O.I.N.D. GILF

"Well, I hoped you'd give me your blessing to ask her and help me find a ring," I said.

"The blessing you've got," he said. "Good luck finding the ring though. I do not want to be a part of picking the wrong one. Try Debbie though."

So that's what I did. I called Cal and told him I needed to speak to Debbie. Debbie and I took a couple of Saturdays and finally found what we considered the perfect ring. Then we organized another barbecue for the event. Debbie and I were conferring on the best way for me to ask Kath, when all hell broke out.

"Debbie, out of all of my daughter-in-laws, I trusted you the most," said Kath. "Get the fuck out of my house." Cal came over to see what was going on. Debbie was almost in tears.

Thomas came over too. "Mom, this is nowhere near what you think," he snapped.

"Thomas, how would you know what I think, you're..." she began and then stopped.

"Kath," I began. "You've really fucked this up, Sweetie."

"How?" she asked. "I really thought things were perfect with us."

"Nope, I've been thinking about this for a while," I said. "I spoke to Thomas about it a few weeks ago. Cal and Debbie helped too, especially Debbie. Carl was supposed to organize it, but it's screwed now."

"Can't we fix it?" she asked with tears beginning to flow.

"Nope we've just got to do it now," I said.

"Kathryn Smythe, I love you. Will you marry me?" I asked.

Her eyes were opened in shock. She looked around and saw everyone staring at us and more people heading our way. "You all knew about this?" she asked.

"He asked me for my blessing," said Thomas.

"He got Debbie to help him find the ring," said Cal.

"I'm sorry Debbie. I was jealous," said Kath.

"Forget about that Mom. What's the answer?" asked Debbie.

She looked around and said, "No." I was crushed. Even Thomas was shocked.

"Well...Maybe," amended Kath grabbing my arms. "We'll be back," she said dragging me out of the house. You already know where we went. She tried to kill me again but she came back wearing my ring.

Neither Katt, nor Mona attended our wedding by choice. Thomas had to force both of them to go. Kathryn of course refused to sign the pre-nup as Thomas had predicted. When I told her we couldn't get married otherwise she relented and signed it. Then she promptly tore it up immediately thereafter.

The next summer we got together for another bit of shocking family news. Katt was pregnant and didn't know who the father was. Thomas was beside himself. I took him out for a ride in my new car, a silver colored Shelby GT 350 Mustang. We talked and he told me how worried he was about her future. I told him that I'd get her a job at the firm and look out for her.

That seemed to make him feel a little better. A few weeks later we found out that Katt had lost her baby. Somehow she didn't seem too sad about it. She went right back to the life she was living. When I told her about the job, she looked at me as if I was crazy.

"I don't need a fucking job idiot," she snapped. "That was supposed to be your thing. You were supposed to get a great job and take care of me. Like my mom and dad. You know just because you married my Granny, it doesn't make you my fucking granddad so don't try to give me any advice. Only two years ago you were begging me for pussy just like the rest of them. It's your loss. But if you ever want so much as a sniff again you'd better tap into that pipeline for me."

"What pipeline?" I asked.

"I know Granny's giving you money left and right," she said. "I saw that fucking car. It is not cheap."

"Katt, I bought the car with my own money," I said. "Your granny's money is safe in the bank and her investments." Katt just shook her head and walked away.

"I told you she was stupid," said Kath when we talked about it later.

"I have tried so hard to love that girl and her mother," she snapped. "But they just keep pushing it. First Mona, now her daughter. I don't know how much more I can take."

For the first time since I'd known her, I saw Kath upset.

"Honey, don't let that girl upset you," I said. "It's not worth it, she's not worth it. Let's go on with the plan. I can get more time off from work. Let's do it."

"If I didn't have you?" she said shaking her head.

"You wouldn't have half as many problems," I finished for her. Her face flashed anger again briefly and then she smiled.

"I'd be just another sad, 60 year old woman with no love in her life. I'd be another old woman put on a shelf in a nursing home somewhere, while a family who no longer has time for her waits for her to die so they can divide her assets," she said.

"Your kids love you," I told her.

