After he went to bed alone that evening, John had some time to think about Sally’s proposition, and he didn’t think much more about it than he had when she’d first said it. It was not as if he needed sex that badly, because he didn’t, not anymore – he’d burned through that part of his life years ago, after all.

Although Sally had only been around a week, she was turning into a fine friend, a good housekeeper, and generally fun to be around – even more so because that meant Teresa was around as a part of the deal.

But it ended there.

Every reason he’d come up with to not get serious with Sally still pretty much held firm. Given her track record, he couldn’t imagine her sticking with a relationship or anything else for the long haul. Even if he was actively involved, she might be able to manage to stay in the area long enough for Teresa to graduate from high school, but he couldn’t imagine that her will-o’-the-wisp wouldn’t be calling at her every second.

Mandy had been fun, for a while, and so had Lisa, Susan, and Julie – but everything with them ended, at least temporarily in Mandy’s case. He’d pretty well come to the conclusion that he needed long-term loyalty and stability in his life, at least when it came to a relationship. When you got right down to it, Sally didn’t seem to offer that, and really, Mandy didn’t either. Better to do without rather than deal with more heartache from either of those two.

So the best thing he could think of it was to ride out the current hassle – get Teresa out of her wheelchair and getting around normally, which would take a couple months. Once that had happened, he could see helping the two get a place of their own. That way, at least his own life would be back in order; Sally and Teresa could still be his friends, and he could help them out as needed without it having to get much more personal than that.

Besides, Mandy might be back about that time. He wasn’t going to ask her to move in with him, and didn’t think the long-term chances of success were much better than with Sally, but there was a history there he couldn’t deny. If it didn’t work out with her, well, if suitable woman came along, well, great; if one didn’t, then so what? It would be nice to have someone in his life, but he knew all too well that it could easily be a pain in the ass, too. He’d had enough of that in his lifetime.

A couple of weeks passed, with no major hassles. Suncoast wound up winning the Tomtucknee Regional bid, and by a pretty good margin, so all the hassles involved with trying to get an extra angle on Voss had mostly come out to be tail chasing. Warren wound up getting an order about equally big out of Mobile, one he’d been trying to pin down for years.

Warren’s wife wound up pleading guilty to aggravated assault on a police officer and malicious destruction of property; the judge must not have been in a good mood that day, since she got two years for it. The screaming fit she put on in the courtroom may have affected that decision. Warren was concerned he was going to have to move back home to take care of the kids, but they wound up going to his wife’s mother. Warren didn’t like his mother-in-law much better than he liked his wife, but the kids didn’t want to leave their friends and move to Alabama, so Warren was fine with it. By the time his wife got out of the state slammer, he’d be free of her.

John’s big issue with Suncoast in those days was Hal, the salesman who didn’t seem to be doing much of anything in North Carolina. John was starting to look at possible replacements when Hal came in with three big orders in two days, which earned him a stay of execution, if nothing else. About all John could do was to make a mental note to keep an eye on things and re-evaluate in the future if needed.

John normally didn’t read the local newspaper very much, but one day when he walked into the office Annamaria handed him a copy of the paper, which sported a moderate-sized headline: Tow truck scam ring broken. Though the article was vague in spots about details, it appeared that whoever was running Greenleaf was in the process of getting theirs, which warmed his heart. It was about freaking time, in his opinion.

It didn’t come out right away, but a mild combination of a discussion with Detective Garrison and a little nosing around by Annamaria revealed that several competing tow truck companies did indeed have moles among their dispatchers. Garrison was quickly able to see that the incidents involving Fred’s Towing were only happening when one particular dispatcher was on shift, and a little cooperation with Fred and temporary rescheduling settled any remaining question. It turned out that the mole was a relative of Fred who thought that meant she should be getting more money for less work. When a call came in, instant messaging meant that Greenleaf had the word even quicker than the people at Fred’s. In the aftermath, the dispatcher got more than she bargained for in the “less work” side of the equation. Similar links were found in other companies.

The trouble with the Jag proved to be a fuel filter, which Julio remedied in only a few minutes. He and Annamaria seemed to have a lot of fun tooling around town with it; for some reason it didn’t give Julio much trouble, and John was tempted to just let him keep the car as a sneaky way of rewarding Annamaria for being who she was.

One evening when John didn’t have anything better to do he thought to call Emily, still the de facto president of the class of ’88 up in Bradford, to report that one of the lost class members, Sally, had been found. He merely passed along the word that Sally and her daughter were staying with him while the girl recovered from the accident, but didn’t get into a lot of details. Emily and Sally wound up having a nice talk, catching up on some of the other class members.

