"Blue, Without You" - Part 3/3 of a series

This is the third part to my story about one night in the life of a single father trying to go on a date while still caring for his eight-year-old with separation anxiety.  The first two parts are necessary to understand this weeks' entry, but I think you, as the reader, will have a better understanding of my adoration of the characters if you check them out first.
Part 1, titled, "Dependent":  http://grahampatricksmith.blogspot.com/2011/10/brigits-flame-oct-week-3-title.html
Part 2, titled, "Damaged Goods": http://grahampatricksmith.blogspot.com/2011/11/brigits-flame-november-week-1-prompt.html


After I had paid Mrs. Wallace for her time, I sat on the couch with Emer still in my arms.  Charlotte sat beside us.  The woman knew all the right questions to ask about my daughter’s favorite cartoon, and Emer finally started to come out of her shell and answer in sentences that longer than one word.  My daughter still plainly had no interest in the stranger in her home, but, hey, it was a start.

By the time the credits of the show started to roll, Emer’s cheek was rested against my shoulder and she was seconds away from sleep.  She looked like an angel.  “I’m going to put her to bed,” I whispered to Charlotte.  Emer tried to mumble something in protest, but her eight-year-old metabolism had run its course for the day.  A few minutes later I had Emer in her pajamas and tucked into her side of the bed. 

“When’re you coming to bed, daddy?”  She asked, squeezing her teddy bear.

“Soon, honey,” I told her just before I kissed her forehead.  “Good night, Emmie.”  Emer mumbled the best good-night she could as she rolled over, and I took a wistful glance at my daughter before heading back into the living room.

“She’s beautiful,” Charlotte told me as I joined her on the couch again.

“Thanks,” I replied.  I sighed and sent Charlotte a sideways glance as I practically deflated against the couch.  She scooted closer to me.  “You want a beer?  I have Hoegaarden.”  I asked her. 

 “Ooh, beer snob,” she commented with a sly smirk.  “If you had offered me anything less, I might have been insulted.  You can’t get me liquored up on cheap booze.” 

“Look who’s calling who a beer snob,” I retorted, imitating her smile. I stepped to the fridge, pried the lids off of two bottles of beer, and returned to the couch.  Charlotte held it with one finger around its neck, like an old pro, and stretched her feet across my lap on the couch as she took her first drink.

The events of the night rolled over in my head again.  “Thanks again, Charlotte, for coming back here with me,” I told her.  “I’ll be honest; when you asked if you could meet Emer, I was nervous.  She’s sort of… discriminatory when it comes to me bringing a woman home.  Specifically, she never likes any of them. I’m really sorry if she said anything that offended you.” 

“Just how many women do you bring home?” She asked.  My jaw dropped and I sputtered like an idiot for a few seconds, but then she laughed and her eyes softened as she lowered her bottle.  “Relax, I’m just teasing.  Your daughter is a wonderful little person, David.  She couldn’t offend me if she tried.  I don’t blame her for wanting you all to herself.” 

I smiled and tentatively laid my hand on Charlotte’s bare ankles.  She jumped a little from my cold palm, but then smiled as I caressed the smooth skin of her feet and legs.  Her eyelids fell and she took another drink from her beer as I touched her.  “So, Pinkie Pie is your favorite character?” I asked.

“We both like to party,” Charlotte cooed, laughing a little as she set her bottle on the floor. 

I allowed my fingers to walk their way along Charlotte’s leg, to her knee.  She made no move to stop me.  “Oh, do you now?” I said in my most smooth voice. 

Holy cow, was I out of practice.  How many years had it been since I had tried to seduce a woman?  Two?  Three? 

My fingers touched her thigh, and a need awakened inside of me, the likes of which I hadn’t felt in ages.  Come to think of it, how long had it been since I had been laid?  I had very nearly gotten lucky on a date about eight months ago, but a frantic call from Mrs. Wallace about Emer having a panic attack had sent me running home. 

I wanted Charlotte.  Badly.  And, if my skills at reading women hadn’t completely atrophied in the time I had been celibate, it looked like she wanted me, too.

