soon….well, he was going to be real unhappy shortly.
Except, over in the driver’s seat, Enriquez was ALREADY unhappy. In his right front pocket of his Levis was an engagement ring. He intended to ask Andrea to marry him tonight…but then he’d intended to ask her each night for the last 5 months. It hadn’t happened yet. The reason had to do with tradition…..well, tradition and fear.
Andrea’s father was Arturo Lopez, an icon in the local Hispanic community. He had started as a deputy sheriff, gone on to law school and become a prosecuting attorney. He had served as a Superior Court judge, then been appointed to the Albuquerque Federal Court. It was rumored that he was to be nominated for the next opening on the Tenth Federal Court of Appeals…that he was being groomed to be a Supreme Court Justice some day. And to Enriquez….this was the man he would first have to ask, before he could ask his daughter.
Enriquez was a first generation US citizen. Born to a couple who had left their small village in Mexico to come to the US as guest workers, he had been born in the United States only four months after their arrival. Even now, eighteen years later, his family was not particularly prosperous. His mother and father had come to the US with meager skills and, although both had worked hard and taken courses at the local community college to improve their skills when they could, they had large families that were still south of the Rio Grande, and had shared their own relative abundance with them since their arrival.
Enriquez had resented this as a child, having less than most of those around him. And having at that time never traveled to the small village where his grandparents lived…where his aunts and uncles and cousins eked out a meager existence…. Enriquez had grown up quite resentful of his own circumstances. That was why, at age twelve, he had decided it was OK to join a gang…to be the lookout when they had stolen cars to take to the chop-shop just across the border. Except he’d been caught, almost immediately.
He had appeared with his parents and the Superior Court judge ….Arturo Lopez…had pulled him, his parents, the prosecutor and the public defender into his chambers.
Enriquez had gotten the ass chewing of his life from the judge who had quoted chapter and verse, telling him he could be tried as an adult conspirator in a criminal enterprise with dozens of felony counts…because he was a gang member. Enriquez had watched his mother cry and his father shake with fear….and wished he’d never been born, to disgrace them that way.
He had been young and scared, and hadn’t noticed the prosecuting attorney’s slight grin as he had suggested pleading guilty as a juvenile and a deal for public service and four year’s probation….the prosecutor and Judge Lopez had done this at a time or two before, …….but with the public defender nodding quickly yes…he and his parents had taken the offer. Enriquez had spent the entire Christmas holiday from school picking up litter on the roadside, and helping in the nursing home….the other hundred hours….well, he remembered that too, when he’d gone to the judges office and sat next to his secretary.
Lopez was not an uncommon name in the Southwest. Enriquez hadn’t thought of the connection when he’d started to casually date the young sophomore with the amber eyes and raven hair….not even after he’d met her mother several times. It was at the time of the first dance he’d taken her to…when he’d picked her up and she’d introduced her father…when Enriquez had seen those same brown eyes that had looked down upon him from the bench five years before…then he’d known. Enriquez had tried to break it off several times…knowing the man would never accept him..but each time….each time he’d taken her to some quiet place…somewhere they wouldn’t be interrupted when he explained to her why they couldn’t be together…..well, he never could tell her that, because he loved her…and as their love had gotten deeper, and now intimate…he felt so much guilt. Because in the culture in which he’d been raised ….women did not get to choose. You asked their father for permission to court them….and the father’s word was law. And he knew with certainty that Arturo Lopez would have a much better match planned for his daughter than Enriquez, the criminal he had once sentenced.
So there was considerable angst in the Jeep….four young people who superficially were quite happy, but each harbored private thoughts that were troubling them. And none of them were really sure of what to do….all were young, inexperienced….naive. And because of their naivete they weren’t sure…weren’t at all sure that things would work out. And because they were preoccupied they were about to make a mistake…a mistake that no one who dwells in the desert should ever make.
*I sure missed you*
*We were dreamwalking only 45 minutes ago, Joey..*
*Maybe so,…but it was a long 45 minutes*
“Good morning Mrs. Guerin…..Mr. Guerin.”
“Uh, Joey, …aren’t you going to invite Andrew in?”
“No Mom, we’re just going out the door now.”
“And where would that be, Joey?” asked Michael.
“We’re just going out on a walk…and a picnic lunch. Andrea and Enriquez will be picking us up any minute.”
Michael looked at the two standing there with backpacks and a lunch. He was getting more uncomfortable with this by the day. “Well, don’t stay out too late,” he said sullenly.
“We’ll be back before dinner, Daddy.”
“Well see that you are…”
As the old Jeep drove up and Joey and Andrew got in, Maria shook her head. “You can’t act like that, Michael. You’ll just drive her away.”
“Well I can’t pretend I’m happy about it, Maria.”
“Michael, I’m not happy about it either…but we set the terms of that promise, not Joey. And we have to live up to it. She doesn’t need you trying to pick a fight with her, not if you want her to open up and talk to us again. She tried to talk with us on that ride home, Michael, you know she did. And we are the ones who ducked it.”
“You think I’m in a bad mood? What about her….last night? What about her attitude.”
“I don’t think I even blame her about that. God, Michael, if you’d been there to see…no, that would have even made it worse.”
“You mean the appointment? Well she got the pills, isn’t she happy now?”
“Michael, stop it. Stop it right now. Yes, she got a prescription from the nurse practitioner….that has to have been the most humiliating thing that has ever happened to her.”
“Well she chose to do it. “
“Well she didn’t choose to get the reception she got. I’m surprised she didn’t powerblast the nurse. If I could, I probably would have.”
“What happened?”
“It’s a long story, and you’d have kind of had to have been there.”
In the cold back seat of the old Jeep, Joey snuggled next to Andrew, wishing that Andrea and Enriquez weren’t there. Then she could use her powers to warm Andrew up, rather than just snuggling up against him. This was nice too, though, she decided quickly.
She was angry with her father. He was acting like a jerk. It had been THEM …..her Mom and Dad, that had forced the promise from a naïve nine year old Joey who hadn’t believed herself that any such thing would ever come to pass. So when she keeps her promise….the one THEY made her make…What happens? Do they keep theirs? NO. But worse than that, worse than reneging on a solemn vow, her father was being rude to Andrew, and if it happened just one more time, there were going to be sparks flying.
Maybe she shouldn’t feel that way, but she did. She was starting to believe the whole damn world was against her….her and Andrew. ‘I should have powerblasted that damn nurse,’ she thought to herself. She knew she really would never do that, she was just mentally blowing off steam. But it had been bad enough when she’d gone to the clinic with her mother and the woman had hardly spoken to her, acting like her mother was the only other thinking being in the room. Every instruction had been given to her mother, ……as if her mom was going to have to give her each pill, each day. As if she were two years old. And then she’d said those words, that the pill was only backup…..that ‘your daughter’ should still insist that her 'sexual partners' use condoms, because the pill didn’t protect her from anything but pregnancy, not the ‘sexually transmitted diseases she will otherwise get from her partners.” ‘Partner,’ Joey had said. ‘Just one.’ The nurse had rolled her eyes skyward and looked at her mother, a knowing smirk on her face. ‘Well, if you say so Miss Guerin. But even if YOU restrict yourself to the one partner, you’ll also be having sex with everyone he ever had sex with…that’s how it works.’ She’d told the nurse that he’d never….that neither of them had ever….that neither of them would ever…again the eyes had rolled skyward, and she’d given Maria that look. At least she’d given them the prescription without making her go through that exam. Joey hadn’t been looking forward to that.
OK, she understood….it wasn’t just her mom and dad, ...the whole damn world thought they were too young. But they weren’t.
Maybe if Dad had connected with Mom sooner……the mind connection, she was pretty sure that they’d…done IT years before that. Something she’d heard Grandma Amy say one day many years ago, something about if they hadn’t been together that night….if he hadn’t come back, all of the alien-hybrids on earth wouldn’t even exist. Something Grandma Amy had read in Aunt Liz’s journal, back when the Special Unit was chasing them. And what about that period of time?
Her mom and dad had been chased by the Special Unit for almost two years, living together on the road. Who were they trying to kid, pretending that they’d been saints….or that they hadn’t needed each other? Their wedding anniversary was only ten months before Mark’s birthday. Who were they trying to kid? But maybe if his dad and mom had used the connection back when they were first dating...then they'd know...know how certain she was of his love....why she didn't want to wait anymore.
It was starting to feel, more and more, that Andrew was the only one she COULD trust, the only one she could feel truly comfortable with. She’d been hesitant at first…..uncertain. But more and more Joey realized that it was going to be the two of them….that it would ALWAYS be the two of them. No matter what condescending nurse practitioners or promise-breaking parents thought.
Andrew enjoyed the feeling of Joey snuggled up to him, but he could sense…along the edges of a connection, how troubled she was. Family had always been important to Joey. Before there was a ‘them’, it was all she had. It made Andrew real uncomfortable that Joey and her parents were upset with one another….particularly when he figured that he was pretty much the reason. ‘I suppose I can get them mad enough at me, they’ll forget about being mad at her….’ He’d have to think about that a little bit….
There seemed to be a fair amount of angst in the Jeep.
In the front passenger seat was Andrea. Now Andrea isn’t angry at Enriquez…..quite. What are you when you love someone too much to be angry with them, but if you didn’t love them that much, you’d damn sure be angry with them....?
Oh yeah, vexed.
Andrea is vexed with Enriquez because they started going together two years ago, got fairly serious in the last year, and for the last several months have been having sex. And it isn’t that she doesn’t enjoy Enriquez, and even enjoy the sex……but she’d like a little commitment here. Her ring finger really hadn’t seemed QUITE that empty, before she’d known that Joey and Andrew were engaged….and they’d only been going together since football season. And while she really, REALLY, did love Enriquez…she was really REALLY getting vexed. And if Enriquez didn’t do some committing pretty soon….well, he was going to be real unhappy shortly.
Except, over in the driver’s seat, Enriquez was ALREADY unhappy. In his right front pocket of his Levis was an engagement ring. He intended to ask Andrea to marry him tonight…but then he’d intended to ask her each night for the last 5 months. It hadn’t happened yet. The reason had to do with tradition…..well, tradition and fear.
Andrea’s father was Arturo Lopez, an icon in the local Hispanic community. He had started as a deputy sheriff, gone on to law school and become a prosecuting attorney. He had served as a Superior Court judge, then been appointed to the Albuquerque Federal Court. It was rumored that he was to be nominated for the next opening on the Tenth Federal Court of Appeals…that he was being groomed to be a Supreme Court Justice some day. And to Enriquez….this was the man he would first have to ask, before he could ask his daughter.
Enriquez was a first generation US citizen. Born to a couple who had left their small village in Mexico to come to the US as guest workers, he had been born in the United States only four months after their arrival. Even now, eighteen years later, his family was not particularly prosperous. His mother and father had come to the US with meager skills and, although both had worked hard and taken courses at the local community college to improve their skills when they could, they had large families that were still south of the Rio Grande, and had shared their own relative abundance with them since their arrival.
Enriquez had resented this as a child, having less than most of those around him. And having at that time never traveled to the small village where his grandparents lived…where his aunts and uncles and cousins eked out a meager existence…. Enriquez had grown up quite resentful of his own circumstances. That was why, at age twelve, he had decided it was OK to join a gang…to be the lookout when they had stolen cars to take to the chop-shop just across the border. Except he’d been caught, almost immediately.
He had appeared with his parents and the Superior Court judge ….Arturo Lopez…had pulled him, his parents, the prosecutor and the public defender into his chambers.
Enriquez had gotten the ass chewing of his life from the judge who had quoted chapter and verse, telling him he could be tried as an adult conspirator in a criminal enterprise with dozens of felony counts…because he was a gang member. Enriquez had watched his mother cry and his father shake with fear….and wished he’d never been born, to disgrace them that way.
He had been young and scared, and hadn’t noticed the prosecuting attorney’s slight grin as he had suggested pleading guilty as a juvenile and a deal for public service and four year’s probation….the prosecutor and Judge Lopez had done this at a time or two before, …….but with the public defender nodding quickly yes…he and his parents had taken the offer. Enriquez had spent the entire Christmas holiday from school picking up litter on the roadside, and helping in the nursing home….the other hundred hours….well, he remembered that too, when he’d gone to the judges office and sat next to his secretary.
Lopez was not an uncommon name in the Southwest. Enriquez hadn’t thought of the connection when he’d started to casually date the young sophomore with the amber eyes and raven hair….not even after he’d met her mother several times. It was at the time of the first dance he’d taken her to…when he’d picked her up and she’d introduced her father…when Enriquez had seen those same brown eyes that had looked down upon him from the bench five years before…then he’d known. Enriquez had tried to break it off several times…knowing the man would never accept him..but each time….each time he’d taken her to some quiet place…somewhere they wouldn’t be interrupted when he explained to her why they couldn’t be together…..well, he never could tell her that, because he loved her…and as their love had gotten deeper, and now intimate…he felt so much guilt. Because in the culture in which he’d been raised ….women did not get to choose. You asked their father for permission to court them….and the father’s word was law. And he knew with certainty that Arturo Lopez would have a much better match planned for his daughter than Enriquez, the criminal he had once sentenced.
