My mind wandered to the locked glove compartment of my car in which sat, wrapped in a brown paper bag sandwiched between a stack of receipts and a leather binder, Amber’s cell phone. I had decided to keep it as a sort of memento though I knew that it was a risky thing to do; but her cell phone reminded me of the good times that we had shared during that year when we petted long distance and Amber was both loving and playful. I wanted to remember her that way before I came to know her face and the familiar touch of her soft tanned flesh and the cold-hearted alien that sometimes lived within that disguise. Amber had childishly adorned her flip-phone with little stickers of tiny red hearts around the outside edge of the face and it made me think about her innocent side; the side that had been so Beautiful before her father had molested her innocence away from her and before she had turned into a sexual deviant herself as so often happens to the victims of pedophiles. During our intimate conversations I often sensed that unsullied side of her personality when we played on the phone. It made her devious behavior seem more erotic, as though I were spoiling her wholesome purity; her virginity. It was as if I were a pedophile myself and I was enticing the child in her, as with a stick of licorice or a sweet-tart, to part her fleshy legs and offer up to me her tender prize.

In any event I couldn’t bring myself to part with Amber’s phone so one day when Melanie was out shopping at the grocery store I took a thin scrap of plywood from her garage and I crafted a false shelf underneath of my bottom bureau drawer (which could only be detected if the drawer were completely removed) and I hid the cell phone there, still wrapped in the brown paper bag. I knew that if

Melanie found out that I had Amber’s cell phone that she would think that I had killed her. I knew that if she found it she would not be able to trust me so I hid it where she would never find it.

During the wet spring days that followed Amber’s funeral, through incessant days of constant coolness and steady showers of unrelenting rain that seemed as though they would never end, Melanie and I settled into a routine of sorts. She rose with me early each morning and made my coffee and breakfast while I showered and dressed for work. After I had left she would summon Sarah (I know this because Sarah told me so) into our bed and she would cuddle her as if she were her mother until Sarah crept from her groggy state of slumber to a blissful wakefulness. Then the two of them would bathe in sweet smelling powders and dry and dress while playfully giggling and teasing one another, as though they were sisters. Melanie spent her days educating and entertaining Sarah; playing games and reading and teaching her how to cook. At night I would come home exhausted from my grueling day of work and we would sit down together as a family and eat whatever delicious concoctions the two of them had created. Afterwards we would watch television together or we would play soft jazz music and read by a warm fire while we nestled on the sofa. I would inevitably fall asleep sandwiched between Melanie and Sarah, and Melanie would wake me when she was ready for bed and we would all retire for the evening.

After nightfall during the week, in the bedroom, the door always bolted, Melanie would often make love to me while I lay upon the bed too tired to take the lead. She was passionate and tender and incredibly thoughtful and I just laid back and effortlessly enjoyed the dreamlike ecstasy that she so generously gifted to me through the haze of endorphins that leaked into my tired head and carried me off to sleep with a feeling of joy and contentment. I often woke up with her soft lithe body resting on my chest and me still buried inside of her and she would sense my arousal and entreat me again to engage her passively in the midst of my delirious state; and that lovemaking was the most pleasurable of all as it mixed with the fantasy of my dreams and gently returned me to my sleepy state upon conclusion.

On Saturday and Sunday mornings I would sometimes try to repay Melanie’s benevolence by gently waking her up in a mutually delightful way as she quivered to wakefulness (although, in truth, she would often clump me on the head and complain that she had to pee!) Once I even tested Amber’s sentiment that Melanie could endure endless hours of oral provocation and Melanie came for me six times before my jaw grew so tired that it tingled from the loss of sensation. Her seemingly boundless bliss gave me greater pleasure than the intimate passion that she gave me in reciprocation. As lovers in love we were as made for one another as Catherine and I had been.

On the weekends we wouldn’t roll out of bed until Sarah came knocking and then I would quickly slip into my pajamas and Sarah would squeeze between us and we were as the planets to the sun; in harmony with our universe. On the weekends, too, as the weather broke and summer approached, we took long drives into the country for picnics or we would drive to county fairs or to carnivals. Once we even purchased some fishing rods and reels from a flee market and we went fishing on a small rowboat on a private lake just over the Texas boarder. None of us had ever fished before and the result was as entertaining as it was disastrous. When Sarah caught the first fish I helped her to reel it in and when I pulled the large white fish into the boat it flopped around while Sarah and Melanie screamed and rocked the boat so much that I fell into the lake.

Sometimes we would take little road- trips to video stores and the book stores and we would hunt for old movies or entertaining fiction novels. We would eat in homey little family style diners that catered to the miniscule budget that we were bound to. We shopped at the goodwill store for clothing to replenish

Sarah’s abandoned wardrobe and to alter and enhance Melanie’s attire and as they shopped and tried on dresses and shoes they acted as though they were in Macy’s instead of second hand stores. Sarah and Melanie were like a mother to a daughter and why not; Melanie was about as blood related to Sarah as I was. But we were both as much in love with our little sociopath as we were with each other.

I cannot recall a more contented time in my life. All of the misery that had come crashing into our lives over the previous year, like a flaming meteor shower to the supple body of the earth, seemed a distant memory as the dust settled around us instead of on top of us. I had all but pushed out of my mind the fact that I was a fugitive. We were, all of us, happy.

* * *

It was nearing the end of a wonderful summer and Sarah and I had lived in Kansas for almost two years. Tony and I had finished installing a new breaker panel and electrical service in a small vacant sand-stone colonial home in the small down-town area of Derby that consisted of no more than six city blocks. Tony was beginning to trust me with the more complicated tasks and I had rewired the entire electrical panel, carefully bending the red, black and white wires into neat curves and cutting and skinning the tips of the wires before sliding the bare copper into the ground bus or the compression fittings on the breakers, without his supervision while he paced around on the floor above me, his work-boots clumping like a Holstein on a barn-deck, making calls to his clients from his cell phone.

The job that Tony had scheduled for that particular Friday fell short of the eight hours it was intended to consume so I whistled happily as I drove home with the top down on the mustang from our job in the little town of Derby with the anticipation of spending some extra time at home with Sarah and Melanie. The afternoon was hot and sunny and I could see the shimmy of heat vapor rise from the blacktop in front of me as I drove down the two lane highway and inhaled the scent of freshly cut grass mixed with wildflower pollen while the crickets sang like a monotone chorus. I passed an endless stream of small frame and brick veneer ranch and bungalow houses to my right and a flowing river of colorful purple Coneflower, Blue Flax and Black-eyed-Susan on my left.