"Oh, they love you too," she said. "Most of the grand kids who are younger than you call you grandpa now." She laughed at my reaction to this. A grandfather at twenty-five.

"Ray what will happen to us?" she asked seriously one night while we were lying in bed cuddled together after one of her lung busting marathon sex sessions.

"What will happen to us when my body starts to fail and I can't ring your chimes anymore?"

Kath worked out like an Olympic athlete. She jogged every morning either outdoors or on our treadmill. She did yoga three days a week and did weights three days a week. Her diet most days was very Spartan though she loved spoiling me. At twenty five I couldn't do most of the workouts she did. But you can only hold back the hands of time for so long.

Now it was my turn to get angry. "Kath, I love you," I told her. "Notice that I didn't say that I love fucking you, although I do. The sex that we have is spectacular, but it isn't all that we have. My philosophy is that we'll do it until we can't do it anymore. And when we can't we'll still travel together and we'll take long walks holding each other's hands. We'll find new ways to just kiss and hold each other and make each other happy.

And when we can't do that anymore we'll sit and talk to each other about everything we've done and seen. We've been together for four years now and we've never run out of thing to talk about. I seriously don't think we ever will. This is why it's also very important that we pick another one of our drop dead dozen and go there soon." I told her.

"I don't think you like to travel Ray," she said seriously. "It takes you away from your work or whatever building you're designing. I think you only take these trips with me for two reasons," she said. I started laughing and squeezed her tighter. I did notice that even then she seemed a bit frailer than she had when we first got together.

"Now who's the one with the two things for every question?" I laughed. "Okay Kath, what are your two reasons?"

"Number one, you go on these trips because you love me so much that you'd do anything to make me happy and you know I love to travel," she said. I nodded and told her that was true.

"And number two, you just like fucking me in different hotels," she smirked.

We both started laughing and almost didn't notice that soft knocking on our door.

"Just a minute," said Kath. She put on a robe and threw me one as well. "Come in," she said.

"Hi Mom," said Thomas. "We need to talk. Why don't you put some clothes on while I talk to Dad for a few minutes?"

Dad? That was a new one, I thought. A 44 year old man calling me Dad at 25.

"Ray, I want to apologize to you," he said looking at me. I started to say something but he cut me off. "From the very start of this thing with you and my Mom, I guess at first I was against it. I thought that you were just using her for her money or something. You have to admit it's a weird relationship. I don't know why it seems so strange to anyone. Older men with young hot women are not only accepted in society but admired. I don't know why the reverse seems strange to people.

Anyway after a while I guess we all came to accept you two. Well most of us anyway. I have to admit I still had some doubts. But Ray I couldn't help over hearing what you just told her and it really made me feel bad about the way I treated you. It won't happen again."

I just nodded as Kath came into the room. "I'll leave you two to your talk," I said.

"Actually I need you in on this as well," he said.

"Okay," I said. We went into the dining room and sat around the table.

"It's Katt," he said. "I don't know what to do about her anymore. Ray, she's a few months older than you are; she'll be 26 next week. Since the miscarriage, and truthfully before it, her life has been on a downward spiral. All she does is lay around the house all day and go out every night. She doesn't come home until four or five in the morning.

This morning we got a call to go and pick her up because she'd been arrested for possession of drugs and public intoxication. You wouldn't believe the way she was dressed. Apparently she gave her car away during the night also. The boys she gave the car to, did some damage with it and we're being held responsible since the car is in my name." He put his hands over his head.

"I've tried to convince her to get a job for months. I even tried having her come in and work in my office on the weekends. She can't do anything. She doesn't know anything about anything. I know she never finished her degree but God damn it she was in college for six fucking years. What did I pay for?"

"She can't do simple spreadsheets. She can't input info into a database. She can't even fucking type. What did she learn at school?"

"Last week I went out into the backyard to give a check to our lawn service guy. He didn't hear me calling him because he was so busy staring at the house. I came up behind him and almost had a heart attack. Katt was in the window dancing naked and putting her ass and her breasts against the window. I ran inside to make her stop. She just laughed about it and said she was just revving them up to make them work better."