So there was considerable angst in the Jeep….four young people who superficially were quite happy, but each harbored private thoughts that were troubling them. And none of them were really sure of what to do….all were young, inexperienced….naive. And because of their naivete they weren’t sure…weren’t at all sure that things would work out. And because they were preoccupied they were about to make a mistake…a mistake that no one who dwells in the desert should ever make.
The dirt road paralleled the east side of the arroyo for several miles until finally coming to the place where the jeep could be parked and they could descend into the dry creek bed. In most places the walls were sheer, carved 12 foot deep into the desert, but here there was a more gradual transition, where people could get down to the floor of the arroyo and walk along the walls finding the small fossils of shells and fish that had been exposed over the many millennia by the erosion of the ancient sea floor.
It was a popular place to hike and the four had gone for nearly three miles before coming to the area where a smaller arroyo joined, where they could climb back out to the desert floor to picnic and explore the ruins of the five buildings of the abandoned mining town. After their explorations, one couple chose to go back to the arroyo to look for more fossils. They other decided to take the harder course, along the edge of the arroyo, looking for more artifacts from the time of the long dead mining town. Just two couples, lost in their own thoughts, lost in the company of their loves, just using the moment as a time to get away from things they were ….well….VEXED about. But all four had been raised in the desert, and all four should have known better.
It had started out as a tropical storm and had come ashore near Galveston Texas where it had caused 36 hours of torrential downpours. And in fairness, it had spent most of its fury working its way up to Garcia Flat. Compared to the rain that had hit Galveston, Houston, and Dallas, the wrung out remnant of tropical storm Ferdinand was hardly worth notice as it spilled a few inches of rain on a few dozen square miles of the desert landscape.
But the desert is not like other places. The land is baked hard and the water is slow to penetrate it. And it is flat…hence the name, Garcia Flats. But in the vast desert, those two inches of rain have few places to go, and mostly where they go is into the arroyos, crevasses carved by the flowing water out of the sandstone of the old seabed that had been lifted up five thousand feet over many millions of years to form the high desert of New Mexico.
Only two inches of rain, but spread over Garcia Flats and channeled into the Arroyo Macho, it would concentrate and come tearing down the arroyo like a locomotive. And that was what had formed the arroyo, not the many days that it would be baked dry, but the one day every year or two when the water would come down through the arroyo in a flash flood that was twelve foot high….that moved at 60 miles per hour….that carried rocks and logs along with it….that had the force to erode the very rock itself. And that was what was forming today and heading south…..toward four hikers…..
I know a girl
She puts the color inside of my world
She's just like a maze
Where all of the walls all continually change
And I've done all I can
To stand on her steps with my heart in my hands
Now I'm starting to see
Maybe it's got nothing to do with me
Fathers be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters too
Oh, you see that skin?
It's the same she's been standing in
Since the day she saw him walking away
Now she's left
Cleaning up the mess he made
Fathers be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters too
Boys, you can break
You'll find out how much they can take
Boys will be strong
And boys soldier on
But boys would be gone without warmth from
A woman's good, good heart
On behalf of every man
Looking out for every girl
You are the god and the weight of her world
So fathers be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters, too
So mothers be good to your daughters, too
So mothers be good to your daughters, too
It seemed to be a day for angst.... Judge Arturo Lopez shook his head as he turned his car onto the dirt road leading to the arroyo. He couldn’t believe how much he’d liked that song when it first came out. It sounded much scarier today though. But this was the first time he’d heard it in quite a while….and definitely the first time in the last four weeks. And it was four weeks ago that he’d found the birth control pills in Andrea's purse.
Rosa, his wife, had given him hell for finding them….for even looking, and in truth he’d just been trying to make change for the paperboy. It hadn’t occurred to him….not in a million years, that Andrea would be…………so soon.
‘She’s almost eighteen, Arturo’ his wife had said. Where had the years gone? He’d worked so hard to build a good life for his family, but the years of schooling, the years of hard work, they had also taken him away from his firstborn. Her brothers had Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and Little League….but somehow his little girl had become a woman. It was like he’d blinked, and the little girl was gone.
And so John Mayers song had now become scary…reminding him of how fast this had happened and what his daughter might be doing right now. Well, not right now, anyway. Right now at least she and the boy were double dating with Joey Guerin and her boyfriend. But that was scary too in a different sort of way, and that’s why he was here.
Shortly after they’d left, he’d been listening to music while reviewing a legal brief. He’d heard the flash flood warning for Garcia Flats and thought at once of the four kids. Arturo Lopez had lost a cousin when he was a child…down in Sonora when a flash flood had caught him in an arroyo. He had told her about it a dozen times and knew she would be careful to watch the sky over the highlands…to not go into the arroyo in this weather. But he’d tried to call her anyway and got her voicemail. Oh, they were probably just out of cellphone range…not really in the arroyo. He’d tried to read the brief…but he’d kept worrying. So now he was out here, just to be sure. That’s what fathers did.
To get his mind off the song, he thought of Joey Guerin and her grandfather. Judge Lopez did not know Michael well, he’d only seen him once or twice. But he knew Maria, and of course Jim Valenti. His mind went back to the first time he had met the Sheriff. He was seventeen years old and the Sheriff had pulled him over for tossing a beverage container from his car, then arrested him. Today the ACLU would have been all over the man for discriminating against a teenager. People littered around every McDonald’s and nobody pulled them in. Where was the probable cause to pull him over? But the rules had been different then, a Sheriff had more latitude. And perhaps even the ACLU wouldn’t have supported him anyway, since it had been an empty tequila bottle.
Yeah, he’d been a poor kid from a poor family…..his parents were illegals, actually, until the amnesty President Reagan signed. And he thought everyone in the world discriminated against him….and they did, mostly because he was almost illiterate, and drank. And when the Sheriff had taken him to old Harrison, the juvenile court judge, he was sure he was going to reform school. But somehow the Sheriff had set it up with Harrison ahead of time….Judge Lopez was sure….for the two hundred hours of public service. He’d picked up litter by the side of the road his entire Christmas break for the first hundred hours. Then the Sheriff had asked him how he liked that? Not very much, he’d replied.
He would always remember what the Sheriff said and did next. “Son,” he had said, “..the best service you can do for the public is to prepare yourself for a meaningful and productive life.”
He had set beside the desk sergeant for three hours a night for over a month, doing his homework. Sometimes the desk sergeant would help. Sometimes the Sheriff would stop by and help. And because of that, he graduated from high school. Even doing well his senior year, his grades were too low to go to college, but he’d gotten in the local junior college, taken law enforcement courses, and got selected to go to the police academy. Two years later, he had been the junior person on the Sheriff’s department.
The Sheriff had juggled schedules,,,sometimes working shifts himself so the young deputy could finish his college…get his degree. And Valenti and Judge Harrison had both written him recommendations for his admission to law school. Three years later, he had been the junior assistant prosecuting attorney for Chaves county, and the rest…as they say…was history.
He remembered the rest, too. The old computer the Sheriff had given him, because he couldn’t afford one for his studies. The processor was ancient, and he had replaced it. The hard disk was old and slow, but it would work. He’d checked to make sure it was still serviceable with a disk rescue program. The disk had been erased, but not reformatted, and the disk rescue program had automatically rewritten the addresses. The three files were ancient, but the names had surprised him. Max Evans, Isabel Evans, Michael Guerin. He’d opened them and started to laugh.
The story was well known in the department, about the Sheriff’s dad and his paranoia about aliens. It appeared that at one time the Sheriff himself had believed that story. And irony of ironies, he had married Amy DeLuca and wound up with a son-in-law he had once had suspicions about being ‘not of this Earth’. And it would have ended at that too, if Maria hadn’t brought Joey in to the station three weeks later.
Maria had tried to see the Sheriff. She had a teacher parent conference about Mark, and couldn’t take Joey. Michael was in California, consulting on a film, and at the last moment Diane Evans had taken ill.
Anyway, he’d wound up taking care of Joey…just for ten minutes, until the Sheriff returned from the courthouse. He would always remember her blue eyes, the capacity of her bladder, and what had happened as he’d gone to change her. It had seemed simple enough….he had a three year old daughter of his own. Of course, Andrea had never had a gold glow come from her butt, and had the diaper dry out without being changed.
He’d agonized for awhile, but the half naked little girl with the blue eyes didn’t seem any more threatening than his own Andrea. And she had smiled at him, just like Andrea always smiled at him. Rosa always said it was just gas, but he knew a smile when he saw one. She sure didn’t look like much of a threat to national security…and she was the Sheriff’s granddaughter and he owed Valenti...owed him an awful lot. What the hell, he’d decided. It’s a land of immigrants, after all.
He’d never told anybody…not even Rosa. And he’d been happy when Andrea and Joey started being friends…although it hadn’t gotten Andrea away from the boy as much as he would have liked. They were good people, the Valentis. And the Guerins too, from what he could tell.
He’d taken time off his calendar to get to Santa Fe…seen his daughter and Joey play. He should have done it years ago…he had missed too many of Andrea’s games. She was almost grown…she’d be gone before he knew it….away at college….or with the boy.
Arturo was still worried about the boy. He had remembered the name somehow, but been surprised when he checked the record to know he’d once sentenced him. His secretary had checked with the parole office…the kid had no further legal problems, and was an honor student. And he was probably no more guilty about what the two of them were doing than his little Andrea, but it was easier to be angry at someone else’s boy than your little girl.
But as he came around the bend in the road he saw the couple in the arroyo and he was immediately worried. He looked a mile north to where the arroyo came down from Garcia Flats and his heart stopped as he saw the wall of water rushing down at his daughter and her boyfriend.
It was a popular place to hike and the four had gone for nearly three miles before coming to the area where a smaller arroyo joined, where they could climb back out to the desert floor to picnic and explore the ruins of the five buildings of the abandoned mining town. After their explorations, one couple chose to go back to the arroyo to look for more fossils. They other decided to take the harder course, along the edge of the arroyo, looking for more artifacts from the time of the long dead mining town. Just two couples, lost in their own thoughts, lost in the company of their loves, just using the moment as a time to get away from things they were ….well….VEXED about. But all four had been raised in the desert, and all four should have known better.
It had started out as a tropical storm and had come ashore near Galveston Texas where it had caused 36 hours of torrential downpours. And in fairness, it had spent most of its fury working its way up to Garcia Flat. Compared to the rain that had hit Galveston, Houston, and Dallas, the wrung out remnant of tropical storm Ferdinand was hardly worth notice as it spilled a few inches of rain on a few dozen square miles of the desert landscape.
But the desert is not like other places. The land is baked hard and the water is slow to penetrate it. And it is flat…hence the name, Garcia Flats. But in the vast desert, those two inches of rain have few places to go, and mostly where they go is into the arroyos, crevasses carved by the flowing water out of the sandstone of the old seabed that had been lifted up five thousand feet over many millions of years to form the high desert of New Mexico.
Only two inches of rain, but spread over Garcia Flats and channeled into the Arroyo Macho, it would concentrate and come tearing down the arroyo like a locomotive. And that was what had formed the arroyo, not the many days that it would be baked dry, but the one day every year or two when the water would come down through the arroyo in a flash flood that was twelve foot high….that moved at 60 miles per hour….that carried rocks and logs along with it….that had the force to erode the very rock itself. And that was what was forming today and heading south…..toward four hikers…..
I know a girl
She puts the color inside of my world
She's just like a maze
Where all of the walls all continually change
And I've done all I can
To stand on her steps with my heart in my hands
Now I'm starting to see
Maybe it's got nothing to do with me
Fathers be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters too
Oh, you see that skin?
It's the same she's been standing in
Since the day she saw him walking away
Now she's left
Cleaning up the mess he made
Fathers be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters too
Boys, you can break
You'll find out how much they can take
Boys will be strong
And boys soldier on
But boys would be gone without warmth from
A woman's good, good heart
On behalf of every man
Looking out for every girl
You are the god and the weight of her world
So fathers be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters, too
So mothers be good to your daughters, too
So mothers be good to your daughters, too
It seemed to be a day for angst.... Judge Arturo Lopez shook his head as he turned his car onto the dirt road leading to the arroyo. He couldn’t believe how much he’d liked that song when it first came out. It sounded much scarier today though. But this was the first time he’d heard it in quite a while….and definitely the first time in the last four weeks. And it was four weeks ago that he’d found the birth control pills in Andrea's purse.
Rosa, his wife, had given him hell for finding them….for even looking, and in truth he’d just been trying to make change for the paperboy. It hadn’t occurred to him….not in a million years, that Andrea would be…………so soon.
‘She’s almost eighteen, Arturo’ his wife had said. Where had the years gone? He’d worked so hard to build a good life for his family, but the years of schooling, the years of hard work, they had also taken him away from his firstborn. Her brothers had Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and Little League….but somehow his little girl had become a woman. It was like he’d blinked, and the little girl was gone.
And so John Mayers song had now become scary…reminding him of how fast this had happened and what his daughter might be doing right now. Well, not right now, anyway. Right now at least she and the boy were double dating with Joey Guerin and her boyfriend. But that was scary too in a different sort of way, and that’s why he was here.
