by Annie Jocoby
I finally was sated a little, so I climbed off of him and into the passenger seat. I looked at him - his thick hair was going in different directions and his shirt was still unbuttoned. My underwear was still on the floor of the car. He smiled at me and said “do you think that your mom will be ok with Dalilah for a few hours more?”
I nodded, getting on the phone and asking my mother if she could continue to watch our child for the rest of the afternoon. She reluctantly agreed.
We didn’t go home, of course. Nat was still there. So, we got a suite at the Radisson, an upscale downtown hotel. As soon as we got into the room, Ryan pounced on me, his hands on my breasts as he stripped off my top. I unzipped my skirt, tossing it to the side of the bed, while pulling down his pants, then unbuttoned his shirt, pulling this off of him as well.
Although we got our clothes off in record time, the actual love-making did not have the same urgency as it did in the car. Ryan laid me down gently on the bed, looking into my eyes and stroking my hair before he started kissing me passionately. He worked his way down my neck, my breasts, my stomach, then started kissing my thighs. I sighed. This was one of my favorite parts, when he started to lick my thighs slowly. Then he started licking and sucking my genitals, very gently and smoothly, his hands running the length of my entire body. He teased me, bringing me to the precipice of an orgasm, then backing off, only to come back to that area a few minutes later. Briefly, the memory of Andrew flashed in my brain, and I could feel my heart racing in panic and fear. But I willed myself to tamp it down, and concentrate on what my magnetic husband was doing. It felt amazing, and I finally exploded in a powerful orgasm.
Then he was on top of me, once again kissing my lips as he entered me slowly. I gasped a little. We had just made love in the car, but this was different. The action in the car was more like a release, a satisfaction of a need I suddenly had for him while we were talking to Dr. Halder. Once I realized that Ryan had been telling me the truth, I suddenly had to have him inside me. That was what the car love-making was. But this – this was just a pure expression of love. Of undying, unadulterated love. Of two people who would never stop having a need for one another, no matter what happened. It was obvious from the way that we touched one another, to the unspoken words that we conveyed with our eyes. As corny as it sounds, our love-making was the culmination of two souls that have a need to be together, and they finally were fused again, after being apart from one another for way too long. For hours, we were like this, me feeling him hard inside me, feeling his mouth all over me.
Then, after making love for hours in the bed, we moved to the bathtub. Ryan lit some candles as we soaked in the enormous Jacuzzi tub. He gently soaped me up with a sponge, laying behind me, then kissing my back and my neck. Some music was playing from the stereo in the room, and it was being piped into the bathroom. It was easy 70s music, which was one of my favorite genres. Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond, Carly Simon, The Carpenters, Christopher Cross, Bread, Air Supply, The Commodores, Kenny Rogers, David Gates, Dan Fogelberg – I loved them all, and Ryan apparently made a CD featuring all of my favorite old-time artists. We hadn’t really spoken in all this time, just letting our touch and our eyes do the communicating. We remained in the bathtub for hours, just relaxing and enjoying each other, and making love in the bubbles.
I finally was out of my reverie when I realized that it was 10 PM. We got the hotel room at 10 AM, after our appointment, and had been enjoying each other non-stop since then. And, as much as I wanted to continue throughout the night, as did he, there was a little matter of a baby who was at my elderly mother’s house.
Both of us looked at each other and said, at the same time “Dalilah.” Then we smiled.
As we made our way to his car, my legs felt like spaghetti. He held my hand, and I could feel the tingling coursing throughout my body as we touched. We were still quiet, neither of us wanting to break the spell. Finally, I spoke. “I hope that Dalilah was ok at my mother’s house.”
“I’m sure she’s fine, beautiful. Like we are, or will be, from now on.”
We got to my mother’s house, then picked up our daughter. “How was she?” I asked.
“Fine,” my mother said. “A little unusual, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“I swear to god, she said an actual word.”
“Oh, come on, she’s just over four months old. How can that be possible? What word did she say?”
“It sounded like grandma.”
I made a face, then took Ryan’s hand and led him up to the room where Dalilah was staying. She was in her crib, punching and kicking the air. Then she looked at me and clearly said “mama.” Then looked at Ryan and said “dada.”
Ryan and I looked at each other with a puzzled look. Then I gave her a stuffed bear, and she clearly said “bear.”
What the hell? She was gurgling and cooing this morning. Then I thought back – it did seem that she was trying to form words for awhile now, but I’m ashamed to say that, with all the chaos going on, I really wasn’t paying attention.
Ryan and I both just shook our heads, as I picked her up and put her in her car seat. “Bottle,” she said. So I got a bottle out of the diaper bag, and she sucked on it hungrily.
Neither of us spoke about our unusual daughter in the back seat. It was just too weird. Then again, nothing would surprise me anymore about anything. There was always something strange that had been popping up – horrible strange things, but nice ones, too. Like having a less than five month old daughter who suddenly knew words.
And, when I got home with Ryan, I suddenly felt the urge to see his mother.