 I leaned down to her, and she sat up far enough to wrap her arms around my neck and pull me into a kiss.  Just as I thought they would be, her full, heart-shaped lips were warm, and excellent for kissing.  As her lips parted and her tongue appeared, the bestial need inside me howled to be released.  I pulled her closer to me with more strength that I thought I had in my right arm.  My left was still on her thigh.  The two of us wallowed in the kiss, each one drawing on the emotions of each other, and my hand crept ever further up her leg. 

“DAD-EEEEEEE!”

Emer’s voice shattered the mood like a baseball through a picture window.  My limbs seized as adrenaline filled them when my daddy-defenses instantly kicked in.  Charlotte slipped from my arm and bounced on the couch, her eyes wide with surprise. 
“DAD-EEEEE!  WHERE ARE YOU?!” 

My mouth worked uselessly for a second as my brain caught up to reality.  The urge to run to my baby girl’s side and the need to be with the woman on my couch fought for control.  Charlotte blinked for a few seconds, then a defeated smile crossed her face and she chuckled. 

“Charlotte,” I said, my breath huffing as if I had just run a marathon.  “Charlotte, I… I….”

“Go to her,” she said with that beautiful, placid smile.  From the couch she stretched as far as she could and stroked my cheek gently with her fingertips.  “She needs you.” 

I blinked stupidly again, wondering if I should make an excuse for being cock-blocked by an eight-year-old or unapologetically run to my daughter’s side.  Still smiling, Charlotte motioned for me to go just as Emer cried out again, “DAD-EEEEEE!” 

After I meandered from beneath Charlotte’s legs I trudged to the bedroom and opened the door.  Inside I found my daughter sitting cross-legged on the bed and clutching her teddy bear to her chest.  The bedside lamp basked the room in yellow light.

“I woke up and you weren’t here,” Emer said.  She batted her big, blue eyes at me.  “I thought you were gone.”

I did my best to resist my little girl’s siren’s song.  “I’m still here, honey,” I told her, brushing back a silken strand of her golden hair.  “Why don’t you try to go to back to sleep?  I’ll be to bed soon.”

She wrapped her arms tighter around her teddy bear.  Its limbs splayed out like she was going to squeeze it in half.  “I can’t sleep without you,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. 

As it does so often where Emer is concerned, my heart broke, and she became that much more difficult to resist.  “How about I get you a glass of water?” I asked.  “That might help you get to sleep.” 

Her little forehead knotted together, clearly displaying her distress, but she replied with, “Okay.” 

When I left the bedroom, I found Charlotte standing by the door with her shoes and jacket on and her purse in her hands.  I froze so quickly that my socks slipped on the hardwood floors.  “Charlotte,” I managed to choke.  “What’s going on?”

For a moment everything I thought Charlotte might have been, every positive vibe I had gotten from her that evening, turned into a spear and stabbed me in the heart.  But just as the cold feeling started to creep into my chest, she smiled her beautiful smile again and stepped to me.  “Maybe we should call it a night, David.”

“But…” I stammered.  “But I’m just getting her a glass of water.  Then… then we…”

She laid her hand on the side of my face, and the tension that had been building in my shoulders was gone.  “It’s okay, David.  She’s wonderful, and you’re wonderful.  And right now, she needs you.  Let’s see where things go from our next date.”

I visibly shook.  “Wait.  You’re not breaking up with me?  This isn’t our last date?”

“No, goofy!”  She laughed.  “Why would it be?”

 I rolled my shoulders.  “More than one woman has turned tail because of how dependent Emer and I are of each other.  I thought you were going to be one more on the list.”

She slipped one arm around my waist and I wrapped my arms around her back.  “I am not most women,” she whispered. 
“Thank God,” I told her, just before I leaned down and kissed her again.  Just before the two of us stepped away she lowered her hand and grabbed my butt fiercely. 

She popped up on her tiptoes and whispered, “Next time, dinner will be at my place.” 