It wasn’t long before the wheelchair became very confining to Teresa, and she was literally counting the days until she could get the casts off. She managed to stay busy with schoolwork, the computer, reading, and with Carlos and Josie showing up frequently. It was fun to have the teenagers around the house, and once again John noted the missing presence in his life. Things were going to be quieter when Sally and Teresa were gone, that was for sure. When he stopped and thought about it, he wasn’t sure how much he was looking forward to it.

Eventually the weeks crept past for the girl, until one day John and Sally wrestled her into the seat of the now-repaired Toyota and instead of taking her back to the hospital, took her to an orthopedic specialist John happened to know. An x-ray revealed that her legs were pretty well healed, and it was time to get the casts off. The chore went quickly, and Teresa had big plans to walk out of the place.

There was a fly in that ointment, one John had warned her about – her legs would be weak from disuse. She made it to the front door but was glad to have the wheelchair for the ride back to the car. That was the last time she used it, though; John stopped off at Green’s Medical Supply and borrowed a walker for her to use. Naturally, Teresa disdained it as an “old people’s thing” but that didn’t last very long. It proved to be what she needed to get the strength back in her legs, and soon she was getting around the house with it.

Still, getting rid of the casts was very liberating for her. Within minutes of getting home from the doctor’s office, she had her tiny red bikini on and was heading toward the pool that had been denied to her for two months. John and Sally joined her, of course, partly to keep an eye on her but also to soak up some of her feeling of freedom.

That evening, as John was grilling some steaks out on the patio to help celebrate Teresa’s release from her enforced plaster bondage, Sally came out and said, “I’ll keep an eye on the steaks. You have a phone call you’d better take.”

John was afraid he knew what that meant – a unit must have crapped out somewhere, and he’d spend half the night, or more, in a mad drive to deliver a replacement unit. To his relief, it was Mandy. The thought crossed his mind that now that Teresa had her casts off, it was probably about time for Mandy to be heading back this way. They’d heard a little from her the last few weeks, but not much.

“So did you get your divorce yet?” he asked.

“Not just yet, but it won’t be long now,” she replied. “Another few days.”

“Well good deal. I guess that means we ought to be seeing you in a week or ten days or so.”

“I’m afraid not, John,” she sighed. “The more I thought about what you told me, the more I think you were right. We’d both be damn fools to try and pick up where we left off, and our experience would be hanging over us if we did. Somehow that doesn’t strike me as a recipe for success.”

“It’s not a done deal, that’s for sure,” he agreed, “but we might be able to make a go out of it.”

“And we might not, John. That would just be more time wasted for the both of us.” She took a deep breath and went on. “It’s not like I’ve found someone out here, because I haven’t. I haven’t even been looking for a guy. I have been looking for a job, though, and I’ve got one. I just found out this afternoon, and I start the first of the week. It’s not a private agency, it’s a state agency. The money isn’t what I’ve been making elsewhere, but if I can stick it out for a year I’ll have civil service status. That won’t make me fireproof in case of a major downsizing, but it’ll make it pretty damn difficult. That means I won’t have to be continually worrying about whether the project gets funded next year or not.”

“Well, that’s good news, I guess,” he told her, not sure of how he actually felt. In a way he’d been looking forward to her coming back to Sarasota – but in a way he’d been dreading it, too. “It ought to give you a little stability in your life.”

“I sure hope so,” she said. “I’m going to be in the state capital here, Carson City, Nevada. It’s not exactly Sarasota, and it’s not exactly DC, but there are some things I like about it, and I can’t help but think I can make a life for myself here.”

“Well, good,” he told her. “I’m sure you’ll be back to see your dad sooner or later, so drop in if you get the chance.”

“I probably will, although I doubt if it’s going to be anytime soon,” she said. “Maybe around the holidays I’ll see if I can put together a few days off and make a quick trip back there. If not, we’ll probably see each other at a class reunion sooner or later.”

“That’s about the only time we’ve seen each other in the past few years,” he replied. “So that won’t be anything new.”

“Yeah, but at least I won’t have Joe bitching at me about my wanting to go in the first place. That strikes me as a net gain.” She hemmed and hawed for a moment, then changed the subject. “Look, John. About Sally.”

“Yes?”

“I still don’t know what to tell you about her. I like her spirit, and I know you were starting to feel real protective and fatherly toward Teresa. I imagine that’s still pretty true.”

“More true than ever,” he agreed. “She got her casts off today and she’s about the happiest kid you’ve ever seen.”

“I’ll bet. It’s tough for a kid at that age to be held down like that. But John, you’ve been good for the both of them, and I could see they were good for you. They both appealed to your protector instinct, and although I know you’d deny it, I know you have it.”

“Well, maybe,” he conceded, at least partway, “or I wouldn’t still be an EMT.”

“True,” she laughed. “That really is important to you and a lot has come from it. But John, just because I’m not going to be an issue for you anymore doesn’t mean you should go head over heels and do something you might better not do.”