Shortly after they’d left, he’d been listening to music while reviewing a legal brief. He’d heard the flash flood warning for Garcia Flats and thought at once of the four kids. Arturo Lopez had lost a cousin when he was a child…down in Sonora when a flash flood had caught him in an arroyo. He had told her about it a dozen times and knew she would be careful to watch the sky over the highlands…to not go into the arroyo in this weather. But he’d tried to call her anyway and got her voicemail. Oh, they were probably just out of cellphone range…not really in the arroyo. He’d tried to read the brief…but he’d kept worrying. So now he was out here, just to be sure. That’s what fathers did.
To get his mind off the song, he thought of Joey Guerin and her grandfather. Judge Lopez did not know Michael well, he’d only seen him once or twice. But he knew Maria, and of course Jim Valenti. His mind went back to the first time he had met the Sheriff. He was seventeen years old and the Sheriff had pulled him over for tossing a beverage container from his car, then arrested him. Today the ACLU would have been all over the man for discriminating against a teenager. People littered around every McDonald’s and nobody pulled them in. Where was the probable cause to pull him over? But the rules had been different then, a Sheriff had more latitude. And perhaps even the ACLU wouldn’t have supported him anyway, since it had been an empty tequila bottle.
Yeah, he’d been a poor kid from a poor family…..his parents were illegals, actually, until the amnesty President Reagan signed. And he thought everyone in the world discriminated against him….and they did, mostly because he was almost illiterate, and drank. And when the Sheriff had taken him to old Harrison, the juvenile court judge, he was sure he was going to reform school. But somehow the Sheriff had set it up with Harrison ahead of time….Judge Lopez was sure….for the two hundred hours of public service. He’d picked up litter by the side of the road his entire Christmas break for the first hundred hours. Then the Sheriff had asked him how he liked that? Not very much, he’d replied.
He would always remember what the Sheriff said and did next. “Son,” he had said, “..the best service you can do for the public is to prepare yourself for a meaningful and productive life.”
He had set beside the desk sergeant for three hours a night for over a month, doing his homework. Sometimes the desk sergeant would help. Sometimes the Sheriff would stop by and help. And because of that, he graduated from high school. Even doing well his senior year, his grades were too low to go to college, but he’d gotten in the local junior college, taken law enforcement courses, and got selected to go to the police academy. Two years later, he had been the junior person on the Sheriff’s department.
The Sheriff had juggled schedules,,,sometimes working shifts himself so the young deputy could finish his college…get his degree. And Valenti and Judge Harrison had both written him recommendations for his admission to law school. Three years later, he had been the junior assistant prosecuting attorney for Chaves county, and the rest…as they say…was history.
He remembered the rest, too. The old computer the Sheriff had given him, because he couldn’t afford one for his studies. The processor was ancient, and he had replaced it. The hard disk was old and slow, but it would work. He’d checked to make sure it was still serviceable with a disk rescue program. The disk had been erased, but not reformatted, and the disk rescue program had automatically rewritten the addresses. The three files were ancient, but the names had surprised him. Max Evans, Isabel Evans, Michael Guerin. He’d opened them and started to laugh.
The story was well known in the department, about the Sheriff’s dad and his paranoia about aliens. It appeared that at one time the Sheriff himself had believed that story. And irony of ironies, he had married Amy DeLuca and wound up with a son-in-law he had once had suspicions about being ‘not of this Earth’. And it would have ended at that too, if Maria hadn’t brought Joey in to the station three weeks later.
Maria had tried to see the Sheriff. She had a teacher parent conference about Mark, and couldn’t take Joey. Michael was in California, consulting on a film, and at the last moment Diane Evans had taken ill.
Anyway, he’d wound up taking care of Joey…just for ten minutes, until the Sheriff returned from the courthouse. He would always remember her blue eyes, the capacity of her bladder, and what had happened as he’d gone to change her. It had seemed simple enough….he had a three year old daughter of his own. Of course, Andrea had never had a gold glow come from her butt, and had the diaper dry out without being changed.
He’d agonized for awhile, but the half naked little girl with the blue eyes didn’t seem any more threatening than his own Andrea. And she had smiled at him, just like Andrea always smiled at him. Rosa always said it was just gas, but he knew a smile when he saw one. She sure didn’t look like much of a threat to national security…and she was the Sheriff’s granddaughter and he owed Valenti...owed him an awful lot. What the hell, he’d decided. It’s a land of immigrants, after all.
He’d never told anybody…not even Rosa. And he’d been happy when Andrea and Joey started being friends…although it hadn’t gotten Andrea away from the boy as much as he would have liked. They were good people, the Valentis. And the Guerins too, from what he could tell.
He’d taken time off his calendar to get to Santa Fe…seen his daughter and Joey play. He should have done it years ago…he had missed too many of Andrea’s games. She was almost grown…she’d be gone before he knew it….away at college….or with the boy.
Arturo was still worried about the boy. He had remembered the name somehow, but been surprised when he checked the record to know he’d once sentenced him. His secretary had checked with the parole office…the kid had no further legal problems, and was an honor student. And he was probably no more guilty about what the two of them were doing than his little Andrea, but it was easier to be angry at someone else’s boy than your little girl.
But as he came around the bend in the road he saw the couple in the arroyo and he was immediately worried. He looked a mile north to where the arroyo came down from Garcia Flats and his heart stopped as he saw the wall of water rushing down at his daughter and her boyfriend.
As Joey and Andrew had started back along the upper bank of the arroyo, Andrea had taken Enriquez hand and pulled him back toward the narrow entrance to the floor of the arroyo.
"We'll meet you back at the car."
Enriquez had looked a little nervously at the dark clouds to the far north, but she had said she really wanted to talk to him alone, so he had let his worries pass. It was 10 minutes later when she said the words she'd maneuvered him here isolated from the other couple by the high walls of the arroyo, to say to him.
"Have you ever noticed the chain around Joey's neck, Enriquez? There's an engagement ring on it."
'Oh damn,' thought Enriquez. He was pretty sure he knew where this talk was going.
"Andrew proposed to her. Her folks thought they were too young, wanted them to wait. But Joey wouldn't take it off. Finally they compromised....she won't get to announce it until this summer. but they ARE engaged, Enriquez."
"Uh-huh," said Enriquez, and in fairness he was probably doing well to even get that much out. He'd been blindsided by this.
"That's called COMMITMENT, Enriquez."
"Uh-huh."
"They've just been dating since football season....and already he was sure he loved her and wanted to spend his life with her."
"Uh-huh." He really had a better vocabulary than that normally. He was in fact an honor student.
And he really knew where this all was heading, because he still didn't have the nerve to ask the judge, and without asking him he couldn't ask her, and even if he asked, the judge was going to say no....hell, Enriquez would have himself if he'd been in the man's shoes, because as much as he loved Andrea, he knew damn well she could do a lot better than him.....and possibly he was even a little bit relieved when he saw the wall of dark water a mile away, crashing down the arroyo toward them realizing he'd probably die before he'd ever hear the VEXED words from Andrea she was getting ready to speak to him.
"We'll meet you back at the car."
Enriquez had looked a little nervously at the dark clouds to the far north, but she had said she really wanted to talk to him alone, so he had let his worries pass. It was 10 minutes later when she said the words she'd maneuvered him here isolated from the other couple by the high walls of the arroyo, to say to him.
"Have you ever noticed the chain around Joey's neck, Enriquez? There's an engagement ring on it."
'Oh damn,' thought Enriquez. He was pretty sure he knew where this talk was going.
"Andrew proposed to her. Her folks thought they were too young, wanted them to wait. But Joey wouldn't take it off. Finally they compromised....she won't get to announce it until this summer. but they ARE engaged, Enriquez."
"Uh-huh," said Enriquez, and in fairness he was probably doing well to even get that much out. He'd been blindsided by this.
"That's called COMMITMENT, Enriquez."
"Uh-huh."
"They've just been dating since football season....and already he was sure he loved her and wanted to spend his life with her."
"Uh-huh." He really had a better vocabulary than that normally. He was in fact an honor student.
And he really knew where this all was heading, because he still didn't have the nerve to ask the judge, and without asking him he couldn't ask her, and even if he asked, the judge was going to say no....hell, Enriquez would have himself if he'd been in the man's shoes, because as much as he loved Andrea, he knew damn well she could do a lot better than him.....and possibly he was even a little bit relieved when he saw the wall of dark water a mile away, crashing down the arroyo toward them realizing he'd probably die before he'd ever hear the VEXED words from Andrea she was getting ready to speak to him.
Andrea looked up in horror at the churning wave of dirty water coming down the arroyo. She turned to run back to where they’d gotten back down into the arroyo but Enriquez grabbed her hand before she could run.
“No time to get there. The water will be on us first. We have to get up the side.”
She looked upstream only briefly, but the wall of water had gotten noticeably closer, even in the ten seconds since last she’d looked. She didn’t see anywhere they could climb out, and the sound of the onrushing waters was getting louder…more frightening each second.
“Come here,” Enriquez shouted, as he strained to roll the large rock against the side of the arroyo. “The wall isn’t vertical here, it leans out a little. I can stand on the rock, you can climb up on me, and I can lift you high enough to grab the top and pull yourself up.”
“But what about you? You’ll be trapped.”
Hell, Enriquez knew that…but with Andrea about to be crushed…and drowned…., well it really wasn’t what he considered a priority. Still, he had to motivate HER to get up the wall. “There’s probably a branch up there you can use to pull me up with, or maybe some old steel cable from the mine. Hurry, climb up…there’s no time to talk.”
And she did climb, standing on his shoulders, she just failed to be able to reach the top of the arroyo wall. She felt him push up on her feet, lifting her another 10 inches…it was barely enough. As she grabbed the edge and hoisted herself over she heard a clatter from below. Andrea looked back to see that the boulder had rolled and Enriquez had fallen, his leg badly bruised…maybe even broken. Desperately she looked around for a rope, a branch, a stick, anything. But there was nothing. She looked back over the side, saw him sitting there, saw the water only seconds away. He looked up at her then, mouthed the words….she couldn’t hear them over the noise of the water, but she read his lips and heard the words in her mind…. ‘I love you…’
The world seemed to stand still for Andrea Lopez. In less than a minute she’d gone from being ready to read the riot act to her boyfriend to being about to watch him die. And it was too much…..just too much. She loved him……she needed him……..she didn’t want to go on without him. She turned around and lowered herself as far as she could down the wall, ready to slide down and join him. ‘At least,’ she thought, ‘we’ll be together.’
Andrew had never moved as fast in his life as he did as he ran to the side of the arroyo. Joey was nearly matching his pace, communicating through the connection faster than they could have verbalized a plan. He knew what she knew, she knew what he knew, instantaneously. He knew what she was going to do, knew what he had to do, they moved like they had been choreographed, as he fell onto his chest to grab Andrea’s hands while Joey went over the bank and slid down the steep sloping side of the arroyo to land at the bottom and continue the roll to her feet.
Enriquez’s heart was gladdened when he saw her make it to the top. He couldn’t resist telling her he loved her…his last goodbye. He hadn’t considered the effect it might have on her. He watched in horror as she started to come back down the arroyo wall. He screamed at her, “No Andrea, don’t….” perhaps she hadn’t heard, lost in the noise of the coming flood, perhaps she had heard…but was coming anyway. Then he saw Andrew’s face and hands,…his hands holding her, not letting her descend back to her death. “Thank you,” he said, crossing himself.
Enriquez was watching his death coming, now only seconds away when Joey landed next to him. He looked at her, the rock…no time to roll it back before the water would hit them, even if his leg could do it. ‘Why, Joey?’ he thought. ‘You were safe….you should have stayed….’
It hit him then, not the water but a golden glow, forcing him against the wall, into the shallow and narrow chasm the small rockslide had left. He felt her body thud into his, the crescendo of noise overtaking them as the world turned to a green glow.
The waters beat against the green curtain around them and stones and logs carried in the flood would sometimes push in to the green slightly, deforming it in their passage.
Enriquez watched for twenty seconds before really believing this was happening…that this was not death. He looked to his side and Joey was there, her eyes closed, the concentration visible in the lines on her forehead.
Enriquez shouted over the noise of the falling water, “I don’t know exactly what you are doing….and I sure don’t want to interrupt you….but maybe later, Joey, ….you could explain this to me?”
He had pulled her back up to the bank, and was holding her. Andrea struggled to break free without success... Andrew was too strong. Finally she just struggled to look into the maelstrom, to see any trace of Enriquez…..and then she saw the green glow.
“He’s OK, Andrea.” Said Drew Douglas. “Joey has him…he’s safe.”
As the waters receded she saw the green glow, the top of it no longer covered by the flood, Enriquez’s head and Joeys now visible behind the green veil.
“Andrew…..how is she doing that?”
“I love Joey, Andrea. She is the most wonderful human being I’ve ever known….but she isn’t exactly 100%......human.”
“What?”
It was five more minutes before enough water had run through the arroyo that it was only calf deep, and slow running. A near exhausted Joey let the green glow collapse and sat down shakily on the large boulder. Enriquez moved over and sat beside her, limping visibly.
