Blue Ridge

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance by any character or situation to any actual person or event is purely coincidental. All characters presented in this narrative are over the age of 18.

This is an installment in the Rebecca series.

Blue Ridge

By Royce F. Houton

Summer has a reliable timetable for taking up residence in the Virginia Tidewater -- the low-lying coastal region through which rivers and creeks wind like serpents, emptying themselves eventually into the lower Chesapeake Bay where it kisses the Atlantic Ocean. Locals call it Hampton Roads, shorthand for a cluster of pretty substantial cities at the southeasternmost corner of Virginia that includes -- but is not limited to -- Virginia Beach, which is the state's largest city with a significant summer tourist industry as its name implies; Portsmouth; Chesapeake; and Norfolk, where I have lived with Becky Parsons for the past year and a half.

Summer traditionally starts with restrained increments in May that gather in frequency, heat and duration until it finally settles in full time around late June or Independence Day. The summer of 2024 arrived suddenly with all the subtlety of a home invasion.

More often than not, it's sweltering here from July through mid-September, especially when the air drifts on the prevailing southwesterly air currents, picking up all the steamy output the sand flats, farm fields, swamps, bayous and mud bogs in rural Southside Virginia and the North Carolina low country can yield. But by mid-May of 2024, muggy heat that can soak through an undershirt and dress shirt in less than five minutes had settled in with no intention of moving along.

Becky and I loved spending time outdoors. We took turns living at her house in Norfolk's somewhat patrician Ghent neighborhood, which had a very private back yard that allowed us to wear the minimum when we like -- sometimes not even that! -- and my beachfront house on a sandy strand in Norfolk's Ocean View area, the southern shoreline near the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. We could be adventurous outdoors there, too, but it required more vigilance because the shoreline itself is public access for about 30 feet from the high tide waterline, meaning joggers or dog walkers could (and almost have) surprised us in compromising situations.

But weather this miserable made anything outdoors -- from barbecues with Becky's daughters and grandkids to making out -- unappealing to say the least.

By the first week of June, we'd both had enough.

"This frozen Margarita is not doing the trick," Becky lamented as we reclined on chaise lounges on her deck just after sunset. We had hoped to take in a meteor shower in the northern sky provided we could see through the gray, hazy humidity that made the stars indistinguishable and rendered the moon a silvery blur.

Sweat beaded on her forehead and trickled into her eyes when I looked over at her. The same was true on the untanned skin of my bare chest. The cloth bunched around the drawstring of my sleep shorts was already soaked.

I nodded sympathetically at Becky. "You're right, Becks. This sucks."

"We expect this for July and August, but the calendar says it's still more than two weeks before summer starts. Kids aren't even out of school yet," she said, taking a gulp of her fast-melting Margarita. "Fuck climate change."

"Is it too early for us to get out of this swamp to higher altitudes for a few days?" I said.

"Why not? Neither of us has to punch a clock. What you got in mind?"

"There's this little village I love up in the Berkshires if you feel like it."

She scrunched up her nose and shook her head.

"Don't feel like airports or an all-day drive," she said.

"Blowing Rock?" I was referring to a lovely mountaintop community in far western North Carolina, not far from Boone. It's among the highest points in the Appalachians.

"Too far. Too crowded."

"Homestead? Greenbrier?" Those are old luxury hotels and resorts in the Alleghanies, both about a six-hour drive if not longer. The Greenbrier is just across the state line in West Virginia. She knew that and shook her head.

"I want private. I want woods and hiking trails. I'd be happy if we didn't see another soul the whole time."

"Blue Ridge?"

That's our closest mountain range, just a little over three hours up Interstate 64. We've hiked sections of the Appalachian Trail in Nelson County a little west of Charlottesville. It's got some history between us, too. It's where our friendship turned into our initial courtship. Years ago. Before life interrupted us.

Becky nodded and flashed her thumbs-up.

"Let me see if I can find us a place to stay that gives us woods and is private, where we might not run into another soul and that I can book for as early as tomorrow," I said, fishing my iPhone from my pocket. "That about cover it?"

We looked over a half-dozen AirB&B properties, and while they were charming, they were in or on the periphery of communities like Bedford, Roseland, Lovingston, Amherst or Schuyler, and Becks vetoed them. When Becky said "woods," she was evidently thinking of something way off the grid, not some tourist village with wide flagstone paths suited to golf carts that felt like summer camp for the Medicare crowd.