Brigits Flame: Oct., week 1 - Baptized by Fire

The air under the floorboards was hot and cramped.  Every breath I took was just another mouthful of the same stale, damp oxygen, filled with the scent of wood and perspiration and mildew.  The thundering of my heart was so loud in my ears that I swore it would give away our position any minute.  Of course, such a thought was incredibly stupid.  No one else could hear my heartbeat, not even the seven other children crowded into the crawlspace with me.  We were completely concealed.

    

Unless they had brought the dogs.  God help us if they brought the dogs.

Heavy boots resounded slowly on the floorboards, less than an inch above my head.  They sounded like thunder from a storm still far away, one whose clouds were visible from miles away and whose rain was yet to be felt.  But this storm wasn’t distant, and we hadn’t had such an adequate warning as thunder and lightning and clouds.

“And you have not seen the eight Hofmann children?” Said a rough, gravelly, man’s voice.

“I wasn’t aware that the Hofmanns had children.” Mrs. Schmidt, the clockmaker, was a perfect liar, and could deceive anyone without the slightest waver in her voice. “They lived more than a kilometer from here, and I only saw Mr. Hofmann every few months or so when he’d need his watch repaired.”

No doubt the soldiers had searched the floor for a trap door into the hidden crawlspace, and no doubt they had come up empty handed.  It was common knowledge that almost all older buildings had secret hiding places such as this, but the clockmaker’s shop was a special kind of oddity.  Its hidden compartment was between the basement and first floor, and the compartment was in the basement’s ceiling, forcing one to climb up into the hiding place.  It was why Mama and Papa had asked Mrs. Schmidt to hide us when they left to secure our passage to Mama’s cousin’s home in London.

They had been gone a week, though they told us the trip would take two.  They were still alive, and they would be back for us.  I knew it.

The gruff-voiced soldier hadn’t responded, nor had he moved.  For just a moment I forgot he was in the room, and I became distracted by the sounds of the other soldiers frantically searching the basement for eight hiding children.  “You’re lying, Mrs. Schmidt.”

 

“I beg your pardon,” Mrs. Schmidt replied, instantly irritated.  “I will have you know that I am a staunch supporter of The Party and have divulged all my ancestry to the authorities.  I would never betray the Fatherland.”

I heard the other soldier ascend the stairs from the basement and I exhaled a sigh of relief, probably the fifth time I had held a mouthful of the same stale air.  I tightened my arm in triumph around my six-year-old sister, Anya, who made a tiny, fearful, mewling sound.  “Sir, we found no one,” one of the other soldiers told the one who was in charge, the one speaking with Mrs. Schmidt. 

A pregnant silence hung in the room, and I wished that I hadn’t allowed myself the small moment of triumph.  A rustling of leather and metal and the ominous clicking of the hammer on a pistol pierced the silence.  The cruel meaning of the sounds screamed louder than their muffled resonances could.  “Mrs. Schmidt, you have only one opportunity to tell us where the children are hiding.”

“S-sir!” Mrs. Schmidt flustered.  “You have searched my home and wrecked my business, and now you threaten my life!  Why, I have half a mind to find your commanding officer and…”

Thunder rang through the house, louder than anything I had ever heard in my life.  The floorboards muffled the sound somewhat, but it was still loud enough to deafen me with a sudden ringing in my ears.  Through the ringing I still heard a limp thump on the floor above us.

Anya curled tighter in my arms and mewled again, but I clapped my hand over her mouth and held my breath to keep my own tears inside.

 

“The Fatherland doesn’t need liars, pure-blooded or otherwise,” the soldier said, just over whisper.  A second later he said, louder, “Take anything of value, then burn it to the ground.  If they’re hiding here, all the better.” 

The sorrow for Mrs. Schmidt in my heart was instantly crushed with urgency and fear.  I looked to the second oldest, my twelve-year-old sister, Lenora, and found her face streaked with tears and her bottom lip trembling uncontrollably.

Mrs. Schmidt was dead.  I needn’t muddy the details with hope for the soldiers’ mercy.  And mama and papa were surely in London by now, trying to figure out a way to get the eight of us there in secrecy.  There was no one else who could save us.

