Please be aware this story contains elements of taboo sexual relationships, if this offends you please stop reading now.
Many thanks to my editor, GrandTeton, for leading me along the paths of righteousness (at least where grammar and punctuation are concerned...) and for taking the time to identify and temper my wilder flights of fantasy.
This is not the real world, it's an imaginary world of my making, and things happen the way I think they should, not how they would in real life, so please remember to not take any of this too seriously, it's just a story...
Have fun,
BB1958
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Secrets Revealed:
House-hunting took up most of my time for the next several weeks. Poor Davey was well and truly back in the swing at his hospital. He came home to Sybil's house every night wrung out and ready to drop, but that inner steel of his kept him going back for more, keeping his head above water and his mind in the game through all that punishing schedule.
In turn, I was overwhelmingly, unbelievably proud of him. Mom had told me once how he'd fought to get where he was today, willpower and sheer determination to succeed in his calling and be like his daddy keeping him afloat where so many other men would have given up and sunk without trace, and it was beginning to pay off.
So while he studied, worked, trained, and learned, I did what I could to find the place we could call home; Sybil's house, for all its warmth and welcome, was her home, not ours, and I couldn't help but feel twinges of discomfort at the thought of how much we were imposing on her. She never said a word, bless her, and her warm presence was a boon and a blessing, but nevertheless I would have felt more comfortable in a place of our own, and she understood that; Sybil's was a place of refuge, and gladly given, but we had to strike out on own, and soon.
And then Sophie finally came home. By the time the days rolled around to the day she was due to arrive, I was a frazzled wreck; I'd spent the night before they were due back pacing and worrying and fretting and snapping at Davey, Rosie, Jimmy, everyone, really, and driving poor Davey insane.
By the time we set out to meet her at Heathrow, I'd swung the other way, and now I was a terrified bag of nerves, all sorts of weird fears and bizarre feelings roiling around inside of me; at one point I was actually convinced she'd forgotten me, which probably gives a great, big, neon-lit clue as to my mental state right there and then.
Davey was comforting and Jimmy kept his mouth shut and stared stolidly ahead after I bit his head off for no good reason, but I could see the looks he and Davey were exchanging, those special 'shutupshutupshutup, she nuts, don't set her off, for fuck's sake!' glances that would have pissed me off if I wasn't so busy freaking-out.
Actually arriving at Heathrow Airport and getting to the Arrivals Area was a blur, and still is; I don't rightly know how we got there, because all I remember was circling round and round in the parking garage, then next thing I know we're in the Terminal 5 Arrivals Area. After several lifetimes of alternately fretting, feeling scared, losing it with Davey and poor Jimmy, and slowly losing my mind, suddenly she was here, my mom was home, she was here, and I could finally hold her again.
I don't think I need to go into what I was feeling; all I could do was squeak 'Mom, Mom', endlessly, and she was too busy squeezing the life out me to correct me, and Uncle Richard's arms around both of sealed us together; Sophie may have been Davey's aunt, but now she was truly my mom, I could feel it in waves running through and through me, and Uncle Richard was everything Daddy had been, he felt so like my daddy it was impossible not to think of him as anything else, and he was there, warm, loving, making me his daughter, drawing me in and making us a family.
I glanced at Davey, and his expression was unreadable; he looked transfigured, as if he'd finally worked out what was going on inside me, like he'd finally got it for real, not just what I'd told him before, and I loved him even more for that. From where I stood, I could see the knowledge dawning in his eyes that Sophie was my mom now, and if she was my mom, then in a very real sense she was his mom too. She was just who he needed in his life, and everything about her that had shouted 'MOM!' at me was doing it to him, too. We were truly family now.
*
Sophie is a master of organization, and with her around, the pace stepped up a notch, whether house-hunting with me or interviewing dressmakers, caterers, venues, florists, and jewellers, then project-managing the whole thing into one complete event. I was awestruck; I thought I was capable, and reasonably organized, but what I knew amounted to tidying a toy-box compared to Sophie, with her memory like an elephant, her ability to relate one fact to another, and her razor-sharp attention to detail.