I drilled down and found some local vacation rental agencies that had photos of cabins well off the beaten path. Many of them looked forlorn, even trashy. Others, though, looked more like what Becky had in mind. We settled on a luxury one-bedroom log cabin dating to the 19th century in the area near Crabtree Falls and Montebello. It had been outfitted with every creature comfort imaginable, even a detached sauna, and was well out in the woods not far off the Blue Ridge Parkway. Best of all: it was available starting the next day, a Wednesday, with check-in starting at 3 p. m.

"Book it and let's start packing," Becky said, tossing the watery dregs of her Margarita over the deck railing as she rose from her lounger and retreated inside to air conditioning and a chance to shower off the sweat that now glued her oversized N. C. State Wolfpack t-shirt to her curves that never failed to command my attention.

I booked us for four days -- through Sunday morning -- then followed her indoors as soon as I got the rental confirmation. There's room for two in that shower.

▼ ▼ ▼

Meeker Cabin was secluded. Maybe more than secluded. It was so hidden away down a succession of gravel and unpaved lanes that it took us nearly an hour to find it. Losing cellular data coverage not long after we turned off I-64 onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, rendering GPS navigation apps useless, didn't help. When we finally arrived, Becky was beaming. It checked all her boxes.

That was particularly true with the 25-degree drop in temperatures and the cool, fresh breeze. It was 94 and sticky when we left Norfolk a little before noon. The afternoon high here had been 76. By the dinner hour, it was down to 69 with a forecast overnight low of 56 under an unobstructed canopy of stars.

She spread her arms and twirled around in the clover-covered meadow that doubled as the cabin's front lawn, a clearing that sloped gently downward to the west and afforded us a view of the Shenandoah Valley below. This, she said, "is the right way to feel alive."

I carried in our one bag of luggage with all our clothing and grooming needs along with two bags of groceries we had brought from home and opened a bottle of Cabernet while she explored the grounds a little more. When she returned to the cabin, I was waiting on the screened porch in one of the two oversized wicker chairs with the wine and two stemmed glasses I found in a kitchen cabinet. Rather than take the other seat, she curled herself onto my lap and kissed me.

"Wow, what's that for," I asked.

"This," she said, glancing around her at the cabin, the meadow, the darkening woods. "You read my mind."

"Remind me to read your mind more often," I said as I pulled her to me for a kiss that lingered on and on -- long enough for her to feel me stiffening beneath my camping shorts where it pressed into her.

"Mmmm. Nasty boy," she purred against my lips.

It had occurred to me on the drive up here that she was braless beneath her loose-fitting, floral-print cotton dress that flowed from her bustline to mid-calf in length. What I hadn't realized until now was that she wore nothing else beneath it, either. She took my right hand, guided it midway up her inner thigh, pushing up the hem of her dress as she did, until finally my fingers sensed her warm core.

"And my naughty girl," I whispered back as I nibbled and kissed her neck.

I had covered my hand in her wetness and teased her bud to her first climax before she stood, pulled the dress over her head in one swift movement and stepped out of her sandals, leaving her naked. I used the time to shed my shorts and boxers before Becky again took her seat, this time astraddle me.

"Now fill your naughty girl's drenched pussy," she growled.

Dirty sex talk was out of character for Becky. She was never shy about letting me know what she needed when we make love, but she was a believer in showing more than telling. When she did use words, they were general and demure: "Yes, like that!" or "Longer, slower strokes." But something had flipped a switch within her in the cool, late-spring gloaming at an altitude a few thousand feet higher than our almost sea-level Hampton Roads home. Her sex was almost drooling as she sank herself fully onto me without pause and began grinding her mound hard into my pubic bone. She crested twice in less than 10 minutes from that alignment without us ever uncoupling, each time shuddering and wailing in her release. Then she ordered me out of the chair and positioned herself crouching in the seat, presenting her backside to me. She came once more in synch with me as I emptied myself deep inside her..

Drained, we slumped into the chair together, gently peppering each other with kisses as the sun's last, faint hues retreated from the sky and the Milky Way filled the heavens.

It may have been fifteen minutes. It may have been an hour or more. But at some point, I awoke, sore from the awkward position in which Becky and I had fallen asleep in each other's arms, scooped her slim form into my arms and carried her to bed. We slept almost around the clock, waking naked and hungry as wolves to a Blue Ridge sunrise.