“Believe me, I’ve been thinking about that a lot,” he agreed. “I’m not any closer to an answer, either. But things had to stay pretty much the way they were until Teresa got her casts off. Now, that’s rapidly becoming a non-issue. She has to use a walker for now since her legs are so weak, but that’ll be gone in a few days.”

“And then she’s going to be pretty much a normal kid,” Mandy sighed. “Or at least as normal as a kid in her position can be. John, it would be nice if you could keep Sally and Teresa around for a few years, more for Teresa’s sake than for Sally’s. I’m not telling you to marry Sally or anything, and I think you’d be foolish to do it. But, well, something short of it.”

“Believe me, I’ve been thinking about it. I don’t know exactly how it’s going to work out, but I am thinking about it.”

“Well, however it works out, good luck to you, John. I guess part of the reason I’m going to stay in Nevada is so that I don’t get in your way and complicate things, however they happen to work out.”

“It would complicate things, that’s for sure,” he replied, “and I still don’t know which way I’m going.”

“You’ll figure it out, John. You’ll figure it out. Catch you around sometime.”

John hung up the phone thinking that Mandy had followed her own unpredictable will-o’-the-wisp toward the future, rather than trying to revive a past that was, at best, uncertain. Maybe she was better for it. Time would tell.

He thought a lot about Mandy’s phone call, and what he was going to do about Sally and Teresa, but he didn’t come to any conclusions. It was clear that he was going to miss the two if and when they moved out, but maybe it was for the best, too.

It was a relatively quiet evening around the house. Teresa spent some time on the computer, Sally watched TV a little before she gave up on the show she was watching as being incredibly stupid, and John sat on the patio reading a book. It was, all in all, a pretty quiet evening.

About her normal time, Teresa started yawning and making sounds about heading toward bed. At least it was good to see her head for the bedroom using the walker instead of the wheelchair; a real milestone had been passed today.

Not long after Teresa went to her bedroom, John and Sally were out on the patio, stripping the cover off the hot tub – it was something they’d done most nights since Sally and Teresa had been living there, and it was always a good time to talk about things. Although there were some important outstanding questions they needed to settle, tonight the focus of the discussion was Teresa’s getting rid of her casts and how happy a kid that had made her.

They were just getting nice and mellow when the sliding door of the patio opened, and Teresa walked out, wearing a robe and using her walker. “Are you two having fun?” she asked.

“Uh, Teresa,” Sally started. This was awkward; she and John weren’t wearing any clothes, of course. “Maybe, uh . . . ”

“Don’t bullshit me, Mom,” Teresa smiled. “I know what the two of you have been doing out here almost every night we’ve been here, and now that I’ve got those damn casts off I get to join you.”

“But Teresa,” John protested, to no avail. Teresa stripped off the robe revealing the fact that she had nothing on under it. Without a bit of shyness, she maneuvered the walker around so she could get her fanny up on the deck, swung around, and with her arm strength slid herself into the tub.

“That’s better,” she said. “I’ve been wondering what I’ve been missing. There have been some days I thought this would feel really good.”

“It can help your legs recover,” John replied, reaching for something to say. He’d been able to get used to being nude with Sally, but with Teresa . . . that was a whole new world to conquer.

“I thought it might,” Teresa smiled. “A few days of this and I ought to be back to normal. I could really get hooked on this, though.”

“It is relaxing,” John said, still feeling extremely awkward. He stole a glance at Sally, who was struggling to keep from breaking out in a severe case of the giggles.

“John,” Teresa said, “all my life I’ve wanted to know what it’s like to have a dad. I don’t mean some guy who’s hanging around with Mom, I mean a real dad who loves me and takes care of me. You’ve come a lot closer than anyone ever has to being that dad, and I don’t want it to end. You’ve been so good to me that, well, it makes up for a lot of other stuff that went on in the past.”

“We haven’t worked out what happens next,” John admitted. “I’d figured on talking about it in the next few days.”

“If I get a vote, I know what it is,” she said, “and that’s to stay here with you.”

“It may not work out that way, honey,” Sally said. “There are, uh, other issues.”

“Then try to work them out,” Teresa said. “I don’t want to go back to being a hobo who lives in beat-up apartments, travels in a junk car, and is never in any place long enough to make any friends. Try to work something out for my sake, please?”

“We’ll talk about it,” Sally told her daughter, “but I can’t make any promises, not yet. We’ll have to see.”

They were in the hot tub about another half hour, and Teresa was making a pretty good case for it all the way through. Finally they wrapped it up, and John went to his bathroom and got ready for bed. He didn’t know what to think, but realized he had to have been expecting an impassioned plea from Teresa.