From up above Andrea and Drew watched as she put her hand on his leg, and the golden glow flared. “His leg…..”
“She’s healing it, Andrea. It’s OK.”
“But how…? Can she do that? ….I mean, does she know what she’s doing?”
“Oh, most likely. I have a hunch it’s a lot easier to fix a broken leg than a broken neck. She’s kind of tired though, so it might be best not to interfere. Otherwise you’ll likely wind up duct-taped to a fencepost somewhere.”
“She did that? When you were hurt?”
“Yep. Kidnapped me….stole my heart. Quite a crime spree, considering her grandfather used to be Sheriff.”
It was almost fifteen minutes more before the four hikers were reunited at the jeep. The questions had just gotten started when the car drove in to the parking lot.
Arturo Lopez would have given anything to be able to trade places with Andrea as the flood raced toward her. He saw her start to run, but knew it was hopeless to try to outrace the oncoming waters on the sand and rock of the arroyo’s bed.
He saw the boy grab her, drag her to the only place that there was any chance. The boy helped her climb up onto his shoulders, pushed her feet up with his hands. Arturo’s hands clenched as she approached the top….as if somehow he could grip the rocks for her, help her pull herself to safety. He watched her lookf quickly for something to lower….watched the fear, then the sadness come to her eyes when there was nothing there.
He saw the boy….no, the young man, Enriquez’s stock had gone up considerably with Arturo in the last few seconds, saw the young man tell her he loved her. The pain in her eyes….even from the road across the arroyo, was heartbreaking……the same pain he had felt only moments ago. And the pain came back to Arturo as well as she stepped forward, started to slide down the wall. ‘She loves him that much….well, of course she did.’
The judge started to breathe again when he saw Andrew grab her arms…wrestle her back up onto the bank. He didn’t understand, at first, as Joey Guerin went over the side of the arroyo, half-sliding, half-falling into the bed of the arroyo.
When the golden glow flashed, Enriquez almost flew into the small area of shelter at the side of the arroyo, but the judge knew it would not be enough. But Joey had barely gotten to him when the flood hit and the green glow had come nearly simultaneously.
He’d watched the glow…watched it for five or six minutes until it had gone away. You didn’t have to be an expert to read the body language. Neither Andrea nor Enriquez had any idea what was going on as it happened. Andrew Douglas certainly had.
The judge had sat in the car for awhile, waiting for a father’s heart to stop beating quite so fast, saying a few prayers, and reconsidering a lot of things…. at least one being his dislike of Andrea’s young man.
Enriquez had been willing to give his life for her…without hesitation….and she would have gone back…just so he wouldn’t die alone. This wasn’t two hormone driven teenagers having a fling. This wasn’t going to go away…..and maybe it should not….maybe he was the right one for her.
As the man walked up to Andrea and hugged her, his eyes full of tears, Andrew could feel the concern Joey felt, wondering how much he had seen. But right now, the man's eyes were only for Andrea as he hugged her to him.
“I came when I heard the weather report…I tried to call….”
“It’s OK Papa, I’m alright…”
The judge looked at the young man. How do you thank someone for saving your daughter? He put his hand on the young man’s shoulder., he nodded his head. No words were really necessary, Enriquez understood.
As he came toward Joey, she leaned against Andrew, and his arm went around her protectively.
“You don’t remember me, Joey. I used to work for your grandfather…..I took care of you once for a little while…you were about ten months old, I think. You were wet then, too…” he said with a smile. “So is everyone going to catch cold riding home soaking wet in an open jeep…..or are you going to dry them off like you did your diaper back then?”
The grin had said enough to reassure Joey. Tired or not, the gold glow came once more, and everyone was now dry. There were a few more questions.....and a lot of hugs.
Judge Arturo turned to get back into his car and had reached the door handle when he heard, “Senor….”
He smiled as he heard the words, the old words in the old language, requesting formally…. He had used such words himself, just after he’d gotten his first job….after the police academy.
He had met Rosa in junior college, her a high school senior, taking advance placement courses for going to college. By the time he was done with the academy and back in Roswell, she was a Freshman at UNM, home on her Christmas break.
So he’d gone to her father and asked formally, in the old language, in the old way……the old bastard had turned him down. Said he wasn’t good enough for Rosa, he would never be good enough for her. He’d gone back to the Sheriff’s office just devastated, angry, hurt. Jim Valenti had asked him what was wrong, and he’d explained.
‘Well what did SHE say, son?’ Valenti had asked him. ‘This is the United States, the girl gets an opinion, too.’
So he had asked Rosa. Her father had screamed, Rosa had threatened to elope, to go to Las Vegas….to the Elvis Chapel. The old man had caved. It had been a lovely wedding that Spring. His father-in-law finally forgave him….at Andrea’s christening. They were even on pretty good terms now, and after only twenty-two years…..
“Enriquez…this is the United States. You ask her…if she says yes….and I think she probably will….well…you have my blessing. “
There were tears in the judge’s eyes as he drove home, watching the jeep follow in the rearview mirror. He thought he might look up Michael Guerin, have a drink with him. Did aliens drink? Maybe not. He didn’t either…not since that bottle of tequila when he was seventeen. Maybe a cherry-cola or something….. Then they could start a club. Men who were no longer the most important man in their daughter’s life. The judge was sure he qualified….pretty sure that Michael Guerin qualifed too.
In the end, all father’s were kind of the same he decided, no matter where they came from.
Back in the jeep, Andrew was driving. Enriquez was in the back seat....bring snuggled up to by his fiance.
Joey looked over her shoulder at them briefly. 'She almost lost him. And I could lose Andrew too. All it would take would be some stupid traffic accident, something that happened when I wasn't there. We aren't guaranteed any time. We have to make the best use we can of the time that is given to us.'
Teenagers don't usually dwell on their own mortality. This is her midbrain telling her it's about time to cement their relationship.
It'd like to tell her to blow off the birth control pills too, but it knew that'd be pressing its luck.
“No time to get there. The water will be on us first. We have to get up the side.”
She looked upstream only briefly, but the wall of water had gotten noticeably closer, even in the ten seconds since last she’d looked. She didn’t see anywhere they could climb out, and the sound of the onrushing waters was getting louder…more frightening each second.
“Come here,” Enriquez shouted, as he strained to roll the large rock against the side of the arroyo. “The wall isn’t vertical here, it leans out a little. I can stand on the rock, you can climb up on me, and I can lift you high enough to grab the top and pull yourself up.”
“But what about you? You’ll be trapped.”
Hell, Enriquez knew that…but with Andrea about to be crushed…and drowned…., well it really wasn’t what he considered a priority. Still, he had to motivate HER to get up the wall. “There’s probably a branch up there you can use to pull me up with, or maybe some old steel cable from the mine. Hurry, climb up…there’s no time to talk.”
And she did climb, standing on his shoulders, she just failed to be able to reach the top of the arroyo wall. She felt him push up on her feet, lifting her another 10 inches…it was barely enough. As she grabbed the edge and hoisted herself over she heard a clatter from below. Andrea looked back to see that the boulder had rolled and Enriquez had fallen, his leg badly bruised…maybe even broken. Desperately she looked around for a rope, a branch, a stick, anything. But there was nothing. She looked back over the side, saw him sitting there, saw the water only seconds away. He looked up at her then, mouthed the words….she couldn’t hear them over the noise of the water, but she read his lips and heard the words in her mind…. ‘I love you…’
The world seemed to stand still for Andrea Lopez. In less than a minute she’d gone from being ready to read the riot act to her boyfriend to being about to watch him die. And it was too much…..just too much. She loved him……she needed him……..she didn’t want to go on without him. She turned around and lowered herself as far as she could down the wall, ready to slide down and join him. ‘At least,’ she thought, ‘we’ll be together.’
Andrew had never moved as fast in his life as he did as he ran to the side of the arroyo. Joey was nearly matching his pace, communicating through the connection faster than they could have verbalized a plan. He knew what she knew, she knew what he knew, instantaneously. He knew what she was going to do, knew what he had to do, they moved like they had been choreographed, as he fell onto his chest to grab Andrea’s hands while Joey went over the bank and slid down the steep sloping side of the arroyo to land at the bottom and continue the roll to her feet.
Enriquez’s heart was gladdened when he saw her make it to the top. He couldn’t resist telling her he loved her…his last goodbye. He hadn’t considered the effect it might have on her. He watched in horror as she started to come back down the arroyo wall. He screamed at her, “No Andrea, don’t….” perhaps she hadn’t heard, lost in the noise of the coming flood, perhaps she had heard…but was coming anyway. Then he saw Andrew’s face and hands,…his hands holding her, not letting her descend back to her death. “Thank you,” he said, crossing himself.
Enriquez was watching his death coming, now only seconds away when Joey landed next to him. He looked at her, the rock…no time to roll it back before the water would hit them, even if his leg could do it. ‘Why, Joey?’ he thought. ‘You were safe….you should have stayed….’
It hit him then, not the water but a golden glow, forcing him against the wall, into the shallow and narrow chasm the small rockslide had left. He felt her body thud into his, the crescendo of noise overtaking them as the world turned to a green glow.
The waters beat against the green curtain around them and stones and logs carried in the flood would sometimes push in to the green slightly, deforming it in their passage.
Enriquez watched for twenty seconds before really believing this was happening…that this was not death. He looked to his side and Joey was there, her eyes closed, the concentration visible in the lines on her forehead.
Enriquez shouted over the noise of the falling water, “I don’t know exactly what you are doing….and I sure don’t want to interrupt you….but maybe later, Joey, ….you could explain this to me?”
He had pulled her back up to the bank, and was holding her. Andrea struggled to break free without success... Andrew was too strong. Finally she just struggled to look into the maelstrom, to see any trace of Enriquez…..and then she saw the green glow.
“He’s OK, Andrea.” Said Drew Douglas. “Joey has him…he’s safe.”
As the waters receded she saw the green glow, the top of it no longer covered by the flood, Enriquez’s head and Joeys now visible behind the green veil.
“Andrew…..how is she doing that?”
“I love Joey, Andrea. She is the most wonderful human being I’ve ever known….but she isn’t exactly 100%......human.”
“What?”
It was five more minutes before enough water had run through the arroyo that it was only calf deep, and slow running. A near exhausted Joey let the green glow collapse and sat down shakily on the large boulder. Enriquez moved over and sat beside her, limping visibly.
From up above Andrea and Drew watched as she put her hand on his leg, and the golden glow flared. “His leg…..”
“She’s healing it, Andrea. It’s OK.”
“But how…? Can she do that? ….I mean, does she know what she’s doing?”
“Oh, most likely. I have a hunch it’s a lot easier to fix a broken leg than a broken neck. She’s kind of tired though, so it might be best not to interfere. Otherwise you’ll likely wind up duct-taped to a fencepost somewhere.”
“She did that? When you were hurt?”
“Yep. Kidnapped me….stole my heart. Quite a crime spree, considering her grandfather used to be Sheriff.”
It was almost fifteen minutes more before the four hikers were reunited at the jeep. The questions had just gotten started when the car drove in to the parking lot.
Arturo Lopez would have given anything to be able to trade places with Andrea as the flood raced toward her. He saw her start to run, but knew it was hopeless to try to outrace the oncoming waters on the sand and rock of the arroyo’s bed.
He saw the boy grab her, drag her to the only place that there was any chance. The boy helped her climb up onto his shoulders, pushed her feet up with his hands. Arturo’s hands clenched as she approached the top….as if somehow he could grip the rocks for her, help her pull herself to safety. He watched her lookf quickly for something to lower….watched the fear, then the sadness come to her eyes when there was nothing there.
He saw the boy….no, the young man, Enriquez’s stock had gone up considerably with Arturo in the last few seconds, saw the young man tell her he loved her. The pain in her eyes….even from the road across the arroyo, was heartbreaking……the same pain he had felt only moments ago. And the pain came back to Arturo as well as she stepped forward, started to slide down the wall. ‘She loves him that much….well, of course she did.’
The judge started to breathe again when he saw Andrew grab her arms…wrestle her back up onto the bank. He didn’t understand, at first, as Joey Guerin went over the side of the arroyo, half-sliding, half-falling into the bed of the arroyo.
When the golden glow flashed, Enriquez almost flew into the small area of shelter at the side of the arroyo, but the judge knew it would not be enough. But Joey had barely gotten to him when the flood hit and the green glow had come nearly simultaneously.
He’d watched the glow…watched it for five or six minutes until it had gone away. You didn’t have to be an expert to read the body language. Neither Andrea nor Enriquez had any idea what was going on as it happened. Andrew Douglas certainly had.
The judge had sat in the car for awhile, waiting for a father’s heart to stop beating quite so fast, saying a few prayers, and reconsidering a lot of things…. at least one being his dislike of Andrea’s young man.
Enriquez had been willing to give his life for her…without hesitation….and she would have gone back…just so he wouldn’t die alone. This wasn’t two hormone driven teenagers having a fling. This wasn’t going to go away…..and maybe it should not….maybe he was the right one for her.
As the man walked up to Andrea and hugged her, his eyes full of tears, Andrew could feel the concern Joey felt, wondering how much he had seen. But right now, the man's eyes were only for Andrea as he hugged her to him.
