It had seemed so beautifully simple when he and Shae were cuddled together in his old bed in his old home. They'd talked a little more -- not a lot more -- but as he lay there silently holding her, several things became clear, although inextricably mixed together.

Shae had not been an issue in his mind until she surprised him with it -- he just hadn't been thinking far enough ahead. But as soon as she articulated it, he had a vision of a future most likely perfectly acceptable to him when the time came. In fact, he was comfortable with the notion, even intrigued by it. It was not inevitable -- yet anyway -- but it could likely go that way.

But, like he'd told her, it was just too soon.

More than anything else, it finalized the decision to return to Bradford for a while. For any number of reasons, he needed the breathing space, and in their own way the boys needed it too. With his job intact and his mother right across the street, Bradford seemed like the ideal place to lick his wounds, and let the time needed for healing to pass.

By the time morning came, Shae realized he'd made his decision, and she apparently accepted it. From then on, she'd been supportive of the idea and did her best to help out, making no more hints or pleas to continue his stay in the apartment at least semi-permanently.

One of the things they talked about on the drive back to New York was that he had only been in the Battery Park apartment for a few minutes and had found the grief intolerable. It had been clear that he wasn't going to be of much help in the packing and loading and moving.

Cleaning out his apartment would be an extremely painful chore. As close to Dave's pain as Shae had been, she even had doubts she could handle it. There was a lot of Julie in the apartment -- her clothes, personal items, and jewelry, of course, but even toiletries. For that matter, even the furniture would carry memories of her; no matter how many times they were washed, the sheets of the bed would still bear her imprint.

Given a choice, Dave wasn't sure but what he would be willing to just leave everything there except for his and the boys' clothes and personal items, their toys, some critical paperwork, maybe the desktop computer, those sorts of things, and hire someone to haul the rest to Goodwill or a dumpster. In fact, it even seemed like the simplest solution, but even then, someone would have to do the sorting and packing. He wasn't even sure he was capable of any of that chore.

When they got back to Shae's apartment, Dave bit the bullet and called the Albrights, telling them he was going to move out of the Battery Park apartment at the first opportunity. He proposed giving most of Julie's clothes to charity, but holding back jewelry and personal keepsakes, a few of which he would keep for the boys, but most of which he'd give to the Albrights. A little to his surprise, they agreed that was a pretty good way to go about it.

They were, not surprisingly, anywhere near as thrilled with the idea of him taking the boys to Bradford for a while. In fact, in the process of the discussion, Stan made a counter-proposal he obviously had thought hard about -- move to Hartford with the boys, and become involved in the family business, so that in time it could be passed down to them. Drawing deep on his reserves of diplomacy, Dave agreed it had a great deal of merit but wanted some time to think about it, since it would be a major career change at an already difficult time. While he was already facing a great deal of other change, staying with Dunlap and Fyre would provide at least one stable anchor for a while. It would not hurt to let the idea sit for six months or a year while he sat in Bradford and let time pass, and if the idea seemed viable then, a change could be made anytime after that. After some discussion, Stan saw his logic.

As far as it went, in six months or a year it might not even be such a bad idea, Dave rationalized after he got off the phone. If for some reason the virtual office system didn't work out, and if, as seemed possible, he found himself left out in the cold, Stan's proposal offered a solid fall-back position, one that would probably involve more money than he was likely to make at Dunlap and Fyre. However, as far as he was concerned, the job satisfaction was just about zero; added to that, he knew no one in Hartford except for his in-laws, while he did have friends and acquaintances in both New York and Bradford.

On top of everything, while he thought he could get along with Stan, if a little strained at times, Deborah was a much different story. Even though, with the passage of time, she might get over some of her hysteria and depression, just like he was facing, it still left the fact that they did not get along and never had. She was bossy, patronizing, condescending, and just plain irritating as she continually tried to make him aware of his natural inferiority. He did not want the boys exposed to such behavior any more than necessary; in fact it was one of the positive points about the move to Bradford -- it would be harder for Deborah to drop in and upset everyone.

