Hello again! This one turned out to be another long one. I hope you enjoy!
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All characters are over the age of 18
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It broke my heart when my brother Angus and his wife Carol died in that car crash. I was at home when I got the phone call, my elderly mother sobbing on the other end of the line, almost incomprehensible with grief. I went numb. They were gone.
I felt so terrible. He was my older brother by five years and I had always looked up to him. We were not in contact much these past years, him staying in our home town out west and myself and my wife having moved to a big city in the East.
Still, we would talk on the phone every few months and every couple of years one of us would make the trek across the country for a visit. In fact he was due to bring his wife and 18 year old daughter, Miley, to stay at my place in a few months. With the Pandemic, it had been three years since I had seen them in person.
It had been sudden. The two of them were traveling down one of the narrow two lane highways around our home town and, coming around the bend, had hit a semi truck head on. The driver of the truck had dozed off and let his rig wander over the line.
I spent the next few days preparing, as best I could over the phone, arrangements for the funeral. My father had died years ago and my mother lived in a long term care facility. She was in ok shape but setting this all up was beyond her at this time.
With his wife passed on I was executor of his will, but I knew Angus and knew that he would have had everything arranged. The major issue was his daughter.
Miley was 18 years old, and had recently graduated from high school. She was primed to go to a university out west, but obviously things were complicated now.
"Wait," my wife, Allie, said one evening after I had hung up the phone after talking to a funeral home. "Who is Miley's godparents? Is it us?"
I thought for a moment.
"Yeah," I said. "I think we are. I haven't thought about that in a long time."
"Do you know what that means?" Allie asked me.
"I think we were supposed to guide her in her way to god or something? I guess we never did much of that."
"Well yeah," she said. "But it also means that if something happened to the both of them, we are responsible for her. Like we are supposed to take care of her."
"Really?" I asked. "I was like, 25 when she was born. We had just gotten married. You were, what? 23? What were they doing leaving us responsible?"
"I don't know," Allie said and looked down at her hands where she had them clasped on the table in front of her. "I think...maybe we should ask her if she wants to come stay with us. If she wants. For the time being."
"Really?" I asked. It had not occurred to me. I knew that Miley was staying with family friends at the moment, and school and housing would be paid for by a trust her father had set up. It was early July and she had just graduated.
I looked at Allie. We had never had children of our own. When she was a teen she had gotten in a bad accident that almost killed her. She obviously survived but her reproductive system had been destroyed. We knew that going into our relationship and had decided that if we wanted kids we would adopt.
The time had never seemed right. We were both successful in our careers and enjoyed our lives. Now that I was 43 and she was 41 we knew that we were not going to anything about that.
"Would you want that? I don't know if she would want to move here, but even if she did, would you want that?" I asked.
Allie looked around the room. We had a nice house in a neighborhood just off of downtown. She was a lawyer and I did management consulting for a big firm. We had plenty of money and had paid over a million dollars for the house. It's all relative, of course. In my home town a house like this might cost you 100,000. Here you paid for living in the big city.
"This place has always been too big for the two of us. Four bedrooms. What do we need that for? It might be nice to have someone else around. And I feel so bad for her. She has gone through so much loss. I want to help her out."
I could not argue. I nodded.
"I'll talk to her," I said. "I'll see what she wants to do with her life. She's an adult now."
"Ok. Try to convince her. For the summer at least. I think its for the best."
The next day I gave Miley a call.
"Hey, Uncle Eric," she said when she answered.
"Hey, Miley," I said, a bit unsure how to speak to a young woman who was going through what she was. "How are you holding up?"
"Oh," she said, her voice quiet, "you know. I'm getting through. The Smiths are being very kind. I'm looking forward to see you and Auntie Allie."
"We are both looking forward to seeing you too," I promised. "We will be there tomorrow. Look, we have been talking and we were wondering, and no pressure if this doesn't sound good to you, but...how would you like to come back to the city here with us? To stay for a while?"
There was silence on the phone for a few moments. I realized that I could hear her quietly weeping on the other end of the line.
"Oh, shit," I said, starting to panic. "Don't cry! I'm sorry! You don't have to at all! I'm sorry I mentioned it."
"It's not that," she said, through her tears. "It's, I mean, yes. I'd love that. I was hoping you would say that but I was afraid to ask!"
"Oh, Miley, sweetheart," I said. "You don't need to be afraid to ask me anything! I promise that me and my aunt will be there for anything you need or want! We can figure anything out. School, whatever. But we have the space and a room for you here. For as long as you would like."
"I can't wait to see you in person and thank you!" She said. I was smiling. It looked like it was all going to work out.
Allie was delighted with the news. She gave me a big hug and a kiss.
"This will be great," she promised. "It'll be a bit like we have our own daughter!"
"Be careful," I warned her. "She just lost her parents. We don't want to seem like we are trying to replace them."