“I came when I heard the weather report…I tried to call….”
“It’s OK Papa, I’m alright…”
The judge looked at the young man. How do you thank someone for saving your daughter? He put his hand on the young man’s shoulder., he nodded his head. No words were really necessary, Enriquez understood.
As he came toward Joey, she leaned against Andrew, and his arm went around her protectively.
“You don’t remember me, Joey. I used to work for your grandfather…..I took care of you once for a little while…you were about ten months old, I think. You were wet then, too…” he said with a smile. “So is everyone going to catch cold riding home soaking wet in an open jeep…..or are you going to dry them off like you did your diaper back then?”
The grin had said enough to reassure Joey. Tired or not, the gold glow came once more, and everyone was now dry. There were a few more questions.....and a lot of hugs.
Judge Arturo turned to get back into his car and had reached the door handle when he heard, “Senor….”
He smiled as he heard the words, the old words in the old language, requesting formally…. He had used such words himself, just after he’d gotten his first job….after the police academy.
He had met Rosa in junior college, her a high school senior, taking advance placement courses for going to college. By the time he was done with the academy and back in Roswell, she was a Freshman at UNM, home on her Christmas break.
So he’d gone to her father and asked formally, in the old language, in the old way……the old bastard had turned him down. Said he wasn’t good enough for Rosa, he would never be good enough for her. He’d gone back to the Sheriff’s office just devastated, angry, hurt. Jim Valenti had asked him what was wrong, and he’d explained.
‘Well what did SHE say, son?’ Valenti had asked him. ‘This is the United States, the girl gets an opinion, too.’
So he had asked Rosa. Her father had screamed, Rosa had threatened to elope, to go to Las Vegas….to the Elvis Chapel. The old man had caved. It had been a lovely wedding that Spring. His father-in-law finally forgave him….at Andrea’s christening. They were even on pretty good terms now, and after only twenty-two years…..
“Enriquez…this is the United States. You ask her…if she says yes….and I think she probably will….well…you have my blessing. “
There were tears in the judge’s eyes as he drove home, watching the jeep follow in the rearview mirror. He thought he might look up Michael Guerin, have a drink with him. Did aliens drink? Maybe not. He didn’t either…not since that bottle of tequila when he was seventeen. Maybe a cherry-cola or something….. Then they could start a club. Men who were no longer the most important man in their daughter’s life. The judge was sure he qualified….pretty sure that Michael Guerin qualifed too.
In the end, all father’s were kind of the same he decided, no matter where they came from.
Back in the jeep, Andrew was driving. Enriquez was in the back seat....bring snuggled up to by his fiance.
Joey looked over her shoulder at them briefly. 'She almost lost him. And I could lose Andrew too. All it would take would be some stupid traffic accident, something that happened when I wasn't there. We aren't guaranteed any time. We have to make the best use we can of the time that is given to us.'
Teenagers don't usually dwell on their own mortality. This is her midbrain telling her it's about time to cement their relationship.
It'd like to tell her to blow off the birth control pills too, but it knew that'd be pressing its luck.
Last edited by greywolf on Thu Dec 14, 2006 11:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
Alexandria, Virginia
It was Laurie’s first night home.
It had been three weeks of chemotherapy, transfusions, spontaneous bleeding, unrelenting nausea from the chemotherapy. She’d had two episodes of sepsis when her white count had gotten so low she couldn’t handle infection, and both times Bob had thought he’d lost her. He stayed at her side every day, almost every night.
Kate was there almost as often, bringing him food, bringing her little presents, trying to keep them both going just a little longer, long enough for the chemotherapy to work and for Laurie to start to recover.
She’d finally turned the corner five days previously and two days ago they had taken her off of her antibiotics. For 48 hours they did little more than watch, waiting for her infections to flare again. But they hadn’t. Her blood tests showed no evidence of infection, a final bone marrow aspiration confirmed a full remission, and a battered and bruised Laurie Adams was finally discharged from Children’s Hospital National Medical Center and taken home by her father and Kate Powers.
Laurie did a pretty good job of eating the meal Katie had prepared. She wasn’t really hungry, her stomach had shrunk down when she was sick and getting mostly IV fluids. On the other hand, it was a lot more palatable than hospital food.
Laurie had crawled up into her father’s lap after dinner, and Kate had brought her a small ice cream sundae while they watched Laurie’s cartoon DVD, classic Spongebob Squarepants episodes. She’d fallen asleep after twenty minutes, Bob had carried her upstairs, and he and Kate tucked her in her own bed for the first time in three weeks.
As they went back downstairs Kate went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of wine, and took down two glasses. “My contribution to us celebrating finally getting Laurie home,” she said.
They sat on the couch, sipping wine and watching Spongebob argue with Squidward, Kate leaning against Bob, neither of them quite remembering when they’d last been this happy.
But at 3AM, Laurie had a nightmare.
She had dreamed she was back in the ICU, that she had relapsed, that they had to do another bone marrow aspiration. She came awake shaking with fright. She recognized her room, but that wasn’t enough….she was still scared, still needed reassurance. Her little footed pajamas padded down the hall to Daddy’s room, and crawled under the comforter at the foot of the bed to snuggle up against him. The bed seemed oddly crowded.
“Katie……are you having a sleep-over?”
“Shh! Yes Laurie. Be quiet and just cuddle down. You’ll wake your daddy. He’s really tired right now.”
Laurie loved this. She was being cuddled on both sides. She’d told her daddy that she wished that Katie could be her mommy.
Maybe if they were good enough friends to have sleep-overs…..maybe she would become Laurie’s mommy some day. Maybe that’s why she didn’t ask Katie….didn’t want to embarrass her. Laurie was almost sure that Katie had forgotten to bring her PJs……..
It was Laurie’s first night home.
It had been three weeks of chemotherapy, transfusions, spontaneous bleeding, unrelenting nausea from the chemotherapy. She’d had two episodes of sepsis when her white count had gotten so low she couldn’t handle infection, and both times Bob had thought he’d lost her. He stayed at her side every day, almost every night.
Kate was there almost as often, bringing him food, bringing her little presents, trying to keep them both going just a little longer, long enough for the chemotherapy to work and for Laurie to start to recover.
She’d finally turned the corner five days previously and two days ago they had taken her off of her antibiotics. For 48 hours they did little more than watch, waiting for her infections to flare again. But they hadn’t. Her blood tests showed no evidence of infection, a final bone marrow aspiration confirmed a full remission, and a battered and bruised Laurie Adams was finally discharged from Children’s Hospital National Medical Center and taken home by her father and Kate Powers.
Laurie did a pretty good job of eating the meal Katie had prepared. She wasn’t really hungry, her stomach had shrunk down when she was sick and getting mostly IV fluids. On the other hand, it was a lot more palatable than hospital food.
Laurie had crawled up into her father’s lap after dinner, and Kate had brought her a small ice cream sundae while they watched Laurie’s cartoon DVD, classic Spongebob Squarepants episodes. She’d fallen asleep after twenty minutes, Bob had carried her upstairs, and he and Kate tucked her in her own bed for the first time in three weeks.
As they went back downstairs Kate went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of wine, and took down two glasses. “My contribution to us celebrating finally getting Laurie home,” she said.
They sat on the couch, sipping wine and watching Spongebob argue with Squidward, Kate leaning against Bob, neither of them quite remembering when they’d last been this happy.
But at 3AM, Laurie had a nightmare.
She had dreamed she was back in the ICU, that she had relapsed, that they had to do another bone marrow aspiration. She came awake shaking with fright. She recognized her room, but that wasn’t enough….she was still scared, still needed reassurance. Her little footed pajamas padded down the hall to Daddy’s room, and crawled under the comforter at the foot of the bed to snuggle up against him. The bed seemed oddly crowded.
“Katie……are you having a sleep-over?”
“Shh! Yes Laurie. Be quiet and just cuddle down. You’ll wake your daddy. He’s really tired right now.”
Laurie loved this. She was being cuddled on both sides. She’d told her daddy that she wished that Katie could be her mommy.
Maybe if they were good enough friends to have sleep-overs…..maybe she would become Laurie’s mommy some day. Maybe that’s why she didn’t ask Katie….didn’t want to embarrass her. Laurie was almost sure that Katie had forgotten to bring her PJs……..
Guerin Residence, Roswell New Mexico
While it was 3 AM Eastern Standard Time and the bed was warm and cozy for the three people in Alexandria Virginia, it was 1 AM Mountain Time in Roswell New Mexico and Michael Guerin’s bed was as cold as it had been in quite a while.
Maria had glared at him as she’d brushed her teeth, climbed into bed as far on her side as she could get without risking falling out, and then had turned her back to him and was now facing the wall. His attempt at a goodnight kiss had met a Maria who was pretending she was asleep. This hadn’t happened often in the past, but he knew all the signs. He was being allowed to 'stew in his own juices'.
And he knew he’d eventually have to talk with her about it, but he really didn’t think he’d done anything all THAT wrong. It was his house, after all. I mean it had been bad enough Joey had been with him from morning to late afternoon on that picnic. Then he’d picked her up for dinner at his parent's house. And when he’d finally brought her home…almost 9PM, she’d invited him to their den to watch an ancient movie DVD, Tortilla Soup. Maria and Liz loved the flick and had tried to get him to watch it a couple of times. It was the quintessential chick flick.
It wasn’t his fault that he’d needed to go into the darkened room three times, the first looking for a paperback he’d started reading only last August, the second time……about ten minutes later had been looking for the registration for one of their cars……the one he kept in the glove compartment. The third time was ten minutes later, when he’d gotten extremely curious about the middle name of a guy who’d been in his shop class in high school, so he’d kind of barged in without knocking looking for his high school yearbook. It was on that occasion when he’d noticed Andrew’s hand was halfway up Joey’s back under her blouse.
Oh, the hand really hadn’t gotten anywhere all that interesting ..or done much of anything…yet. And it had been proceeding at a leisurely pace, designed to allow Joey plenty of opportunity to express her disinterest or irritation if she objected…..Yeah, like THAT was going to happen.
Anyway, Michael had casually commented on Andrew’s hand in passing, then noted the hour and the long day the kids had, and suggested that perhaps Andrew ought to go home so Joey could go to bed.
Well, Andrew had gone, and Michael had been positively amazed at how angry Joey had been at him….and for what? He hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d ranted at him incessantly for twenty minutes, and he’d finally resorted to informing her that this was his house, and he made the rules here, and as long as she lived under his roof, she better expect that’s the way it was going to be. That had clearly been the correct thing to say, because she’d quieted right down and gone off to her room.
Unfortunately, Maria hadn’t said much since then either. She’d gotten ready for bed without a word, climbed in, curled up facing the wall, and ignored him for the last two hours. And Michael really wasn’t all that dumb. After two hours of getting the cold shoulder, back, butt, and every other frigid part of Maria’s anatomy, he knew that he’d stepped in it.
In fact, he knew even before that, because in her entire life Joey had never been that ….VEXED with him. And he figured that she must really love him, because if she didn’t, she’d probably look at him like that only if she hated him. And he knew he was going to have to patch it up with Joey somehow, apologize, eat copious amounts of crow….but first he had to patch things up with his soulmate.
“Maria…”
That was all it took. He wouldn’t get a second word in for some time.
“I can’t believe you did that to Joey, Michael. I can’t believe you would say ‘it’s my house and I make the rules,’…..It’s OUR house, Michael. All of ours, Yours, Mine…Joey’s….Mark’s….”
This wasn’t good. This was going to be real ugly, with NO guarantee of a kiss and makeup at the end of it. Instinctively Michael realized he’d crossed a line here. This wasn’t that he’d done something that had hurt Maria’s feelings. She loved him, she’d get over that. He’d done something that had hurt one of the kids feelings. This wasn’t her cerebrum talking, it was her midbrain. He’d been mean to their DNA……their shot at immortality. Midbrains can really hold a grudge about such things.
“If my father had come barging in on me when I was with you without knocking three times, Michael…three times, …you know what I’d have done? But oh no, I was LUCKIER than that Michael, my father deserted me and my Mom when I was six, so I never had to put up with anything as bad as Joey just went through.”
This definitely was not good. Even now, thirty plus years later, even after her mom and Jim Valenti were happily married, Maria still hadn’t forgiven her father for deserting them. Man, she was some kind of pissed….
“She’s not a child, Michael, and we can’t treat her like one. Even setting aside the fact that WE made her give us that promise, she’s got to make her own choices in life.”
“But….”
That was a tactical mistake, trying to speak. Even a ‘yes dear…’ would have been hazardous, but a ‘but..’ means one of a number of things, all bad. These include:
Guys have never really understood the conjunction, ‘but’. Gals have. Guys sometimes make the mistake of thinking that 'but' is merely explanatory. Gal’s know better.
The dictionary says BUT, HOWEVER, NEVERTHELESS, STILL, and YET are words implying opposition (with a possible concession). At this point in the dispute, the woman DOES not want a possible concession, she wants you to defer to her greater wisdom. And she damn sure doesn’t want opposition and if she did it sure as hell wouldn’t be from you. But guys don't know that.
