Mel
Friday, October 16th, 2014
Gatlinburg, Tennessee
I cut a bite out of the stack of pancakes with fruit topping and popped it in my mouth. The zing of the cherries sent a shiver down my spine. Dana watched me, amusement lighting her eyes.
“Usually I’m the one clamoring for the next meal. It’s funny to watch you get so into your food.”
“These are amazing. You should try them.”
“No thanks. I felt like having an omelet today.”
“Omelet at a pancake house, that’s...that’s,” I searched for the word, “blasphemy! That’s what that is.” We both laughed. “Seriously though, I’m really going to miss this...all of this. Just you and me, the mountains, doing what we want, eating what we want...no work...”
“Mel, you have more than a hundred grand socked away and, with my settlement I have a million plus and a lifetime pension. We don’t ever have to go back to work if we don’t want to.”
I chuckled and then reminded her, “You had a million plus. You let your mother have free rein with your bank card, remember?”
Dana rolled her eyes. “I know but she promised to stick to working on the house and, I’ll deny I ever said this, but I trust her. She’ll do right by us.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it for a minute.”
“Back to my original statement; work? No work?”
“Baby, I love what I do and I just stood for election. I have a chance to make some real changes to the way policing is handled in Muskingum County. I at least want to see one term through.”
“Okay, fair enough.”
“Is it though?”
“Is it what?”
“Fair? I want to be fair to you too, to us as a couple too.”
“I’ll be honest; I’ve thought a lot about what I want to do next over the past couple of months and, believe it or not, even this week, down here, away from everything else. And, well, I don’t think I want to go back into law enforcement or security. In fact, I know I don’t.”
“What do you want to do?”
“First off, I’d like to do more of this...just getting away, relaxing, recharging. I was thinking maybe we could look into buying a little place near a lake in Ohio or even...even a cabin down here in the mountains or along Douglas Lake that we could maybe get away to once in a while.”
I grinned. “Baby, I’m all for either one of those. I love it down here and my immediate gut feeling is to get a place around here but, on the other hand, I also have to consider how much we can be here given the distance. We might make it down for a few long weekends a year these next four years, if we’re lucky. Maybe somewhere in Ohio would be better...not so far so we could get there more often, huh?”
“Mel, I’d be okay with a few times a year for just a couple of days or we could even fly into Knoxville once in a while, cut the trip down to just a couple of hours of flying and driving. We’ll figure it out. There’s time for that. I have our first house to finish first.”
“Yeah, but something tells me your mom isn’t leaving you a lot to do. Either way, setting up housekeeping in a couple of places isn’t going to keep you busy forever. What else did you have in mind?”
Dana’s eyes shone. “I’d like to write a little...I’ve always wanted to do that. I have a lot of ideas for stories; I’ve been jotting them down for weeks and...well, beyond that, I don’t know.”
“Write, as in writing books and stuff?” She nodded. “I had no idea you wanted to do that but I think it’s great.” I smiled as my mind whirled, “We could set you up a nice little writer’s retreat out on the back of the lot where you could be away from all the hubbub of my crazy family and just write your little heart out.”
“Or, since I’m only talking about a part time writing venture here, we could share the office we already have in the house that you’ll hardly ever use...”
“True,” I told her, “but my piebald mount stays.”
“Deal!”
I smiled. “I love you Dana.”
“I love you too.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket as we were combing through the little gift shop in the restaurant after breakfast. I glanced at the text from Beth and then showed it to Dana:
Beth: Grandma said to let you know that Terry’s funeral is Saturday at 2:00.
Me: Okay. Thanks kiddo. Now put your phone away before you get caught!
I grinned at Dana, “They’re not supposed to use them in school except at lunch time.”
“Do you want to head back today so we can go to the funeral?”
“I don’t want to short change our honeymoon Dana. Who knows when we’ll get to get away again? It may be a while.”
“It’s okay; really. We can come down here again, just like we talked about. Right now, you should be there and I’m on pins and needles to see what my mother’s been up to myself. And, if we go back, you can kind of get a little jump on Monday too so you’re not so stressed.”
“I do sort of want to poke around the whole Patricia Dunkirk/Terry Ford thing and see if there’s anything to it – anything at all between them – and I need to follow up on the Harper investigation. My guys insisted they wouldn’t call me on my honeymoon and they haven’t so I don’t have a clue what’s going on with that. It would be real nice not to be blindsided by everything on Monday.”
“There you go then. Let’s go get packed up.”