The final argument against a move to Hartford, now or in a year, was one he hadn't even considered until the day before: Shae. The two of them getting together in the long run wasn't exactly a bird in the hand, but he could easily rationalize it would be hard to do much better and easy to do much worse. But again: just too soon.

With the decision to move to Bradford made, and the situation with both Shae and the Albrights stabilized for a time, Sunday seemed like a fairly productive day.

Monday didn't go as well. Shae was shooting, of course, and he stayed at her apartment to make some phone calls on some critical issues. He tried to work on Dithyran's Probe after unexpected problems arose. When Shae got home, he was pretty down from frustration. "What's the problem?" she asked. "Maybe there's something I can do to help."

"That's the problem," he said glumly. "You've already been so much help I hate to ask you for more."

"Moving hassles, huh?"

"Yeah. It looks like we can get into Battery Park to move out on Friday, first thing Saturday at the latest."

"That's about what we expected," she said. "Nothing surprising there."

"Yeah," he shrugged. "But the problem is I've spent half of today calling around trying to find a mover. There's no one willing to do it in that kind of time frame; they want a lot more notice. And it's damn expensive. On top of that, Friday or maybe even only part of Saturday doesn't give you or Mom much time to sort everything out and pack it up."

"Eve and John would be willing to help, I'm sure," she offered.

"I've asked too much of them, too," he said. "Well, not John directly, but he's given his wife up an awful lot to help me out."

"I'm sure he doesn't mind under the circumstances," Shae said consolingly. "I know you haven't met John, but I hope sooner or later you'll get to know him. He's an awful nice guy; we all go back quite a ways."

"Yeah, but still. Realistically, we're going to need another week of lead time at a minimum, maybe more. The boys have been out of school long enough, and I don't want them to go much longer. You don't fall behind in kindergarten, but they're just treading water now."

"Oh, you're just being down and frustrated," she shook her head. "Another week wouldn't hurt that much."

"It's just getting more difficult," he shook his head. "I thought about taking or sending Mom back with them before next weekend, and having her put them in school. But I don't like that, either, the biggest reason being I should be around for a change that big."

"They can survive some hassles," Shae told him. "You just need to relax, let it go, and back off from it for a few. Now, as I see it, the big hassle is coming up with a mover, right?"

"Yeah, and getting everything packed and sorted without it getting too emotional."

"Just throwing out an idea," she said. "Why not try it from the other end?"

"I don't follow you."

"I have no idea what the movers would charge, but when we were in Bradford I saw a sign for a cheap daily rental for U-Hauls. How about if we call Emily in on it? Maybe she could find someone who could drive the truck here, maybe give us an extra set of hands or two, like maybe Kevin."

"That has potential," he conceded. "But there I go again, asking someone who's already given a lot to give more."

"Oh, bull," she snorted. "You don't understand Emily, do you? She likes doing this stuff. It gives her a challenge, makes her feel useful. She'd be thrilled if you asked."

He let out a long sigh. "At least with Emily, there's no question that it would get done," he nodded. "Like I say, I really hate to do it, but it's a possible way out of the problem."

Emily proved to be at work at the Spee-D-Mart; they could hear her running the cash register in the background as they explained the situation. "Yeah, sure, no problem," they heard her say, not quite sure if she was talking with a customer at the same time. "I shouldn't have any problem finding hands; enough people have offered to help. What do you say we shoot for Saturday at this point? If for some reason it can't be done, like you can't get in, let me know as soon as possible."

"Sure," he said. "Will do. I wouldn't want someone to start this way in a truck and then not be able to get in."

"Sure, that would be a pain," she agreed. "You're moving into Maude Perkins' old house, right?"

"Yeah, I talked to Arnold this morning, it's a go."

"All right, I'll get hold of him, see if there's anything that needs doing on this end."

"Emily, I feel like I'm already asking a lot of you."

"Don't worry about it," she protested. "Dave, I wouldn't have offered to help if I didn't want to. It's not a big deal. I'll take care of everything on this end. If I have any questions, I'll call you, Shae, or your mom."

"Emily, I'll have to do something nice for you some day."

"Easy," he heard her smile. "When I ask you to do something for someone sometime, say yes. Don't worry, Dave, I'll take care of it."