▼ ▼ ▼

Our first full day was intentional laziness, something we unashamedly treated ourselves to. After I whipped up a massive traditional breakfast of thick bacon, scrambled eggs, toasted English muffins and cinnamon oatmeal (it's an apostasy to Virginians, but neither of us love hominy grits), we spent the morning reading the books we brought with us. The closest thing to industriousness was a leisurely drive to Schuyler.

"The Waltons" weekly dramatic series was appointment television in Becky's home during her high school years. Her parents and widowed grandmom, who lived with them, were arrayed before the TV well advance of its airtime on Thursday nights in the 1970s and '80s. She was touched by the sweet innocence of a fictional mountain family in stories set during the Great Depression that were informed by the childhood of "Waltons" screenwriter Earl Hamner in Schuyler. Hamner's childhood home was saved from decay, preserved and stands now as the unofficial "home of the real-life John Boy Walton."

Becky lost touch with the series during her years at N. C. State and later as a young wife and mom. But something drew her back to the series, first as Lifetime Network reruns and then via streaming. Being in Hamner's homestead reconnected Becky to her family's past, though that of the Waltons.

"Being here, seeing this, it makes me feel like I felt my freshman year in high school at home with mom, dad and Bee Maw in our den. They'd share the couch, and I'd sprawl out on the carpet in front of the TV. Sometimes, Bee Maw would pop some popcorn the old-fashioned way using Crisco shortening in this old cast iron pot. Sounds sappy, but being there, quiet, riveted to that show and trying not to let it show when we started getting teary-eyed... we felt connected as a family in a way I don't believe we ever did after that," she said.

Becky drifted slowly through the Hamner house, stopping to stare at things she had never seen before as though she recognized them. I hung back, watching quietly as she drank in every detail, lingering in one room after another until a young volunteer docent with "DOLORES" on her name tag let us know she was about to close up for the day.

We took our time on the drive back, which is good considering the narrow, serpentine county roads of the region are not conducive to getting from point A to point B in a hurry. And the ride was a pensive, peaceful, introspective kind of quiet. Becky, I assumed, was reflecting on the reverie of her youth the Hamner House had evoked. I was just appreciating the 360-degree beauty of the Blue Ridge foothills.

We stopped for an early supper at a locally celebrated family restaurant that had earned a reputation for superb farm-to-table cooking with beef, poultry, pork and fish sourced from the region's farms and streams. And the contented quiet continued as we made our way back to Meeker Cabin as best we could without guidance from our phones.

Silence is not the default setting in our relationship. Sometimes, it meant some unresolved disagreement was hanging over us. Sometimes, it meant one or both of us was worried. But most of the time, it was either exhaustion or -- in this evening's situation -- a shared sense of peace. But I would always be a little suspicious of extended periods of silence when we traveled because that's what happened many years before after a traumatic night that shook Becky to her core, that changed her for a time, and that ruptured a romance we were about to consummate.

But not tonight.

Becky reached her left hand across the center console and softly grasped my right hand, sitting by the gearshift. I looked at her and she was smiling at me.

"I love you," she said softly, giving my hand a gentle squeeze before returning her gaze to the fields, hills and wooded highlands we were passing as the car climbed the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge, back to Meeker Cabin.

▼ ▼ ▼

"I know we both love our books, but we can't sit around on our asses today the way we did most of yesterday," Becky said as she sipped a hot mug of coffee.

"A good day to get on the trail, seems to me," I said.

"Yes. Which of these do we want?" Becky said, poring over a handful of brochures about scenic overlooks along the Parkway and foot trails through the wooded, sometimes steep terrain. "Here's one for the Appalachian Trail up to the top of Humpback Rock. Here's one that takes us along Crabtree Creek and Crabtree Falls that looks pretty close by. It's about three miles."

We studied them and decided not to commit to anything too demanding. Three miles on foot in someplace as flat as Norfolk was nothing like the challenging inclines the path could take at an elevation of 2,700 to about 3,000 feet, where the air is cool but thinner. We opted for Humpback Rock.

We parked at the scenic overlook along the Parkway to access the trail and what the brochure said was about a 40-minute hike and a climb of about 700 feet over what was packed soil in some spots, loose gravel in others and craggy-edged stone in others.

Forty minutes my ass.

Maybe if you're 25, in great shape and accustomed to climbing trails like this. Not retired, wearing jogging shoes and lugging several bottles of water that left us, winded with our legs quivering from exertion in the 80 minutes it took us to reach the summit. But that hour so at the stony pinnacle made it all worth it.