Anyway, the ‘but’ has now consigned Michael to catching hell all over again, and his entire night would have been spent backing away from having uttered that one-syllable three letter word, except that the telephone will soon ring and cut off the tongue lashing he’s about to get.
“But me no buts, Michael. I’m not about to have my daughter (note the use of the singular possessive, essentially disowning Michael from parentage of Joey….Michael is in some deep shit here) go running off from home because you say, ‘It’s my way or the highway…”
“Now who is exaggerating? She would never run away from home, Maria…”
Now that was an incredibly dumb thing to say. But in fairness to Michael, he’s really kind of off his game. He has been having nightmares since getting back from Santa Fe of Andrew pressuring Michael’s little girl to do something she really isn’t ready to do. Oh, he knows intellectually that Andrew had his chance and took a beating to avoid doing that while she was intoxicated. He even knows intellectually that Joey IS ready to do it….or at least she’s certainly willing. And he even knows intellectually that were Andrew to try to push Joey into doing anything she really didn’t want to do….well, at best he’d probably wind up duct-taped to a fencepost out by the airport, watching tarantulas and rattlesnakes play.
But Michael is a father, Joey is his princess, and so Michael is in denial, and he’s been getting an uneasy two hours sleep a night for the last five days and really isn’t mentating at his best. But anyway, he’s saved by the bell….or at least the ringer on the telephone.
RINGGGG
Now if Maria weren’t…..well, extremely VEXED…with Michael, she’d let him answer the phone. The fact that she grabbed it indicates she wants to deal with the phone call as expeditiously as possible, …so she can get back to carving up Michael. Women think that way…..honest. But as she recognizes the voice, things change.
“Yes Barbara?”
“I see.”
“Well OK. I think that would be best.”
“Thank you so much. We’ll see you at 10AM then.”
“OK, Michael….now what were you saying?” I’d like to think that Michael wasn’t dumb enough to fall for this, because she’s obviously setting him up. But like I said, Michael is a little off his game right now…..
“I said she would never run away from home, Maria.”
“Well that’s great, Michael. Because that was Barbara Douglas. Joey showed up at their house in tears an hour ago to apologize to Andrew for your actions. She was then planning on going and staying at the Parker’s until she could think of what else to do. Barbara and Roger and Andrew calmed her down. The Douglas’s have invited her to stay in their guest room tonight, and they’ll bring her back home after breakfast….if they can keep her convinced that this is really her home.”
“Oh….”
Even tired and off his game, Michael correctly figured that it would be a good time to just shut up.
While it was 3 AM Eastern Standard Time and the bed was warm and cozy for the three people in Alexandria Virginia, it was 1 AM Mountain Time in Roswell New Mexico and Michael Guerin’s bed was as cold as it had been in quite a while.
Maria had glared at him as she’d brushed her teeth, climbed into bed as far on her side as she could get without risking falling out, and then had turned her back to him and was now facing the wall. His attempt at a goodnight kiss had met a Maria who was pretending she was asleep. This hadn’t happened often in the past, but he knew all the signs. He was being allowed to 'stew in his own juices'.
And he knew he’d eventually have to talk with her about it, but he really didn’t think he’d done anything all THAT wrong. It was his house, after all. I mean it had been bad enough Joey had been with him from morning to late afternoon on that picnic. Then he’d picked her up for dinner at his parent's house. And when he’d finally brought her home…almost 9PM, she’d invited him to their den to watch an ancient movie DVD, Tortilla Soup. Maria and Liz loved the flick and had tried to get him to watch it a couple of times. It was the quintessential chick flick.
It wasn’t his fault that he’d needed to go into the darkened room three times, the first looking for a paperback he’d started reading only last August, the second time……about ten minutes later had been looking for the registration for one of their cars……the one he kept in the glove compartment. The third time was ten minutes later, when he’d gotten extremely curious about the middle name of a guy who’d been in his shop class in high school, so he’d kind of barged in without knocking looking for his high school yearbook. It was on that occasion when he’d noticed Andrew’s hand was halfway up Joey’s back under her blouse.
Oh, the hand really hadn’t gotten anywhere all that interesting ..or done much of anything…yet. And it had been proceeding at a leisurely pace, designed to allow Joey plenty of opportunity to express her disinterest or irritation if she objected…..Yeah, like THAT was going to happen.
Anyway, Michael had casually commented on Andrew’s hand in passing, then noted the hour and the long day the kids had, and suggested that perhaps Andrew ought to go home so Joey could go to bed.
Well, Andrew had gone, and Michael had been positively amazed at how angry Joey had been at him….and for what? He hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d ranted at him incessantly for twenty minutes, and he’d finally resorted to informing her that this was his house, and he made the rules here, and as long as she lived under his roof, she better expect that’s the way it was going to be. That had clearly been the correct thing to say, because she’d quieted right down and gone off to her room.
Unfortunately, Maria hadn’t said much since then either. She’d gotten ready for bed without a word, climbed in, curled up facing the wall, and ignored him for the last two hours. And Michael really wasn’t all that dumb. After two hours of getting the cold shoulder, back, butt, and every other frigid part of Maria’s anatomy, he knew that he’d stepped in it.
In fact, he knew even before that, because in her entire life Joey had never been that ….VEXED with him. And he figured that she must really love him, because if she didn’t, she’d probably look at him like that only if she hated him. And he knew he was going to have to patch it up with Joey somehow, apologize, eat copious amounts of crow….but first he had to patch things up with his soulmate.
“Maria…”
That was all it took. He wouldn’t get a second word in for some time.
“I can’t believe you did that to Joey, Michael. I can’t believe you would say ‘it’s my house and I make the rules,’…..It’s OUR house, Michael. All of ours, Yours, Mine…Joey’s….Mark’s….”
This wasn’t good. This was going to be real ugly, with NO guarantee of a kiss and makeup at the end of it. Instinctively Michael realized he’d crossed a line here. This wasn’t that he’d done something that had hurt Maria’s feelings. She loved him, she’d get over that. He’d done something that had hurt one of the kids feelings. This wasn’t her cerebrum talking, it was her midbrain. He’d been mean to their DNA……their shot at immortality. Midbrains can really hold a grudge about such things.
“If my father had come barging in on me when I was with you without knocking three times, Michael…three times, …you know what I’d have done? But oh no, I was LUCKIER than that Michael, my father deserted me and my Mom when I was six, so I never had to put up with anything as bad as Joey just went through.”
This definitely was not good. Even now, thirty plus years later, even after her mom and Jim Valenti were happily married, Maria still hadn’t forgiven her father for deserting them. Man, she was some kind of pissed….
“She’s not a child, Michael, and we can’t treat her like one. Even setting aside the fact that WE made her give us that promise, she’s got to make her own choices in life.”
“But….”
That was a tactical mistake, trying to speak. Even a ‘yes dear…’ would have been hazardous, but a ‘but..’ means one of a number of things, all bad. These include:
- a. Michael has yet to realize the enormity of his transgressions
b. Michael actually still believes there’s something he can say in justification, explanation, or mitigation.
c. Michael is in denial about just how badly he has fouled up.
d. Michael knows he’s fouled up, but isn’t willing to take responsibility for his actions.
Or
e. The ever popular All Of The Above.
Guys have never really understood the conjunction, ‘but’. Gals have. Guys sometimes make the mistake of thinking that 'but' is merely explanatory. Gal’s know better.
The dictionary says BUT, HOWEVER, NEVERTHELESS, STILL, and YET are words implying opposition (with a possible concession). At this point in the dispute, the woman DOES not want a possible concession, she wants you to defer to her greater wisdom. And she damn sure doesn’t want opposition and if she did it sure as hell wouldn’t be from you. But guys don't know that.
Anyway, the ‘but’ has now consigned Michael to catching hell all over again, and his entire night would have been spent backing away from having uttered that one-syllable three letter word, except that the telephone will soon ring and cut off the tongue lashing he’s about to get.
“But me no buts, Michael. I’m not about to have my daughter (note the use of the singular possessive, essentially disowning Michael from parentage of Joey….Michael is in some deep shit here) go running off from home because you say, ‘It’s my way or the highway…”
“Now who is exaggerating? She would never run away from home, Maria…”
Now that was an incredibly dumb thing to say. But in fairness to Michael, he’s really kind of off his game. He has been having nightmares since getting back from Santa Fe of Andrew pressuring Michael’s little girl to do something she really isn’t ready to do. Oh, he knows intellectually that Andrew had his chance and took a beating to avoid doing that while she was intoxicated. He even knows intellectually that Joey IS ready to do it….or at least she’s certainly willing. And he even knows intellectually that were Andrew to try to push Joey into doing anything she really didn’t want to do….well, at best he’d probably wind up duct-taped to a fencepost out by the airport, watching tarantulas and rattlesnakes play.
But Michael is a father, Joey is his princess, and so Michael is in denial, and he’s been getting an uneasy two hours sleep a night for the last five days and really isn’t mentating at his best. But anyway, he’s saved by the bell….or at least the ringer on the telephone.
RINGGGG
Now if Maria weren’t…..well, extremely VEXED…with Michael, she’d let him answer the phone. The fact that she grabbed it indicates she wants to deal with the phone call as expeditiously as possible, …so she can get back to carving up Michael. Women think that way…..honest. But as she recognizes the voice, things change.
“Yes Barbara?”
“I see.”
“Well OK. I think that would be best.”
“Thank you so much. We’ll see you at 10AM then.”
“OK, Michael….now what were you saying?” I’d like to think that Michael wasn’t dumb enough to fall for this, because she’s obviously setting him up. But like I said, Michael is a little off his game right now…..
“I said she would never run away from home, Maria.”
“Well that’s great, Michael. Because that was Barbara Douglas. Joey showed up at their house in tears an hour ago to apologize to Andrew for your actions. She was then planning on going and staying at the Parker’s until she could think of what else to do. Barbara and Roger and Andrew calmed her down. The Douglas’s have invited her to stay in their guest room tonight, and they’ll bring her back home after breakfast….if they can keep her convinced that this is really her home.”
“Oh….”
Even tired and off his game, Michael correctly figured that it would be a good time to just shut up.
Last edited by greywolf on Tue Jan 22, 2008 4:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
0345 Andrew Douglas’ Room, the Douglas Residence Roswell, NM.
He’d felt her unhappiness, her unease, for the last hour, even without connecting. Andrew didn’t want to intrude in to her argument with her father, she could connect easily enough if she needed to talk with him.
He felt guilty of course, because he knew this was about him.
The last thing in the world he had wanted to do was come between Joey and her family…the people who had always meant so much to her. He hadn’t wanted this to happen, hadn’t wanted her to have to make a choice between them and him. He wanted to talk to her….to try to work something out, and he’d already planned on doing that in the morning. Now he just wished somehow he could make things better.
Even without the connection he could sense her moving. He wasn’t surprised when there was a click as his bedroom door knob turned and the door opened. She didn’t say anything…just crawled between the sheets, dressed in the pajama tops he had loaned her. He was wearing the matching bottoms.
She said nothing as she spooned in against him. He put his arm around her and pulled her in tighter, his nose smelling the scent of her hair. He could tell she was stifling a sob. This wasn’t a time for passion, just for comforting.
“It’ll be OK, Joey. It will all work out.”
“It’s OK now. As long as we are together, it’ll always be OK.”
Andrew held her until the early morning, when she woke up, gave him a gentle kiss, and retreated again to the guest room.
Joey actually was feeling immeasurably better. It was like being close to Andrew did indeed make everything right in her world. Oh, she wasn’t forgetting her father, and she wasn’t quite done being VEXED at him. But no matter how last night had ended, this morning had started off…..well, great, really.
Maybe it was time for the two of them to talk, really talk, about Andrew. He’d dodged it first, but afterwards she had kind of been dodging it. It wasn’t an easy talk to have, but she needed to be honest with him. It wasn’t that she loved him any less…..he would always be Dad, ….but Andrew was hers now too.
And she really didn’t want to have to choose between the two most important men in her life, she didn’t want to be hurt, and she didn’t want to hurt either of them, because she would always love them both.
But Dad had to understand…..she did love Andrew….not a puppy love, not a boyfriend-girlfriend love. A ‘he is my soulmate and I will someday carry his child’ man and woman sort of love, and while she would always love her Dad, he would likely be the one most hurt if he forced her to make a choice between them.
But this morning she awoke renewed by being held in his arms for three hours, and she was determined to try to make her father understand.
0815 The Valenti Residence, Roswell New Mexico.
It had taken Michael about a half-hour to get dressed and get to the Valenti house, once he’d gotten Jim’s phone call. It seemed like his missing daughter had neglected to tell him that there were three new members in the ‘I know an Alien’ club.
He had met Arturo Lopez a couple of times, ten or fifteen years previously.
But he was surprised that the judge’s membership stemmed as much from Maria getting him to babysit 15 years ago as it did anything Joey had done recently.
Judge Lopez was lavish in his praise for both Joey and Andrew, thanking Michael for the life of both his daughter and her fiancé. Somehow Joey hadn’t seen fit to mention that she’d saved someone’s life yesterday. Michael had kind of assumed that the reason they’d been late getting home was that they’d been romantically involved, to a degree he’d really rather not contemplate, and that had been one of the major reasons he was so….VEXED with her yesterday. Instead it appeared she was saving the life of a friend.