Dave hung up the phone in considerable relief, realizing he'd been worrying himself. "I hate to ask her," he said to Shae again. "In fact, it scares me a little."

"Scares you a little?"

"Yeah, scares me a little," he smiled. "Think back to everything you've seen out of her the last two weeks. She doesn't do things halfway. Or even just all the way. I mean, it works, it works well, but giving her a free hand? It's hard to say just how far she'll go, what she'll come up with."

"So she brings in a couple extra hands," Shae shrugged. "Fine with me. Dave, I don't want to have to sort through Julie's stuff more than you do."

"Yeah," he agreed quietly, again facing the reality. "There is that."

"Look," she smiled. "I think you're getting too wrapped up in this. There are things you have to do, like at your office, that only you can handle. Why don't you just let your mom and Emily and me handle the stuff we can do? Now, perk yourself up and take the boys down to the park to play, or something."

"All right, Shae," he sighed. "I've been getting too wrapped up in this, haven't I?"

"Yes, you have. It's hard enough on you without you making it harder. Like I said, let us take care of it, OK? If we have any questions, we'll come to you."

Dave couldn't help but wonder if maybe he was making a mistake, but Shae was right -- he did have other problems to deal with, and one was about all he could handle.

He'd been vaguely aware from early on that Bellinger Gates, where Julie had worked, hadn't been totally wiped out. There were some branches, a fairly large one located on Wall Street itself; as luck had it, several key executives had been out of town, or at least out of the office on the morning of September 11. Now, much as Dave was having to struggle to pull his life together, the survivors of Bellinger Gates had to pull the whole company back together. It had taken him a while to get an appointment with a very harried human resources person -- there were only a few left in the department, and hundreds of employees were missing. Enough time had passed that they had been able to set up some procedures to handle everything; nothing was final yet, but their issues, like life insurance, would be taken care of as things ironed out. About all Dave could do was to leave his forwarding address, and offer to be flexible.

But there was another issue at Bellinger Gates that human resources couldn't handle. It was most of a morning before he could get a chance to talk with Martin Clemens, a senior account executive at the company; Dave hadn't previously met him, but Julie had spoken well of him at one time or another. Once condolences had been offered -- and in this case they went both ways -- Dave laid his problem out. "I'm pretty sure Julie's market account was carried in both our names," he told Clemens. "I never paid any attention to it, but I've had the impression she had a few bucks in it somewhere."

"It's no great trick to pull it up," Clemens said, turning to a computer on his desk. In a few seconds, a laser printer was humming. "It's not totally in both your names," he said, handing the printout to Dave. "But you have a power of attorney on it, so for practical purposes, it is. It looks to be in pretty good shape to me."

Dave glanced down at the sheet of paper, and his jaw just about hit the floor. As of that morning, the value of the account was $932,821.64! "Good God," he shook his head. "I had no idea it was anything like that!"

"I hadn't worked with Julie much recently," Clemens smiled. "But I know she used to be pretty aggressive with her accounts. It doesn't really surprise me."

"I had no idea. Look, I'm going to be honest; I knew she did well at times, and not so well at others. But it was all play money to me, if you know what I mean. It didn't seem quite real."

"Oh, it's quite real," Clemens told him. "Just looking at it, she played it conservative some ways. I mean, there's no margin there, no shorts, nothing that would leave you and the boys hanging out in the breeze if it went to hell. So, in a sense, it was play money to her, too."

"It's a hell of a lot more than I ever dreamed." He let out a sigh. "Look, I'm a book editor. My knowledge of the market was about what she knew of book editing, which wasn't much. I'm certainly not qualified to manage that kind of money. What do I do?"

"A lot of it is in places I would consider high-risk, high-gain," Clemens replied. "She could get away with it since she could keep close tabs on it. In fact, over the last few days they seemed to have gained pretty well. But if you don't know what you're doing and don't keep close control on it, you could easily get your butt shot off."

"I'll have to look at it," Dave shook his head. "Maybe learn something about it. But for the moment, I think maybe we'd better get it out of where it is now, and into low-risk mutual funds."

"Sounds like a wise move to me," Clemens nodded. "I can spread it around among several funds to lower the risk."

