The Wednesday Couple

The divorce came three months later, along with a note from Mandy. My first thought was to toss it in the trash, but the look I got from Katie told me a refusal on my offer to marry her would come to the fore if I did. So we waited until the children were at school before we read it.

My dear Daniel,

Katie will be good for you and the children will complement her, so it looks like you have a family that will keep you forever young.

Please promise me two things: never write to me, and never ask to visit. This is my life now, all twenty to life of it. I killed him so he couldn't take your children away. Mothers do that, Daniel: we defend our young and, if you have any doubts about that, then look towards Katie. She will reaffirm that notion.

Come Christmas and birthdays the children will want to send me a card. Please, my love, try your best to dissuade them. I will have my memories of them, and they are safely locked in my mind. This place is my life now, just as the children are both of yours.

You are a good man, and a childhood illness took away from you what you wanted the most. You also have a second chance now, Daniel: grasp it with both hands, and never let anyone wrestle it from you.

Mandy.

Between us I think that letter was read about ten times before I told Katie I was putting it in the fire safe for now, and I would decide later on what to do with it. She knew one day I would show it to the children; it would just be a case of when.

Mark and Sarah had to be the priority now. Getting them settled didn't seem to take as long as we thought. Neither of us went the charm offensive route: we just waited them out, and let them become more comfortable around both us and the town. Other than move into a bigger house not much else changed, except for when they started school.

The children there took one look and welcomed them both. To them they were Katie's children and nothing more needed to be said. Even when Katie and I went to parent days the teachers told us they had taken to the new school very quickly.

I married Katie six months after the divorce. I was standing up front with the Judge as my best man when the music changed and I looked behind me. Katie walked down the aisle with Mark in one hand and Sarah in the other. All three smiled so much it put the sun to shame.

*******

Walter walked into the shop a year after we married. He quickly caught on to the confused look I had on my face and smiled.

"Don't blame me: it's that wife of yours! She says I have to cover for you for two weeks while you have a family holiday, and it seems you missed out on the honeymoon." When I looked beyond him and into the street Katie was sitting in the car, both children waiting in the back. I didn't even get a chance to shower and change.

*******

Beryl and Jordon did eventually have another boy. Jordon wanted to keep going until they had a girl. Beryl listened to him, kissed him ever so hotly and told him "yes, dear." Even Jordon got the message, and resigned himself to two boys.

*******

Emmett went to college in Chester Grove and as soon as he could he came back, walked straight into the radio station, and sat down with Katie. Then both walked into the shop and talked to me. Emmett wanted to update the station and it didn't take Katie long to find out why. It seems Emmett and the Reverend Fenton's eldest were an item, and had been all the way through college. She told him she wouldn't look on their relationship as serious until he had a career.

Katie was happy to share the load now, so Walter and I spent a week updating the radio station while we stripped the place down. Both Emmett and Katie used the back of the shop to broadcast out of. Beryl thought that was fun; she only needed to stick her head into the office and ten minutes later Jordon heard the song that still glued him to his wife, and in turn she showed the world, or her part of it anyway, that she still loved her man.

*******

I still have the odd "what if" moment, but looking at Katie and the children around the dinner table, talking about their day, soon puts that to shame. I'm home now, and the children have forgiven me for leaving them. Now it's time for the first of them to leave, as Mark prepares to go to college. They know the truth - all of it - and I know they grieve for their mother. But they can also see that I would have become a basket case if I had stayed, and would have been no father to them.

It took all of us time to realize it, but what we have now is just so much better than what we had before.

The Sheriff never did find out who put the graffiti on the sign.

The End.