The 360-degree unobstructed view on the clear day at noon was breathtaking. To our north lay the great, undisturbed expanse of protected federal land within the Shenandoah National Park. To our east lay Rockfish Gap and, over the horizon, Charlottesville. To the west was the verdant valley as the mountain descended into Augusta County and Waynesboro. The unflagging cool breeze that rose up the western slope bore the intoxicating perfume of pines and maples and dogwoods and oaks; of honeysuckle and wild rhododendron that it gathered along the way.

"I could stay here all day," Becky said, bunching up the hoodie sweatshirt she had brought along and using it as a pillow as she lay on her back on the massive rock, taking in undiluted sunshine.

I sat beside her, my Scots Irish flesh too lacking in protective pigment to remove my hat, sunglasses or long-sleeved t-shirt or risk having more precancerous lesions painfully excised from my skin on my next dermatologist's visit. But the brisk air balanced with the warming sun were just about perfect.

"And I'd stay here with you," I said. "At least until one of us has to pee."

The descent was even trickier, at least near the top. Sharp ledges of rock required cautious, deliberate footing by tenderfoot hikers like us without the proper high-topped leather footwear for this sort of terrain. A hasty step and an unfortunate slip could leave one of us with a nasty gash. That's the last thing we were looking for.

But sometimes what we aren't looking for finds us.

On the trail a few hundred feet ahead and below us, we heard loud, urgent, fearful voices. While the words weren't clear, it seemed like a shouted warning. Then, seconds later, what sounded like a child's scream and then frantic shouts from adults.

Becky and I rounded a turn in the trail to see a man and woman bent over a child. In the distance, to the right, a commotion as something large and black scurried into the underbrush.

As we reached them, Becky was the first to see blood spewed on the leaves and rocks and the terrified face of a badly injured boy of perhaps four or five. The man and woman, his panicked parents, were trying to comfort the child and unsure what to do. The man was vainly trying to dial 9-1-1 on a cell phone outside its service range. The woman tried to use her hand to close a gaping wound on his forearm.

Instinctively, Becky's experience as a nurse took over. First, she told the frantic parents of her medical training and experience to reassure them and back away so she could tend to the child. The harder challenge was comforting the child who inconsolable, thrashing, screaming and hemorrhaging bloo. Becky caressed his face, smiled at him, brushed his curly blond locks from his face and assured her that she knew what to do and that he was going to be all right. She had done that for years at the largest trauma hospital in Hampton Roads. Children were always the hardest injuries for her, but that was also when she was at her best. The boy calmed down, reassured by the confidence of the nice lady who called herself Miss Becky.

The child had been mauled by an adult black bear, we learned from Todd, the child's father. They had happened upon the mother and her two cubs on the trail, and the boy, Jackson, began walking toward one of the cubs, as if to pet it. Black bears will usually give humans wide berth unless they perceive a threat, and little Jackson's move toward her the cubs constituted a threat to the mama bear.

Either the animal's claws or its teeth has torn a long and deep wound from midway down the inside of Jackson's right forearm almost to his wrist. It appeared, from the blood loss, a vein or artery had been breached, Becky said.

"I need something like a belt or maybe shoelaces," Becky said, calmly but with businesslike urgency, the way a surgeon would call for a hemostat in an operating theater. I knew what she was doing; I had seen her do it before. She needed to fashion a torniquet and apply it to Jackson's deeply gashed arm the arm immediately.

"How about this," I said as I pulled off the bandana I had used to protect my pale neck from the sun.

"Perfect," she said. She found a branch nearby and snapped off a section about half an inch in diameter and about eight inches long. She wrapped the blue bandana around the child's thin arm just above the elbow, cinched half a knot, placed the stick atop it and then cinched another not on top of that and twisted it, tightening the cloth and staunching the profuse bleeding.

Todd and his wife, Marissa, looked on with both alarm and gratitude. Marissa started to speak but Becky cut her off. She was as authoritative, decisive and concise as a quarterback in a huddle.

"We've got to get down the trail fast. Todd, you carry Jackson. I'll walk beside you to manage the torniquet. Marissa, you start working the phones and as soon as you get a signal, call 9-1-1 and then pound 7-7 for the State Police. Rick, you take my hoodie and pack and lead the way back to the parking lot. When we get there, Rich, you drive. Marissa, you ride shotgun and work the phone. I will ride in the rear and tend to Jackson. Todd, follow in your car. Are we all clear?"