Chapter Fifty-One
It was a very peculiar situation at home. Nat and Christopher were still there. Ryan and I had not yet figured out how to get her gone. And Nat had announced to us that she was staying until the results of the DNA test was in, and, if the baby was Ryan’s, she was going to stay with us indefinitely.
Ryan sighed. “Nat, you can’t just be a squatter here. My life is with Iris. It always has been, it always will be, and you’ve always known that. Now, I really don’t want to resort to calling the police and having you arrested for trespassing, but I also don’t know what else I can do.”
“Well, I’m not leaving,” she said. “And it’ll be such a nicer home with furniture in it, and a full fridge.” Ryan and I had just gone to the store and stocked up on everything that we needed and more, and the furniture guys were going to be here the next day.
Quietly, while Nat was in the other room, I said to Ryan “This probably seems familiar to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know. You, Nick and Alexis. Hamptons House.”
“Ha ha. That was different, and you know that.”
“Yeah. But why do I get the feeling that she wants that kind of situation here?”
“Guess again. Believe it or not, to my knowledge, Nat doesn’t get into women.”
“That’s a shock. She’s always been so touchy-feely with me.”
“That’s just the way that she is.”
“Ok, then, I stand corrected.” Then I said “I need to go to the library today. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Fine. Leave me here alone with Stalky McStalker,” he said, with a smile.
I nodded. “I’ll be home in a few hours,” I said. “I’m assuming you’re okay with Dalilah?”
“Of course. Oh, and pick up some Chinese on the way home, huh? Orange chicken and egg rolls. And bring enough for Nat.”
I nodded my head, and, as I turned around to leave, I saw him picking up Dalilah and looking at her with wonder in his eyes. She purposefully put her hand on his nose, and said “dada.” He just shook his head.
I headed to the library, and quickly picked up a few books. Then I headed over to Maggie’s group home, turning off my phone. I remembered that Ryan put a tagger on my phone. He usually doesn’t use it for me, except when he had a feeling that I was in danger.
&
nbsp; I hoped against hope that I wasn’t giving off the danger vibe this morning.
I got to the group home, which was a transitional living home for people who had been released from mental hospitals. Maggie was scheduled to live here for a few more months. She was supposed to be released after a year, but she had a mild relapse because her drugs were miscalculated, so she had to stay an extra six months.
The home was rambling, built during the turn of the century, with 10 bedrooms. Each of the bedrooms housed two people. The people in this house shared the common areas of the living room and kitchen, and there were three therapists living there full-time.
I entered her room, knocking on the open door.
“Iris!” she said. “What a nice surprise!” Then she gave me a big hug. “How’s my favorite daughter-in-law?”
“Great. Couldn’t be better.” Which was actually true. After all I went through, having this nice lull was a slice of heaven.
We chatted for awhile, catching up with each other’s lives. “I can’t wait to get out of here and live out on my own,” she was saying. “Ryan and Sarah are going to set me up in a nice condo downtown.”
I nodded. Then I told her “Uh, Ryan and I have a daughter together.”
She clapped her hands delightedly. “Do you have pictures?”
I showed her the pictures on my phone. She looked at me quizzically. “She looks so big. How come Ryan hasn’t told me about her?” She looked very hurt.
Oh, how to explain all of that to her? “Actually, Maggie, he uh, he uh, just found out about her.”
“Oh. Ryan told me that you two were divorced. I actually didn’t know that you were back. So, I guess that you had his daughter and didn’t tell him about it?”
“Something like that.” I immediately felt terrible. Maggie and I had always gotten along. Now she was looking at me suspiciously. “I’ve had a lot of things happen to me lately, and I just kinda went crazy for awhile,” I said, then instantly regretted my choice of words. How could I refer to myself as crazy, when Maggie was a schizophrenic?
She just shrugged. “Who am I to judge? But I have a feeling that you are here for a reason.”
“Yes. Our daughter is unusual.”
“In what way?”
“She started saying words yesterday, and seems to know what these words are. She’s just over four months old. So, I was wondering about Ryan. He’s so modest, but I was wondering if that was something that he did as well.”
“Of course. Ryan and Sarah both have off the charts IQs. They’re both prodigies, too. Ryan was painting by the time he was two, and Sarah started playing the piano at the age of 3. Both of them were fluent speakers by their first birthday, and they both read entire books by their second birthday – Ryan read The Wind in the Willows before he turned two, and Sarah had finished Charlotte’s Web before she had her second birthday. By the time Ryan was five, he was reading A Tale of Two Cities.”
A Tale of Two Cities? I had trouble getting through that dense tome in high school. “I see. I suppose he was reading Dostoyevsky by age 6?”
“Age 7, actually. He read The Brothers Karamazov that year, and actually understood it all.”
“So, Dalilah isn’t really unusual in the Gallagher family?”
She shook her head. “They get their artistic bent from my side. They get their utter brilliance from their father.”
“So, what should I expect from her?”