I could tell that Kath was having a tough time not laughing.

"What was she like in school, Ray? When did things get this bad? How the hell do we fix this?" he asked.

I looked at Kath and she just shrugged her shoulders. I looked at her again and tilted my head. Her eyes bugged back out and she shrugged her shoulders again. Thomas looked at both of us and said, "Okay there's something you guys aren't telling me, isn't there?"

Kath saw the pain on his face and nodded at me.

"Thomas, remember our man to man talk that I swore you to secrecy about a few years ago?" I said.

"The one where you told me about why you and Katt broke up?" he said.

"That's the one," I said. "Thomas I'm sorry but I didn't tell you the truth. I didn't lie to you, but I didn't tell you the whole truth. When your mom and I caught Kath, she wasn't screwing another guy. She was screwing three other guys. One of whom was the teaching assistant for her Econ class. I can't say for definite sure but that may be the way that she got through a lot of her classes without actually learning much.

Katt always did have a way with guys. To be honest I actually did a lot of her papers and assignments either with her or sometimes flat out for her. I guess a lot of this is really my fault," I said.

"How is it your fault?" asked Kath.

"I agree too, Ray," said Thomas. "So you helped her out in school. Lots of students get by that way. In the business world we call it networking."

"This isn't just about school," I said. "Thomas, your mom and I have talked for hours about the way you bulled your way through school and got your marketing degree. She's very proud of you. I did the same thing to become an architect. Of course I had help. Kath got me that internship at NJA that really helped to pave my way for success."

"She did something like that for me too," he said. "I'm still not seeing it."

"It's simple," I said. "You and I made plans for what we wanted to do in life. We stuck with out plans and became successful in our chosen careers. We also found the people we wanted to be with." He nodded and let me know that he followed me so far.

"Katt had a plan too," I said. "But her plan didn't work out. She didn't have a backup plan so she's just spinning her wheels. Right now she doesn't know whether to try to bull her way through or try something else."

"What was her plan?" he asked. "Believe it or not, I paid for her stint in college, all six fucking years of it. Sorry Mom, but I don't have a clue what she wanted to do with her life."

"Yeah you do," I said. "She wanted to be just like her mom. Remember when she told you that she was going to marry me, and she wanted our marriage to be just like yours and Mona's?"

Kath snorted and got really pissed when she heard that. Neither Thomas nor I realized what she was making the angry face about so we moved on.

"The question is," I said. "How do we help her now?"

"Well we do have some time to figure it out," he said. "My lawyer told me that if we send her to a drug treatment program, we can keep her out of jail. I'll still have to pay for all of the damages that happened with the car and her fines but keeping her out of jail is a big step."

"That gives us time to go on our trip, Ray," said Kath. "We'll meet again to talk about this when we get back."

"Well I do have one idea already," I said. Thomas looked at me. He was interested.

"You and I need to look at everyone that we do business with who owes us a favor," I said. "We get a few of those people to offer Katt a job. Something simple to start with that she can grow into. We don't let her know that it came from us. If it's necessary we even subsidize the job for a while. That way the company she works for doesn't lose money on it."

"How is buying her a job, going to help?" asked Kath. "The only thing wrong with that girl is that we've spoiled her already."

"Well having the job will make her more independent," I said. "It will also hopefully make her more responsible and it will introduce her to a completely different group of people, so maybe it will get her away from the hard partying crowd."

"I like the idea," said Thomas. "We need to come up with a few places so she can go on a few interviews. That way she won't think that we set it up. We can start planning as soon as you guys get back." Thomas was a bit happier when he left than he was when he first got there.

Kath on the other hand had her arms folded across her chest and was clearly angry.

"Honey why are you angry?" I asked.

"Ray, you're a great guy and I love you. In fact you are the only man I've ever really loved. You mean so much more to me than that bastard who got me pregnant twice and then ran out without ever even asking me to marry him. You know in those days that totally ruined my reputation forever. If my Daddy hadn't been rich my life would have been ruined."

"I know that story already Kath," I said slipping my arms back around her.