Becky was all business, no wasted emotion, no indecision. Coldly aware of the stakes, she was professional and efficient. And she would be until the child was out of her hands and in the care of medical professionals.

I was speeding along the Parkway well in excess of its 45-mile-per-hour speed limit (as low as 25 in some hairpin turns), but I'd almost welcome a police officer at this point, someone who could perhaps escort us or use a radio to summon an ambulance. We had gone several miles when Marissa established phone reception.

"Nelson County emergency nine-one-one, what's your emergency," a voice came over the speakerphone. Becky did the talking from the rear seat where she had managed to calm Jackson. She told the operator we were on the Blue Ridge Parkway approaching I-64 in a private car transporting a child with an "AIS three or maybe four trauma" and needed the nearest emergency room or an ambulance.

"Stand by, ma'am," the woman's voice with a pronounced mountain twang said.

For about 15 seconds, the line was quiet until the operator returned to the line.

"OK, when you get to 64, head east and go down Afton Mountain exactly seven miles 'til you reach the first rest area. An ambulance will meet you there," the woman said. "They'll take him to UVA."

She was referring to the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, another 20 minutes or so away. But once inside the ambulance, little Jackson would have access to lifesaving equipment and drugs as he sped toward a world-class hospital.

"Got it and thank you," Becky said.

"Describe your vehicle with your license number if you can so we can have patrol units look out for you."

I described Becky's dark blue Volvo and the tag. "It's got a North Carolina State alumni sticker on the back window," I added. The operator acknowledged it and signed off. Marissa, exhaling deeply for the first time, disconnected the call. She turned around and saw Jackson, his eyelids heavy with sleep, looking calmly at Becky, and then she broke down.

"I don't know what we'd do if God hadn't put you on that mountain when he did this afternoon," she said through sobs. "I can never thank you..."

"It's going to be OK, but we've still got work to do. Get us there, Rick," Becky said. "Marissa, call your husband behind us and fill him on the plan."

Near the bottom of Afton Mountain, I saw a gray-and-blue Virginia State Police cruiser on the interstate berm, its blue strobes pulsing. It pulled in behind me as we zipped past, clearly exceeding the speed limit, and then it passed me as the trooper motioned for me to merge into the left lane behind him. I could hear the siren yelping as he escorted Jackson to his ambulance rendezvous.

The ambulance and another State Police unit entered the rest area just ahead of us. We came to a stop next to the ambulance as white-shirted medical technicians piled out of the cab and the service bay, gently placing the blood-streaked boy on a gurney and gingerly loading him inside. Jackson began to cry out, asking for his mommy and for "the lady, Miss Becky." He wanted them with him for the last leg of the trip.

That's when Becky broke down. Her role was done, and now the gravity of it and the child's plea to be near her took its toll. Marissa put her arm around Becky.

"Come with me, OK," Marissa said. Becky nodded and they walked to the rear doors of the ambulance as technicians began cutting away his ruined shirt and assessing the wound.

"Jackson, mommy will be with you for right now if that's OK with these good people," Marissa said, looking at the two techs for approval. One agreed to ride up front, freeing up a seat so she could ride beside her terrified child.

"Maybe Miss Becky can come see you later after they fix you all up in the hospital. Would that be OK, Miss Becky?"

Becky batted her eyes against tears she couldn't control. She nodded, trying to find the resolve she needed to speak without crying.

"Yes. I'd love to," she managed. When Jackson waved at her with his good hand, she crumbled. I was just three steps behind her, and I got to her just as her legs gave way. I pulled her against me and held her as the pent-up emotion poured out.

The doors to the ambulance slammed shut. Sirens screamed to life as the ambulance driver gunned the engine, the VSP unit out front again leading the way, and Todd trailing behind in his compact car. They disappeared eastbound onto the interstate.

Travelers who had stopped to use the restrooms, walk their dogs or stock up on water or soda had gathered on the periphery to see what the lights and commotion were about, and that's when I realized that one of the two VSP cars was still there, though its lights were no longer flashing. An officer in his stiff-brimmed hat sat inside it, the driver's side door open. Eventually, he got out and approached us.

"Ma'am, have we met?" the officer, a middle-aged, olive-complexioned man with graying black hair said.

Becky was still clinging to me. She squinted at the officer.

"I'm not sure," she said.

