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“Please come, Bess,” he says as he briefly lifts his head, and then his fingers sink into my heat, he gives them a little crook as he sucks my clit, and I finally find my release. But Eli isn’t finished. He accompanies me all the way through my orgasm, and then brings me very gently back to earth.
He wipes his face on the covers as he crawls up my body. He grins. “You came quick,” he says. He looks awfully pleased with himself, his grin as boyish as the day I met him, but there’s still a need in him. I can feel it in the way he holds me tight, in the way he looks at me.
“It has been a while,” I admit as I rub his shoulders. He rests there, staring into my face as he looks at me, his gaze soft and hot and adoring. “I love you, Eli,” I say.
He buries his face in my neck and nuzzles me gently, his hips flexing as he pushes inside me. He moves slowly, and a pained groan leaves his throat when he’s fully sheathed. “I love you, Bess,” he says. He grins. “I’ve missed fucking you.”
Eli always did have a filthy mouth when we had sex, and it was a huge turn-on.
I open my legs a little wider, and he changes the angle of his thrust to hit that secret spot inside me that Eli always knows how to find. “That’s it, right?” he asks. “Right there?” He watches my face.
“Yes. God, yes. Don’t stop.” I lift my legs and wrap them around his back, and that’s when it feels the best. In moments, I’m coming apart around him. In short, gentle thrusts, he brings me patiently through it.
“Bess.” He says my name so I’ll open my eyes and look at him. “Do you want me to pull out?” He stares into my eyes, and his are so full of love for me that it’s almost more than I can bear.
I touch his shoulder gently, running my hand across his sweat-slick skin. “Do you want to pull out?” I ask, and I hold my breath as I wait to hear his response.
He closes his eyes, pumps once, twice, and then he comes inside me. He doesn’t pull out. My eyes fill up with tears because I know what this means. It means he’s open to whatever life brings us. It means he’s in it with me, whatever we may face.
“You okay?” he asks, his brow furrowing when he sees a tear roll down my temple into my hair.
I nod and bury my face in his shoulder as he rolls to the side and rolls me with him. “I’m good,” I say, my voice squeaky.
“Why the tears?” he asks gently.
“I don’t know.” I can’t explain it. It’s just overwhelming. “I missed you.”
He kisses me and pulls me on top of him, where he starts to kiss me again, and then he’s hard again, and then he’s inside me again, and again he doesn’t pull out. He comes deep inside me and when I collapse on top of him, I know that we are going to be okay.
41
Eli
Thirty-one days after Aaron gave us the cat, he came to us with all this paperwork. He had made an iron-clad will, leaving the proceeds of Lynda’s life insurance for us, as well as his own. He had sold his house and put the contents in storage—prepaid for two years—so we could get the kids’ things when they wanted them. He had made arrangements with his in-laws so they knew we were to have the children, and they tolerated the idea of it although it didn’t make them happy.
Aaron had planned everything, even going so far as to leave letters for the kids for special days, like the days they got married and the days they got their driver’s licenses. He even wrote silly letters like one for the first time they got drunk, and one for the day they passed an important test. He left a book of memories for them of that summer, filled with photos Bess had taken of him and the kids during his last days. He’d spent days poring through old photo albums my mom had kept that had pictures of all of us together. He’d explained what was happening in each photo so they would have concrete memories of what had happened in his life.
The early pictures of the summer album showed his smiling face, still looking vibrant and healthy. But as the days went on, his illness started to wear on him, and there were evident lines on his face in the pictures, and a level of exhaustion around his eyes. But still he looked happy and that was all that mattered.
He had told us he didn’t want to die at the lake. He wanted to die in a sterile hospital where no one would associate this happy summer with that awful event. He wanted Lake Fisher to remain a refuge, to be “the happiest of the happy places.” So, forty-five days after he gave us the cat, we moved Aaron to hospice care for his last days. His mom flew down with an aide from the facility where she lived, and she spent quite a bit of quality time with the kids, and in the end she was with Aaron during those last days.
In the days before his death, he’d begun to have vivid dreams about Lynda, even going so far as to tell Bess about the conversations they’d had in his dreams, conversations in which Lynda would ask about the kids or reminisce and laugh about the past. And therefore he loved going to sleep, and when he asked for pain medication, he always woke up with a smile and a new story to tell. He remembered things he hadn’t thought of in years, and the girls enjoyed hearing the stories about their mom.
After we moved him to the hospital, I came and went, but Bess stayed with him nearly every moment, all the way to the end. And when he passed, he was surrounded by love. He had Bess and me, his mother, and Sam had asked to stay too. She had buzzed around, taking care of anything he needed, and she came home tired but content with what she’d done each day.
Fifty-two days after Aaron gave us the cat, he drew his last breath. Bess had sat beside him, counting his breaths the way she did with the kids, and when she got to six, he stopped breathing. No more breaths. Bess had squeezed my hand, and then she’d said her farewell, and we’d gone back to Lake Fisher. We buried Aaron in the tiny cemetery behind the campground, where he’d asked to be buried. His gravestone was simple but elegant. And his daughters hadn’t shed a tear.
I’d once told Sam that I was grateful when my father died because it meant he wasn’t in pain anymore. So when I asked her if she was okay after the funeral, she looked at me, smiled softly, and said, “I feel grateful.” She grew up so fast.
They had all mourned for weeks before his death, as his slow decline began, but after the funeral was over we all refused to mourn any longer. We enjoyed the rest of the summer, and then we packed up Aaron’s van and closed up both the cabins, and we drove the kids and the cat home. We settled into our new life seamlessly. We had the occasional tantrum, but we learned that we could weather any storm as long as we did it
together.
Today, it has been exactly one year since Aaron’s death, and we have been at Lake Fisher for the last two weeks. The girls have had a wonderful time, and only Sam’s gaze swings toward the tiny little cemetery. Occasionally, she walks up to leave a posy for her dad, the way Mr. Jacobson does for his late wife. We give her all the time she needs to deal with it in her own way.
Tonight is movie night and the kids are excited. Mr. Jacobson calls us all to attention in the big field where he has set up the movie projector. As it gets dark, he starts a movie, but it’s not a blockbuster. “I thought the campground could use a commercial,” he says.
“What?” Jake asks. Apparently, he didn’t know about this.