Sleep wouldn’t come. He lay awake thinking about options, trying to figure out some way to make Teresa’s dream come true, at least without it messing up his life beyond recognition. He was still staring at the ceiling when he heard the door open quietly; in a few seconds he felt someone joining him in bed.

“Sally?” he guessed.

“Yeah,” she said. “Don’t worry, John. I’m not coming in here to use my body to talk you into staying. I even have a T-shirt and panties on. But Teresa was being pretty insistent about it, and it came down to my coming over here, or she would. And I’ll guarantee you, she’d be coming over here to use her body on you. I think she’s a little young for that, so, well, here I am.”

“She must really want to stay,”

“She does. What’s more, she’s not the only one. John, we don’t have to have sex if you don’t want to. I’m, well, I told you a while back I’m flawed about it. But I think we need to at least look like we’re doing something or she will be in here, and I’d really rather that didn’t happen just yet.”

“So she’s blackmailing you.”

“I guess,” Sally sighed. “Look, I don’t mind spending the night with you. In fact, I’d kind of like to, just to enjoy being close to you.”

“I don’t mind that idea. I do like you, Sally. I’m just concerned that we could wind up going someplace that it would be better if we didn’t even try for.”

“I see what you’re saying and I don’t blame you. John, with my past I know I’m not the best prospect out there. In fact, it might even be a good idea if we drew a line and didn’t go past it. But for right now, maybe the next few nights, I think maybe I’d better be here than in with Teresa.”

“You’re probably right on that. She’s a kid, and while she’s a pretty forward kid, she’s still jailbait, and I’d be foolish to go down that road. Cute jailbait, though. I have to admit that.”

“Yes she is, and I think it’ll get even worse as she gets her health and confidence back. If we wind up staying here with you, well, in the long run I’m the only defense you’ll have against her. We don’t have to do anything John, not if you don’t want to. We can just fake it for her sake.”

“I suppose,” he conceded, “but maybe we’d better start thinking about an apartment or a trailer for the two of you.”

“It might work,” she replied, “at least as a place for us to stay. But John, I’m not convinced she’s going to give in that easily. She knows about my, uh, problem with sex. We’ve talked about it often enough. She thinks that a guy as concerned and caring and experienced as you are might be able to overcome it. And since she doesn’t want to have a first time as horrible as I had, well, John, unless we do something you’re going to be on her hit list sooner or later. Maybe it will work in a few years, but not now.”

“Maybe I could tell her flat out I’m not going to do it now, but in a few years I might consider it if I don’t have anything else going at the time.”

“That might work,” Sally sighed. “At least it buys us a little time to think of something else. But John, uh, while I don’t really want to do it tonight, I can’t help but think that Teresa’s idea about you and me might hold some water.”

“No way of knowing without finding out,” John smiled.

“Right, and considering this day, I don’t think this is the time to be finding out. But someday, and probably someday soon.”

Teresa said nothing the next five mornings about the fact that her mother hadn’t slept in her bed at night. But the sixth morning, John and Sally came out of his bedroom, both of them with a relaxed attitude and big grins on their faces. “That’s better, you two,” Teresa said when she saw them. “It wasn’t worth the worry now, was it?”

“So you’re still not married?” Scott Tyler said at the twentieth reunion of the Class of 1988. It was being held at a restaurant in Hawthorne, near Bradford.

“Not yet,” John replied, “but some years ago we decided that if it wasn’t broke, there was no point in fixing it. We may change that now that Teresa is going to college. Or we may not. Sally started out as my housekeeper, cook, and companion, and mother to my de facto adopted stepdaughter. She’s done a damn good job of it, and I don’t have anything to argue about.”

“You know,” Scott smiled, “a good many years ago, probably after you divorced Mandy, there was a bet going around that you’d turn up at our twentieth class reunion with a good-looking young babe with a southern accent.”

“Oh, hush yo mouf,” Teresa said in an exaggerated southern accent. “I’m his unofficial stepdaughter, not his girlfriend.”

“Well, still he outdid the bet,” Scott smiled. “Two good-looking babes, and it’s hard to believe one of them is Sally Hanson.”

“It’s hard for me to believe it myself, sometimes,” Sally smiled. She’d long since quit being a bottle blonde with poorly enhanced breasts. She was back to her normal brunette, but the exaggerated implants had been replaced with a pair that were reasonable, but not outlandish, thanks to the lawsuit settlement. Over the years she’d worked at bringing her natural beauty out. She was obviously older than her daughter but no less good-looking. She knew that John was proud of both of them; he’d told them that often enough. “I went through a lot of hell along the way, but I finally got lucky. It’s been worth it, and with John Engler, of all people. I never would have expected that!”

“I never expected I’d wind up with Sally Hanson, either,” John smiled. “But Scott, let me tell you, I am not complaining.”

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