"No Ray, Girls Katt's age aren't really mature enough to appreciate people for their true qualities, especially when it comes to men. They typically go for the jocks or the hot guys. Katt always did before she met you. So I kind of wondered why she was with you. Now I know and I'm pissed."

Kath told me a story or two that she'd been holding in for a long time. After she told me I understood much more about the family, and I shook my head.

A few weeks later, Katt got out of the drug treatment program and accepted a job with one of the companies that we'd set up. She was fired after two days. Over the next three weeks she went through all four of the companies we set up. Finally Thomas gave her a job in his office where she pretty much did nothing. And that was the status quo for the next few years.

Meanwhile, the years flew by for Kath and me. We visited all twelve of the places on our drop dead dozen list and started another list. We were very happy and very much in love. Kath was really excited about every new thing or place that we discovered. We took thousands of pictures and recorded hours of video footage. Then one morning after we'd had a particularly intense love making session it happened. It wasn't something that most people would notice but it scared the shit out of me.

We were getting ready for a barbecue with the entire family over. That meant the kids, the grandkids and even our first great grandkids. Thomas, Kath, Mona and I were sitting at a table. Cal and Debbie arrived. Cal stepped up and hugged Kath and she called him Carl. Most people occasionally got the twins confused but Kath never had.

I freaked out. "Thomas, you watch everything and do the grilling," I said.

"Ray, you guys aren't making another motel run are you?" he laughed.

"No we're making an emergency room run," I said seriously.

"Honey, I'm fine," said Kath. "It was just a senior moment. I'm going to start having them every now and then."

"Kathryn Smythe Jordan," I said. "Do you love me?"

"Of course," she smiled. "I think we all know that."

"Then get dressed," I said seriously. "If this is nothing you'll all have something else to laugh at me about. But we're going."

A few hours later Thomas called my cell phone. "Ray, are you guys on your way back yet?" he laughed. "Or are you staying until the motel closes? Should I save you a steak?"

"Thomas, I'm at St. Mark's," I said. "I need you to come down here. Come alone."

Thomas got there in fifteen minutes. He was still wearing his shorts and a sun visor and he wasn't alone. Debbie was with him and she looked worried.

"She had a T.I.A." I said.

"She had what?" he asked.

"It's like a mini stroke," I said. "Blood flow to the brain is disrupted temporarily. In a real stroke the symptoms can be permanent. In this case it was only temporary. They need to do further tests to determine whether or not this is a serious condition or just something that happened due to stress or something."

He noticed that I was holding her hand while she slept. "Don't worry, they just gave her something to relax her during her MRI and it relaxed her too well. She's only sleeping."

He nodded his head. Debbie was already on the phone relaying the information to everyone else.

We sat there for a while watching her sleep. "How'd you know Dad?" he asked.

"I didn't," I said. "I just noticed the mistake with your brother. She never gets the two of them mixed up. And she just looked funny to me. It was very slight but her coordination was off and so was her speech. She said it was because she was tired. But I knew better."

"God damn it," he said. "I never noticed anything."

"Neither did I," said Debbie.

"You two don't live with her," I said. "You don't spend every day talking to her and looking at her. Did you know that sometimes I just stare at her when she sleeps for hours? I can't help it. She's just the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and..."

"Did you know that she can't sleep with all of that yammering," said Kath opening her eyes. "You just had to go and ruin it didn't you?"

"Ruin what?" I asked.

"I know why you brought me here?" she said. "Everyone knows that I intended to sneak you to our motel today and fuck your brains out. After last night you were scared," she smirked. "You thought I was going to totally drain you didn't you?"

Debbie blushed and started laughing. Even the doctor who'd come into the room and was standing behind Thomas had to look away for a moment.

"Doctor? Could that have anything to do with the attack?" I asked. He smiled. "I very much doubt it," he said. "A healthy sex life may actually be contributing to your wife's incredible health and fitness. But eventually we all lose that race. We'd like to keep her here for a few days for observation and to run a few more tests. But I'm sure she'll be fine."

"Told ya," Kath smirked.

"Doctor, I'd like her moved to a semi private room," I said.

"But sir," he said. "Your insurance will pay for a private room if you want it."