“She’s going to be a handful, I’ll tell you that. But Ryan should know how to handle her. We kept him in school, in his own grades. That was what he wanted. He didn’t want to skip any grades. But he always went to the very top schools, so they had excellent programs for him and others like him. There were quite a few pupils in his school that matched his brilliance, so he never felt like he was all that unusual.”
I thought of my own high school. There was a gifted program, but probably nothing like what Ryan went through. I also imagined that his school was the type of school where the lessons were demanding for all the kids. I knew that Dalilah would also be going to the very best private school, so she should be challenged sufficiently.
We chatted some more. As I started to leave, Maggie gave me a hug, and said “Please bring my granddaughter to me the next time you come?”
I nodded. “I will. Please don’t tell Ryan I visited you today. As I said, I only came here because I have the feeling that Ryan never would’ve told me this. He is never one to toot his own horn.”
“Truer words were never spoken. I’m very glad you’re back, by the way. I started to worry about my son after you divorced him.”
“We aren’t divorced. I mean, we were, but I lied on the petition, so it’s pretty much void. All I have to do is file a motion with the judge to have it thrown out. I need to do that soon.”
“At any rate, I’m very glad that you’re back with him. He loves you so much.”
“And I, him.”
When I got home, bearing the Chinese food that Ryan requested, I saw Ryan sitting on one of the orange crates, his head in his hands. Dalilah was in her bassinette next to him, saying random words. Nat and Christopher were also there in the dining room. Nat looked at me worriedly, and Ryan immediately got up from his perch, and wrapped his arms around me.
Uh-oh. I turned off my phone, so now he’s worried.
“Oh, thank god,” he said.
“What? I’ve just been gone for a few hours.”
He just held me and said nothing. I looked at Nat, who was biting a thumbnail, a worried expression on her face. I made a gesture to her to explain what was going on.
“Ryan talked to his dad while you were gone,” she said.
“Is he ok?”
“He’s fine. But he’s been in touch with Andrew. He knows that you’ve told people that he was the one who attacked you.”
“And?”
“And he wants to kill you.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
I was feeling like I was Pauline now in The Perils of Pauline. Or Indiana Jones. Something was always happening to me, so that my life was always being threatened somehow. Will she die from her Rochelle attack? Find out in the next installment. Then will she die from being a junkie in a drug house? You’ll have to wait until next week. Then will she die at the hands of her obviously insane rapist? Duh, duh, duh!
I pushed Ryan away from me, and said “Is that all you’re worried about?”
“What do you mean, is that all I’m worried about? A retired government assassin has your number, of course I’m worried about that,” Ryan said. “And you should be, too.”
“How did your father find out about this?”
“Let’s just say that he heard it from his associates. Andrew has become unhinged.”
“Imagine that. A man who used to kill people for a living, becoming unhinged.”
“Why are you taking this so lightly?” Ryan demanded.
“I guess because I’m getting used to this type of thing happening to me anymore. There’s always something that’s threatening me. Some bogey man. I’m tired of looking over my shoulder constantly for one person or another. Just finish me off, already.”
Ryan looked stricken, then picked up Dalilah and handed her to me. She looked me right in the eye, grabbed my hair, and said “Mama.”
“There,” Ryan said. “There’s your reason for living.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “You and Dalilah both are my reason for living. That’s not the point. It just seems that somebody is going to get me. It’s like that movie Final Destination – I cheated death once, now it’s gonna stalk me.”
“Well, there’s something that I need for you to do. I need you to resume target practice. You need to get handier with your .45. I’ll go with you, of course. I’ll teach you how to handle your pistol. Then we need to get you a concealed carry permit.”
“What, we’re gonna take Dalilah there? She’ll freak out.”
“Nat has offered to watch her while we do th
is.”
I looked at Nat, and she nodded. “I still like you, Iris, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”
“I suppose that there isn’t any way you’ll take no for an answer on this?”
Ryan just shook his head.
I sighed. “Here we go again. Well, I suppose it can’t do any harm. It’s not like hiring some random guy to protect me. And I suppose if I’m going to be married to you – and I will be, I promise you I’m not going to leave again – I probably should know how to defend myself. It seems that will be a necessity from here on out.”
“I’m sorry, beautiful, that it is a necessity. God knows, I have lived an f’d up life. It’s caught up to you, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am about that. But you need to be safe, and I can’t be with you every minute of every day. Much as I would like to be. And I know that hiring another bodyguard would never go over with you. So you, my beautiful, need to be able to defend yourself.”
I nodded. “Ok, then, let’s go target shooting.”
So that Saturday we got to the target range, which was a typical target range, with stalls and figures of men some fifty feet away. Ryan and I had our headphones on, and Ryan was showing me how to hit the targets. He cocked his pistol towards the figures, and bam! bam! bam! – he hit three bulls-eyes in a row.
“Now you try it.”
I nervously cocked my gun, and tried to aim at the figure, but missed it entirely, the bullet landing somewhere to the right of the cardboard cut-out.
“I’m sorry, I guess I really don’t know how to aim. That bad man taught me how to load the pistol and everything, but we really didn’t get into aiming it. By the way, how did you get so good at this?”