"You know what you're doing, and I don't, so I'll take your word on it." He let out a sigh and said. "Everything the past couple weeks has been pretty surreal, but I never in my life imagined I'd be saying those words about that kind of money."

"Believe it or not, it's a relatively small account," Clemens smiled. "We're used to much larger."

"I suppose," Dave sighed. "Go ahead and set it up, can you?"

"Sure can, and it'll only take a few minutes. Would you like for us to plan on continuing to manage the account?"

Twenty minutes later, Dave walked out of the jury-rigged office almost staggering with a new reality he hadn't imagined. That one account alone had been worth close to a million dollars, and some Bellinger Gates employee stock she'd held separately put it well over the mark. Also, there was a quarter-million-dollar life insurance policy, and the human resources people said there was the possibility of a further settlement out there, still fairly fuzzy. For practical purposes, he was a millionaire when everything was done -- in fact, had been even before Julie died, although he hadn't realized it.

Given a choice, he'd much rather be broke and have Julie back, but it was clear now it wasn't going to happen.

Dave was still feeling pretty surreal an hour later when he walked into the new Dunlap and Fyre office in the Ford building. Things were very crowded and looked pretty much thrown together, but they seemed to be working. Soon, he was in a conference with Michelle and Dick. "I take it this is all a go," he said.

"Even more than before," Dick agreed. "You see how packed we are in here. It's probably not going to get better. Are you still looking at heading way out into the sticks some place?"

"Michigan," Dave smiled. "I was there over the weekend. It's a hell of a lot different than New York, but there's a lot of good people, too."

"Might as well be a foreign country; I'm a city boy," Dick shook his head. "What kind of time frame are you looking at?"

"I'll probably be moving this weekend, unless some snag comes up. From our viewpoint, the only problem I can see is I'm going to be stuck with dial-up internet; they don't have broadband in town yet. That means videoconferencing isn't going to be viable."

"We might as well do it on the phones," Michelle snorted. "I'm hoping we can do a lot of the conference stuff face to face. You're still figuring on coming into the office occasionally, right?"

"I think it's going to be important," Dave said. "The problem is it's a ten-hour drive here. Flying isn't going to be a whole lot less, when you add driving to an airport on my end, and then a three-hour wait on top of it. That pretty well means I'm not going to be in every week, and it does mean we need to schedule when I'm here ahead of time so we can work appointments into the time slot. I'm thinking we shoot for once a month, for two or three days."

"That's about how I read it," Dick agreed. "It would be nice if you were a little more available, or a little more often, but that's part of the price. It's going to be a lot worse for Jean out there in Oklahoma."

"Yeah, I wish it was a little easier, too," Dave nodded. "I'd feel a lot happier with half a day once or twice a week, but I can't do it from Michigan. I could from Staten Island. But if this proves to be too cumbersome, I'm more or less figuring on being back somewhere around the city in the spring. Maybe Staten Island, maybe somewhere else."

"That's long enough to give it a fair trial," Michelle agreed. "We need to work out some details before you go. How are you coming on Dithyran's Probe?"

"Very well, in spite of everything," Dave said. "I hope to have it ready for review before I head out. I'll lose several days in the move, and I might as well pick up a new project."

"We've got them," she said. "All the hassles and moving here means we're going to have to shuffle some schedules around. We've got one that's slipped through the cracks I'd like you to get on next and push through."

"Fine with me," he nodded. "After all, I'm going out there to work, not to screw off. I want to be busy."

"Shouldn't have any problem with that," Michelle grinned. "We've got more work than we know what to do with, anyway. Now, this upcoming project is called Swordsman of Atlantis. We bought it last spring, but it's been kicked around a little when it shouldn't have been."

"Is the author anyone I know?"

"Probably not," Michelle said. "Her name is Larissa Hamilton; it's her first book, a fantasy. I'm a little embarrassed we let this one slide, but it came to us from over in general fiction, and I guess they didn't know what to do with it. On top of that, her editor over there was Mike Pittman, and he's gone now. I've glanced at it; it looks like one of those big complicated fantasy doorstoppers you like so well. I'll pop it into your file; take a look at it when you get a chance."

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