I felt my womb contract and bit back my suggestion that Chace, as he’d be buying since he wouldn’t let me, should hit the ATM prior to us going out.

Instead, I got up on my toes, touched my mouth to his and moved away while asking, “Dinner first?”

“Yep,” Chace answered. “What’re we having?”

I opened the door of the fridge and pulled out the packet of hamburger, replying, “Packet tacos.”

“Works for me,” he muttered.

I set to work while Chace got me a glass of wine. Then I kept working while Chace sat on my counter and I took sips of wine and I told him my other good news.

“Library Board called. I have a meeting with them next week. The Town Council has allocated more funding to the library and they’ve told me when we get it we’ll get new computers and they’re giving me a ten percent salary adjustment.”

“Not on par with Lexie and Ty havin’ a healthy baby girl but still, good news, honey,” Chace commented, I looked to him and gave him a big smile since he was also smiling at me then I turned my attention back to the taco meat.

“Faye,” he called when the meat was browned and I’d added the water and seasoning.

I looked back to him. “Yeah?”

“Turn it down,” he ordered and I dipped my ear to my shoulder.

“What?”

“Come here.” He kept ordering and my head straightened.

“We’re close. I just have to slice the lettuce and tomato,” I told him.

“In a minute, turn it down, we got a problem.”

Oh jeez.

I didn’t like this.

We hadn’t had a problem in a while.

It was Saturday, three weeks and then some since we’d met Becky.

Miah and Becky were back in Wyoming and, from daily reports, they were settling in, doing fine, seeing a local counselor and bonding with their grandparents as well as their aunts, uncles and cousins. They were living with their Mom’s parents with their Dad’s visiting daily. In fact, they had dinner together every night.

This meant the kids were surrounded all the time by people who loved them and showed it.

Good stuff.

Miah was still reading and doing a lot of it and I knew this because he called at least once a week to tell me what he read, what he thought about it, what he was planning on reading next and asking my thoughts on what he should add to his list to be read. He was still also playing his video games and I knew this because he called Chace at least once a week to talk to him about the games, his scores and other boy to man stuff.

At first it was weird getting used to a communicative Miah. But since he pulled his thumb out of the dam, there was a lot to flood through. It was like there was never a time when he didn’t speak. He could gab for half an hour nonstop and if he was really excited about something, that shone through.

He seemed to be really excited about a lot of things and that way regularly.

Great stuff.

I missed him. Mom and Dad missed him. Chace missed him. But it was clear he was flourishing. So that helped us to be able to cope with missing him.

Anyway, we were all planning on taking a week’s vacation to drive up there and spend some time with them. This was my idea and I wasn’t certain how Chace would feel, our first vacation together, spending it with my parents, a couple of kids and four people we didn’t know very well.

Chace thought it was great idea with one caveat.

“We get a hotel room, baby, in a hotel where you’re parents aren’t staying.”

Apparently, there would be other activities during our vacation.

Hotel room sex with Chace. Another something new.

Another something to look forward to.

More good that had happened was that Mary Eglund had slunk away, resigning from the City Council after her sister’s felonious activities had become public knowledge and, already disliked, she was now reviled. This was because she, one of the only people to have contact with Enid Eglund, didn’t see her sister’s insanity and do something about it or find she was abusing two kids whose mother her sister murdered. But instead she spent her time being annoying and telling people how to live their lives when she should have been taking care of family business.

Rumor had it her house was on the market.

She wouldn’t be much of a loss to the community.

Her sister, on the other hand, was currently enjoying her stay in a hospital for the criminally insane somewhere in Wyoming. I didn’t like this, Chace didn’t either. What she did to those kids, I felt, deserved worse punishment.

But there was no denying she was seriously, fraking ‘round the bend. She’d been deemed unfit to stand trial and pretty much fit for nothing but loads of meds and incarceration amongst a bunch of other folks who were as tripped out as she was.

I didn’t like it but I didn’t dwell. She was locked away, perhaps not the way I’d prefer but she was still locked away and no longer a threat to anyone.

So there it was.

Onward from the slightly bad was further good.

Valerie had spent the weekend before visiting and except for a couple of times where she got nervous and fidgety, these being when she first met my parents when they came over to Chace’s for dinner, it had been a really good weekend.

I liked her. She was cute and funny and, with Chace now far more relaxed with her, the visit had gone well. Except she brought me a pair of earrings, pearls surrounded by diamonds, their expense so obvious it kinda flipped me out but Chace told me to roll with it and, with no other choice, I did. I wore them all weekend even though they were way fancier than my outfits but she seemed delighted I did so it was worth the fashion faux pas.

Trane had not been invited nor did he show. Valerie didn’t mention him. Chace and I didn’t either. I sensed an underlying sadness in Valerie that this was the case but I also saw her determination to enjoy Chace how she could take him so I did what I could to facilitate that.

I felt something lovely seep into me because I could see she saw Chace was happy, more relaxed, a part of my family and I sensed she liked that immensely. So although there was sadness, there was also ease.

Life was good. It had settled into normal. No dramas. No “dark”. No nothing but work, food, family, sex, TV, books… life.

I didn’t want a problem. We’d had enough problems.

I was enjoying good. Like, a frak of a lot.

So I didn’t want bad.

But even so, I turned the burner down on the meat and moved to Chace though I did this on leaded feet. He spread his legs when I got close and I took that as my cue to move between them. When I did, I rested my hands on his thighs and he lifted one to shift my hair over my shoulder as the fingers of his other hand curled around the top of my hip. After he slid my hair away, he wrapped his fingers around the side of my neck, his thumb gliding over my jaw.