That’s about a 9 out of 10 on most fathers’ guilt-o-meters, and Michael was no exception.
He’d already been feeling that he’d come down a little hard on Joey…Maria had made her opinion of that perfectly clear, and he had wanted to try to patch things up at 10AM when the Douglas’s brought her back.
Maria was right of course. They were going to be losing her soon enough…..they sure didn’t need to drive her from her own home right now. They really did need that talk….if he could convince her to let him talk to her…..to open up to him.
When Judge Lopez said that Enriquez had proposed to Andrea after both had been saved from the flood, Michael had shaken his head.
“Yeah, Joey’s engaged too……they sprang that one on us, just as we were planning on breaking them up...or at least cooling them down, afraid they were getting too close. I’m not sure what you have to do to keep kids out of trouble these days.”
The Judge had looked at him curiously, then at Jim Valenti. Jim was slowly shaking his head.
“Michael, I may not be completely unbiased here….I owe Joey quite a lot after yesterday, but…do you have any idea whatsoever how good you have it….how good Rosa and I have it?”
“What do you mean?”
The Judge looked at Jim Valenti again. “It’s been a long time since I sat on juvenile court, or domestic court, but Jim here can tell you what it’s like out there. We both, you and I, have amazingly good kids. Why don’t you tell him what it’s like in the real world, Jim? You know.”
“Artie’s right, Michael. In her whole life I think this is the first time you and Joey have ever been at odds on anything.
You wouldn’t believe what you see out there in law enforcement. Kids get lost in drug and alcohol use, get in relationships that are amazingly destructive, act out criminally in every way from shoplifting to joy-riding and even murder these days.
The biggest dispute Joey ever had with anyone up until now has been with her mother, back when she was doing motocross and wanted the more powerful bike. And you were on her side, too, even though you weren’t brave enough to go up against Maria when she put her foot down.”
“You wouldn’t believe, Michael, the stuff that comes into court. The domestic disputes, the hatred that’s there sometimes. Worst of all are teenagers doing totally self-destructive things, just to assert their individuality from Mom and Dad.
I say prayers of thanks every night that nothing like that has happened with Andrea, and hope that it won’t happen with her younger brothers. I may not like every decision she makes, and you may not like every decision that Joey makes, but they are damn good kids, Michael.
Joey in particular has….incredible powers, and yet she has never made an issue of them, never used them inappropriately. I’m sure the temptation was always there, but she has apparently always made good decisions.”
“I know she’s not a bad kid….but they are just too young for this serious a relationship.”
“You ought to hear what Amy thought about you and Maria, when you were both in High School. It happens, Michael. It wasn’t Joey’s choice to have Andrew break his neck this year. It just happened, and you know what, Michael,…he’s been good for her.
She’s been too much of a loner all of her life, too isolated from people…and that got even worse when Mark went off to college. She has blossomed, Michael. She has friends…not just Andrew, but her teammates and their friends. That never happened before, Michael. I think sometimes you don’t realize how lonely she must have been.”
But as he thought of it, Michael did realize how lonely it could be. He remembered when he thought he’d never fit in….that nobody could ever really care for him. Sure Isabel and Max did, but they had to, they were family.
But he hadn’t really believed he could be cared for by a human….until that night that Maria had brought a cold wet and miserably lonely Michael into her window. They had both told Amy that nothing happened when she caught them in bed together…that they were just sleeping. Amy still probably didn’t believe them. But that was the day….the turning point. After that day, Michael Guerin really did start to believe he must be OK…because someone loved him for him…not for where he came from.
‘She’s an awful lot like her father,’ Maria had told him...and she was right. Michael wondered which bed at the Douglas’s she’d spent the night in…….and if she’d just slept. And then he wondered if he really wanted to know.
“Judge, Jim, I know you are both trying to help, and thanks for that. But Joey and I will work it out. It’ll be OK….somehow. I know they are good kids….both Joey and Andrew. I think we just need to have a father-daughter talk….kind of a heart-to-heart, I guess. But thanks for talking to me.....for caring.”
Michael went back to start the announcements to the alien community….three more members of the IKAA club. But his mind really was on what he wanted to say to his daughter…….
He’d felt her unhappiness, her unease, for the last hour, even without connecting. Andrew didn’t want to intrude in to her argument with her father, she could connect easily enough if she needed to talk with him.
He felt guilty of course, because he knew this was about him.
The last thing in the world he had wanted to do was come between Joey and her family…the people who had always meant so much to her. He hadn’t wanted this to happen, hadn’t wanted her to have to make a choice between them and him. He wanted to talk to her….to try to work something out, and he’d already planned on doing that in the morning. Now he just wished somehow he could make things better.
Even without the connection he could sense her moving. He wasn’t surprised when there was a click as his bedroom door knob turned and the door opened. She didn’t say anything…just crawled between the sheets, dressed in the pajama tops he had loaned her. He was wearing the matching bottoms.
She said nothing as she spooned in against him. He put his arm around her and pulled her in tighter, his nose smelling the scent of her hair. He could tell she was stifling a sob. This wasn’t a time for passion, just for comforting.
“It’ll be OK, Joey. It will all work out.”
“It’s OK now. As long as we are together, it’ll always be OK.”
Andrew held her until the early morning, when she woke up, gave him a gentle kiss, and retreated again to the guest room.
Joey actually was feeling immeasurably better. It was like being close to Andrew did indeed make everything right in her world. Oh, she wasn’t forgetting her father, and she wasn’t quite done being VEXED at him. But no matter how last night had ended, this morning had started off…..well, great, really.
Maybe it was time for the two of them to talk, really talk, about Andrew. He’d dodged it first, but afterwards she had kind of been dodging it. It wasn’t an easy talk to have, but she needed to be honest with him. It wasn’t that she loved him any less…..he would always be Dad, ….but Andrew was hers now too.
And she really didn’t want to have to choose between the two most important men in her life, she didn’t want to be hurt, and she didn’t want to hurt either of them, because she would always love them both.
But Dad had to understand…..she did love Andrew….not a puppy love, not a boyfriend-girlfriend love. A ‘he is my soulmate and I will someday carry his child’ man and woman sort of love, and while she would always love her Dad, he would likely be the one most hurt if he forced her to make a choice between them.
But this morning she awoke renewed by being held in his arms for three hours, and she was determined to try to make her father understand.
0815 The Valenti Residence, Roswell New Mexico.
It had taken Michael about a half-hour to get dressed and get to the Valenti house, once he’d gotten Jim’s phone call. It seemed like his missing daughter had neglected to tell him that there were three new members in the ‘I know an Alien’ club.
He had met Arturo Lopez a couple of times, ten or fifteen years previously.
But he was surprised that the judge’s membership stemmed as much from Maria getting him to babysit 15 years ago as it did anything Joey had done recently.
Judge Lopez was lavish in his praise for both Joey and Andrew, thanking Michael for the life of both his daughter and her fiancé. Somehow Joey hadn’t seen fit to mention that she’d saved someone’s life yesterday. Michael had kind of assumed that the reason they’d been late getting home was that they’d been romantically involved, to a degree he’d really rather not contemplate, and that had been one of the major reasons he was so….VEXED with her yesterday. Instead it appeared she was saving the life of a friend.
That’s about a 9 out of 10 on most fathers’ guilt-o-meters, and Michael was no exception.
He’d already been feeling that he’d come down a little hard on Joey…Maria had made her opinion of that perfectly clear, and he had wanted to try to patch things up at 10AM when the Douglas’s brought her back.
Maria was right of course. They were going to be losing her soon enough…..they sure didn’t need to drive her from her own home right now. They really did need that talk….if he could convince her to let him talk to her…..to open up to him.
When Judge Lopez said that Enriquez had proposed to Andrea after both had been saved from the flood, Michael had shaken his head.
“Yeah, Joey’s engaged too……they sprang that one on us, just as we were planning on breaking them up...or at least cooling them down, afraid they were getting too close. I’m not sure what you have to do to keep kids out of trouble these days.”
The Judge had looked at him curiously, then at Jim Valenti. Jim was slowly shaking his head.
“Michael, I may not be completely unbiased here….I owe Joey quite a lot after yesterday, but…do you have any idea whatsoever how good you have it….how good Rosa and I have it?”
“What do you mean?”
The Judge looked at Jim Valenti again. “It’s been a long time since I sat on juvenile court, or domestic court, but Jim here can tell you what it’s like out there. We both, you and I, have amazingly good kids. Why don’t you tell him what it’s like in the real world, Jim? You know.”
“Artie’s right, Michael. In her whole life I think this is the first time you and Joey have ever been at odds on anything.
You wouldn’t believe what you see out there in law enforcement. Kids get lost in drug and alcohol use, get in relationships that are amazingly destructive, act out criminally in every way from shoplifting to joy-riding and even murder these days.
The biggest dispute Joey ever had with anyone up until now has been with her mother, back when she was doing motocross and wanted the more powerful bike. And you were on her side, too, even though you weren’t brave enough to go up against Maria when she put her foot down.”
“You wouldn’t believe, Michael, the stuff that comes into court. The domestic disputes, the hatred that’s there sometimes. Worst of all are teenagers doing totally self-destructive things, just to assert their individuality from Mom and Dad.
I say prayers of thanks every night that nothing like that has happened with Andrea, and hope that it won’t happen with her younger brothers. I may not like every decision she makes, and you may not like every decision that Joey makes, but they are damn good kids, Michael.
Joey in particular has….incredible powers, and yet she has never made an issue of them, never used them inappropriately. I’m sure the temptation was always there, but she has apparently always made good decisions.”
“I know she’s not a bad kid….but they are just too young for this serious a relationship.”
“You ought to hear what Amy thought about you and Maria, when you were both in High School. It happens, Michael. It wasn’t Joey’s choice to have Andrew break his neck this year. It just happened, and you know what, Michael,…he’s been good for her.
She’s been too much of a loner all of her life, too isolated from people…and that got even worse when Mark went off to college. She has blossomed, Michael. She has friends…not just Andrew, but her teammates and their friends. That never happened before, Michael. I think sometimes you don’t realize how lonely she must have been.”
But as he thought of it, Michael did realize how lonely it could be. He remembered when he thought he’d never fit in….that nobody could ever really care for him. Sure Isabel and Max did, but they had to, they were family.
But he hadn’t really believed he could be cared for by a human….until that night that Maria had brought a cold wet and miserably lonely Michael into her window. They had both told Amy that nothing happened when she caught them in bed together…that they were just sleeping. Amy still probably didn’t believe them. But that was the day….the turning point. After that day, Michael Guerin really did start to believe he must be OK…because someone loved him for him…not for where he came from.
‘She’s an awful lot like her father,’ Maria had told him...and she was right. Michael wondered which bed at the Douglas’s she’d spent the night in…….and if she’d just slept. And then he wondered if he really wanted to know.
“Judge, Jim, I know you are both trying to help, and thanks for that. But Joey and I will work it out. It’ll be OK….somehow. I know they are good kids….both Joey and Andrew. I think we just need to have a father-daughter talk….kind of a heart-to-heart, I guess. But thanks for talking to me.....for caring.”
Michael went back to start the announcements to the alien community….three more members of the IKAA club. But his mind really was on what he wanted to say to his daughter…….
10:03AM The Guerin Residence, Roswell NM
Michael had been dusting and polishing the dirtbike for 15 minutes. He wasn’t really sure when the last time he’d rode it had been, certainly months…maybe even a couple years. The last time it had been ridden, Joey had ‘borrowed it’ to assist in her abduction of Andrew he remembered. So much had changed since that day, much of it he had to admit, for the better. He wished he could somehow make this all Andrew’s fault, that he could somehow dislike the young man, but there really wasn’t a great deal about the young man that one could fault…..other than that he’d stolen Joey’s heart.
He saw the Douglas car drive down the street and watched it pull to the curb beside the front yard. Andrew got out first from the backseat, then took Joey’s hand. Michael noticed that she looked at him…..warily, her eyes trying to decipher the feelings lurking behind his. As he led her forward Andrew was watching her…keeping his body slightly between them, protectively. She seemed to gather courage from his presence.
‘When did I become the enemy?’ Michael wondered. For somewhere along the line, it had certainly happened. And how had that happened? He knew it had, knew it with total clarity when he’d opened the hotel door in Santa Fe, when he’d seen Joey’s eyes, and seen her cuddle back against Andrew then, appearing to draw courage from Andrew at that time too. ‘I can’t go on like this,’ Michael thought. ‘I can live with the fact that I’m not the most important man in your life anymore, Joey,’ Michael thought. ‘I can even live with you making choices that aren’t the ones I wish you would make,……..but I can’t live with you being afraid of me….with you hating me.’
“Good morning Andrew…..Joey.”
“Good morning, Mr. Guerin.”
“Hi, Daddy.”
Michael could somehow tell when the connection formed between them…not what they were thinking really, but that he was reassuring her…telling her it would be OK….that he would be back soon.
“Uh, Joey….I’ll see you at 2PM. We have that meeting with Jan Pemberton about work at 3.”