Footsteps retreated from the house, and when they were gone my younger siblings all started crying, the seven of them together like a flock of wounded lambs.  “Shh!” I hissed at them as I willed away my own tears.  It was so dark between the floors that I wasn’t sure if any of them could see my face, but I glared at their shadows and showed them the sober determination in my eyes.

A lone set of footsteps thumped back into the house, accompanied by a sound of water being sloshed onto the floor.  Liquid dripped between the floorboards and spotted the wood beneath us, and with one sniff I knew instantly that we would not be lucky enough to have the house soaked with water.  The footsteps continued into the basement, and as I listened I pushed Anya out of the way and positioned myself alone on top of the trap door.  It had no hinges, which would have been visible from the outside; instead there were two wooden slats that held it into place, making it all but invisible from the basement beneath.

 

When I was sure the soldier was beneath me, I rose up on my elbows and toes, slid one of the slats out of the way, and then brought down my full weight upon the remaining slat.  Though I wasn’t a large boy for fourteen, I weighed enough; the wood splintered under me and I held my breath and tensed every muscle in my body as I fell from the crawlspace on the trap door.

 

When I fell upon the soldier, it felt as though I had been hit by a truck.  Though I had tried to prepare myself for the blow, all the air was ejected from my lungs and my entire skeleton shuddered as the man crumpled beneath me.  For a numb second I lay upon the ruined trap door, too stunned to speak or move, but the smell of gasoline in the basement shook me back to reality and I forced myself to my feet.  From the hole in the ceiling Anya and Lenora looked upon me, a strange mix of heroic elation and revulsion on their faces.

 

“Don’t lay there gawking!” I hissed at them.  “We have to get out of here!”  One by one Lenora lowered the younger siblings to the floor by their arms, until she dropped from the hole in the ceiling and landed nimbly on the trap door.  There was a satisfied spark in her eyes when her weight fell upon it and the soldier crushed beneath, who hadn’t moved since I had landed on him.

I looked away from the soldier and instead concentrated on the gasoline can he had dropped, which had emptied completely on the floor, and the steel lighter that had skittered from his hand and lay a few feet away.  I snatched it up and approached the stairs.  “As quietly as you can,” I told my siblings.  The younger ones had been staring, dumbfounded, at the dead soldier since they had emerged from the crawl space, but turned their eyes to me when I spoke.

Once I removed my shoes so I would make less noise, I slunk up the stairs and peeked onto the first floor.  It was empty, thank God; if there had been any more soldiers in the house they surely would have heard the commotion.  I motioned for my siblings to follow, and soon seven barefoot children were following me onto the first floor.

Mrs. Schmidt lay in a heap on the floor, between two dark trails of gasoline.  She was curled into a ball away from us, thankfully, and lay in a pool much darker than the gasoline around her.  I snapped my fingers once and my siblings’ eyes shot from her to me, and with my fingers I commanded their eyes not to waver.  Seven scared children all nodded, but said nothing. 

I skulked to the front door, which the soldier had left open, and looked out into the street.  It was abandoned, but I could hear the small group of soldiers in another business a few meters away, no doubt being just as evil and cruel as they had been to Mrs. Schmidt in their pursuit of the Hofmann children.  With a motion from me, Lenora led the six younger children out the door and around the side of the building.

When they were clear I took one last look into the clockmaker’s shop and the motionless woman who had given everything to protect eight children that lived more than a kilometer away.  I prayed for God to receive her and to forgive me for bringing such a fate upon her just because she had the best hiding place in the village.

I struck the lighter and tossed it back into the building, onto one of the dark streaks of gasoline.  A ribbon of fire instantly surged to life and ran across the floor like a wild, reckless child.  Before the fire and sadness and fear could transfix me I darted away from the door and around the back of the building, where I found my siblings waiting for me.  The eight of us ran for the nearby woods as if we had the Fuhrer’s entire forces at our heels.

If we were lucky, we would get to the road to London and find Mama and Papa before the dogs found us.

If we were lucky, word would reach Mama and Papa that the Hofmann children had not been found and were on the run.  

If we were lucky, Mama and Papa had made it to London.

If we were lucky, there would still be a London for us to run to.