“OK, Drew.”
Michael was pretty sure those last two conversations were entirely for his benefit, that all of that and more had already passed through the connection. The quick kiss on the cheek she gave him and the quick hug he gave her seemed genuine enough though.
How did it get to the point that his own daughter had to steel herself to be with him…to talk to him. It couldn’t go on this way…it would break his heart if it did, maybe it already had.
“It has been years since we rode on this bike together. I thought maybe we might go for a ride this morning. I got out your riding leathers.”
“I think I might like that, Daddy.”
It took only a few minutes before she was on the bike behind him and shortly they were speeding through the desert, moving quickly toward the low hills to the north. Michael remembered doing this…..she’d been younger then, and had ridden in front of him. Maria hadn’t really approved, even when he’d gotten her the full face helmet and little set of riding leathers. Maria would have been just as happy if Joey had lost interest in the dirtbike, like her brother had. Instead she had loved it, swiped her brothers seldom used bike and discovered junior motocross.
‘She’s like you, Michael,’ Maria had said. ‘Too much like you,’ she’d meant. And in many ways that was true….especially the brooding loner part. And maybe that’s why the conflict was more with him than it was with Maria.
While Maria may not approve of what she intended either, maybe it was just more of an issue for Michael because he and Joey had always thought so much alike, shared the same thoughts…the same values. How had it all changed so quickly…?
It was almost twenty minutes before they came to the rise off to the side of the old dirt road, just a few miles from the pod chamber. The place had a beautiful view of the desert, he remembered. He hadn’t been there in years.
She got off and sat on the rock that was almost like a bench, looking out at the beauty of the scene. He sat beside her, neither one really wanting to look the other one in the eye, both somewhat afraid of what they might see there. ‘How had it gotten like this,’ Michael wondered. ‘Somehow I have to fix this.’
“I hadn’t slept much before Andrew’s mother called your mom. I don’t think I slept at all, afterwards.”
“I should have told you I was going….I’m sorry. But I just couldn’t bring myself to argue with you any more. I needed to get away….needed to think….and to decide.”
“You know, I don’t think you and I ever had any disagreements until recently….at least not since you were two and powerblasted the cookie jar.”
Joey smiled and shook her head. “That really wasn’t my fault. My seven year-old brother told me to do that….so I did.”
“I know. Mark admitted that to me…when he was twelve. Of course, by then the statute of limitations was kind of up….”
“But more recently..?”
“Well, since Andrew…no, don’t look at me like that, I’m not blaming anything on Andrew, but since Andrew you and I seem to have had more….issues. Would you really have powerblasted me over that engagement ring..? Right there in the kitchen?”
Joey gave him her junior version of the “Maria-look,” then smiled. “Probably….”
“That’s kind of what I thought. So….how did you sleep last night.”
When he saw her eyes meet his he was momentarily alarmed. It had been an innocent question, and her eyes seemed to burn into his as she answered.
“It was a pretty miserable night for the first few hours, knowing that we were both angry at each other. I don’t think I’d ever been that lonely, Dad. Then I crawled into bed with Andrew and he held me. We didn’t do anything else, just cuddled. And somehow that made everything alright, made it so I wasn’t so terribly lonely anymore.”
“I doubt I ever told you the story but I felt like that most of the time I was in high school. One night I was miserable, sure that I’d never fit in….I walked out in a rainstorm….your mom pulled me in her bedroom window, just cuddled me until morning. Your Grandma found us curled up together, asleep in bed….I don’t think to this day she believes we just cuddled. Sometimes you just need that, I guess.”
“I do need that, Daddy. And some day….some night….that’s not going to be enough. The connection will form and I’ll feel his need…or he’ll feel mine….and things will spiral out of control. And you know the funny thing, Dad. Even now, even when he’s not here… I don’t know that I want to ‘control’ how I feel about him.”
Michael put his arm around Joey and pulled her close, and her head found his shoulder as she continued tearfully, “I think I controlled how I felt about him for years…first denied how I felt, then told myself he could never love a freak like me. And even after I connected with him in the pod chamber….even after I knew he had loved me for years….even then I thought he’d reject me once he understood what I really was. But do you know what happened, Daddy?”
“Tell me what happened, Joey….”
“It was like he connected with me, Daddy. Like he forced open his mind so I couldn’t help but see…….see that everything I’d been afraid of…..about me being different…..it didn’t matter to him at all. He had loved me before he knew what I was, and he still loved me. And I’ve never known such closeness….not with anyone. I can tell if he’s within a block….connect with him from across the room. And there really is hardly a dream I don’t share with him, Daddy.
I know you don’t approve….you think we’re too young, that it’s too early,…..but it’s like I’ve been in love with him since the third grade and never really believed it could ever happen. It has, and I can’t stay away from him, I can’t be without that closeness….and I can’t promise it won’t go farther than it did last night.”
“I’m not asking for any promises, Joey. I was upset last night, upset with you…and I took it out on Andrew. That was rude and I need to apologize to him….and to you. I haven’t changed how I think…you are too young, this is way too early for the two of you,…but in the end it’s a decision that only the two of you can make.
What I want you to know is this…..no matter what decision you make….you are still my daughter….your Mom and I will still love you,…and you…..and those that you love….will always be welcome, always be a part of our home. No matter how old you are, or what decisions you make, we are a family…and families still love one another, even if we sometimes disagree.”
“I’m sorry, Daddy. I never meant for this to hurt you.”
“There are going to be bumps in the road sometimes, Joey, even when you love someone. Your grandpa and Judge Lopez spent the morning reminding me of just how lucky I have been with my family, and they are right. You’ve given me a lot of joy for a lot of years…we’ll get through this as well. But I can’t let this drive us apart. I love you too much for that.”
“I love you too, Daddy…”
Michael had been dusting and polishing the dirtbike for 15 minutes. He wasn’t really sure when the last time he’d rode it had been, certainly months…maybe even a couple years. The last time it had been ridden, Joey had ‘borrowed it’ to assist in her abduction of Andrew he remembered. So much had changed since that day, much of it he had to admit, for the better. He wished he could somehow make this all Andrew’s fault, that he could somehow dislike the young man, but there really wasn’t a great deal about the young man that one could fault…..other than that he’d stolen Joey’s heart.
He saw the Douglas car drive down the street and watched it pull to the curb beside the front yard. Andrew got out first from the backseat, then took Joey’s hand. Michael noticed that she looked at him…..warily, her eyes trying to decipher the feelings lurking behind his. As he led her forward Andrew was watching her…keeping his body slightly between them, protectively. She seemed to gather courage from his presence.
‘When did I become the enemy?’ Michael wondered. For somewhere along the line, it had certainly happened. And how had that happened? He knew it had, knew it with total clarity when he’d opened the hotel door in Santa Fe, when he’d seen Joey’s eyes, and seen her cuddle back against Andrew then, appearing to draw courage from Andrew at that time too. ‘I can’t go on like this,’ Michael thought. ‘I can live with the fact that I’m not the most important man in your life anymore, Joey,’ Michael thought. ‘I can even live with you making choices that aren’t the ones I wish you would make,……..but I can’t live with you being afraid of me….with you hating me.’
“Good morning Andrew…..Joey.”
“Good morning, Mr. Guerin.”
“Hi, Daddy.”
Michael could somehow tell when the connection formed between them…not what they were thinking really, but that he was reassuring her…telling her it would be OK….that he would be back soon.
“Uh, Joey….I’ll see you at 2PM. We have that meeting with Jan Pemberton about work at 3.”
“OK, Drew.”
Michael was pretty sure those last two conversations were entirely for his benefit, that all of that and more had already passed through the connection. The quick kiss on the cheek she gave him and the quick hug he gave her seemed genuine enough though.
How did it get to the point that his own daughter had to steel herself to be with him…to talk to him. It couldn’t go on this way…it would break his heart if it did, maybe it already had.
“It has been years since we rode on this bike together. I thought maybe we might go for a ride this morning. I got out your riding leathers.”
“I think I might like that, Daddy.”
It took only a few minutes before she was on the bike behind him and shortly they were speeding through the desert, moving quickly toward the low hills to the north. Michael remembered doing this…..she’d been younger then, and had ridden in front of him. Maria hadn’t really approved, even when he’d gotten her the full face helmet and little set of riding leathers. Maria would have been just as happy if Joey had lost interest in the dirtbike, like her brother had. Instead she had loved it, swiped her brothers seldom used bike and discovered junior motocross.
‘She’s like you, Michael,’ Maria had said. ‘Too much like you,’ she’d meant. And in many ways that was true….especially the brooding loner part. And maybe that’s why the conflict was more with him than it was with Maria.
While Maria may not approve of what she intended either, maybe it was just more of an issue for Michael because he and Joey had always thought so much alike, shared the same thoughts…the same values. How had it all changed so quickly…?
It was almost twenty minutes before they came to the rise off to the side of the old dirt road, just a few miles from the pod chamber. The place had a beautiful view of the desert, he remembered. He hadn’t been there in years.
She got off and sat on the rock that was almost like a bench, looking out at the beauty of the scene. He sat beside her, neither one really wanting to look the other one in the eye, both somewhat afraid of what they might see there. ‘How had it gotten like this,’ Michael wondered. ‘Somehow I have to fix this.’
“I hadn’t slept much before Andrew’s mother called your mom. I don’t think I slept at all, afterwards.”
“I should have told you I was going….I’m sorry. But I just couldn’t bring myself to argue with you any more. I needed to get away….needed to think….and to decide.”
“You know, I don’t think you and I ever had any disagreements until recently….at least not since you were two and powerblasted the cookie jar.”
Joey smiled and shook her head. “That really wasn’t my fault. My seven year-old brother told me to do that….so I did.”
“I know. Mark admitted that to me…when he was twelve. Of course, by then the statute of limitations was kind of up….”
“But more recently..?”
“Well, since Andrew…no, don’t look at me like that, I’m not blaming anything on Andrew, but since Andrew you and I seem to have had more….issues. Would you really have powerblasted me over that engagement ring..? Right there in the kitchen?”
Joey gave him her junior version of the “Maria-look,” then smiled. “Probably….”
“That’s kind of what I thought. So….how did you sleep last night.”
When he saw her eyes meet his he was momentarily alarmed. It had been an innocent question, and her eyes seemed to burn into his as she answered.
“It was a pretty miserable night for the first few hours, knowing that we were both angry at each other. I don’t think I’d ever been that lonely, Dad. Then I crawled into bed with Andrew and he held me. We didn’t do anything else, just cuddled. And somehow that made everything alright, made it so I wasn’t so terribly lonely anymore.”
“I doubt I ever told you the story but I felt like that most of the time I was in high school. One night I was miserable, sure that I’d never fit in….I walked out in a rainstorm….your mom pulled me in her bedroom window, just cuddled me until morning. Your Grandma found us curled up together, asleep in bed….I don’t think to this day she believes we just cuddled. Sometimes you just need that, I guess.”
“I do need that, Daddy. And some day….some night….that’s not going to be enough. The connection will form and I’ll feel his need…or he’ll feel mine….and things will spiral out of control. And you know the funny thing, Dad. Even now, even when he’s not here… I don’t know that I want to ‘control’ how I feel about him.”
Michael put his arm around Joey and pulled her close, and her head found his shoulder as she continued tearfully, “I think I controlled how I felt about him for years…first denied how I felt, then told myself he could never love a freak like me. And even after I connected with him in the pod chamber….even after I knew he had loved me for years….even then I thought he’d reject me once he understood what I really was. But do you know what happened, Daddy?”
“Tell me what happened, Joey….”
“It was like he connected with me, Daddy. Like he forced open his mind so I couldn’t help but see…….see that everything I’d been afraid of…..about me being different…..it didn’t matter to him at all. He had loved me before he knew what I was, and he still loved me. And I’ve never known such closeness….not with anyone. I can tell if he’s within a block….connect with him from across the room. And there really is hardly a dream I don’t share with him, Daddy.
I know you don’t approve….you think we’re too young, that it’s too early,…..but it’s like I’ve been in love with him since the third grade and never really believed it could ever happen. It has, and I can’t stay away from him, I can’t be without that closeness….and I can’t promise it won’t go farther than it did last night.”
“I’m not asking for any promises, Joey. I was upset last night, upset with you…and I took it out on Andrew. That was rude and I need to apologize to him….and to you. I haven’t changed how I think…you are too young, this is way too early for the two of you,…but in the end it’s a decision that only the two of you can make.
What I want you to know is this…..no matter what decision you make….you are still my daughter….your Mom and I will still love you,…and you…..and those that you love….will always be welcome, always be a part of our home. No matter how old you are, or what decisions you make, we are a family…and families still love one another, even if we sometimes disagree.”
“I’m sorry, Daddy. I never meant for this to hurt you.”
“There are going to be bumps in the road sometimes, Joey, even when you love someone. Your grandpa and Judge Lopez spent the morning reminding me of just how lucky I have been with my family, and they are right. You’ve given me a lot of joy for a lot of years…we’ll get through this as well. But I can’t let this drive us apart. I love you too much for that.”
“I love you too, Daddy…”
Last edited by greywolf on Thu Aug 23, 2007 4:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.