"I'm Captain Luis Ordoñez. I am in charge of Area 18 for the Virginia State Police based in Charlottesville. A little over 10 years ago, I was a lieutenant based in Louisa County, and we got a call one night to a collision in which a bus bringing a track team home from a meet flipped on U. S. 250 in Goochland," he said.

Now it was coming together for Becky, gaining clarity through mental fog that mercifully cloaks the worst scenes from the worst night of her life: the bloody charnel chamber that was the interior of the upside-down bus littered with badly injured teen-age boys. Its overweight, middle-aged driver, dead but still buckled and shoulder-harnessed into his seat, dangled upside down, his head livid from the blood pooled there and twisted around at an unsurvivable 180 degrees; his eyes bulged, their unresponsive pupils locked in on some point in eternity.

Accustomed as she was to broken bodies arriving in the antiseptic confines of an emergency room, the hellscape of the actual scene -- of so many people badly in need of urgent care, of almost no resources as she struggled in the dark -- haunted Becky. It changed her. She would go days without sleep lest the sounds, smells, images savage her dreams. She withdrew from her friends, from her daughters. From me.

Had we taken Interstate 64 instead of U. S. 250 that runs parallel to it, we would have arrived back at out hotel in Richmond's westernmost suburbs unaware of what happened to those private-school athletes. She and I would have made love for the first time and, probably, embarked on a lasting romance. But that night put a distance between us that neither would bridge for almost a dozen years, until we bumped into each other by chance at the Snooty Fox, a Norfolk adult novelties and videos store.

"I remember you, officer. My name is Rebecca Parsons -- Becky -- and this is Rick Ailey. I remember that night, though for the longest time I tried to forget," she said. "It took many years, a lot of therapy and personal growth to make peace with that horror."

"I understand. I had never worked an accident that bad before. When I arrived, I thought there would be multiple fatalities -- maybe five or six. It would have been, too, Miss Parsons, if it wasn't for you. If you hadn't been where you were when you were to do what you did...," Captain Ordoñez said, looking downward and shaking his head as he ran out of words.

"That never left me. I put you in for recognition by the governor, and it went through. I hoped you would be there at the governor's mansion in Richmond that night to get the award, but you weren't."

"I was in no condition then to even talk about it with people closest to me. Having it all over the news, my colleagues and everybody else constantly asking me about it... I just couldn't," she said.

The officer smiled and nodded.

"I understand. I asked myself ever since, 'Whatever became of the angel of mercy from that night, the one that saved so many lives?' When I heard the all-units call today from Nelson County needing an escort and ambulance rendezvous for a child with severe trauma being transported by private car with what sounded like a medical professional onboard, it reminded me of that night. One of my patrol officers took the call, but I was close, so I responded, too. Sure enough, here you are again, saving another life," he said, looking at Becky with wonderment bordering on awe.

Becky paused a moment, choosing her words carefully.

"We do what we do, captain," she said. "You, for instance. You do it every day, or at least start work every day prepared to do whatever is required of you to save lives without giving it a second thought or a moment's pause. This is the second time it's ever happened to me, and somehow, you've been around both times. I'm no hero, captain. I -- we! -- help people when the need is there. It's just who we are."

The officer nodded, pensively agreeing with her.

"Say I put you in for another governor's award," Captain Ordoñez said, a smile tugging at his lips. "Would you show up?"

Becky thought for a moment. She shook her head and smiled.

"I'm just not that person. I don't like people fawning over me. The real satisfaction I get -- the reason I'm a blubbering mess now -- is moments like the one you just saw, when little Jackson asked me to ride with him in the ambulance, and then waved bye-bye just before it left," Becky said, wiping the last of the tears from her eyes.

"I attended to hurt and sick people for a living for a long time as a nurse. I loved the work, and it kept my checking account from going dry, but it never filled my soul up the way this just did. Even that awful night in 2012 gives me a measure of consolation since time has passed and I've met some of the boys who were in that bus, who healed up and some have families of their own. I still see the suffering but I also recognize the good."

"This may not square with department regulations, but may I at least hug a true hero of mine and someone I will never forget? If that's OK," he said.

Becky pulled from my embrace and rushed the few steps toward Captain Ordoñez with her arms outstretched. There, on the rest area's sun-warmed tarmac with a dozen or so people looking on, they embraced quietly. It was a healing moment for the officer and the former nurse a baker's dozen years or so overdue. One by one, the small crowd that had clustered nearby began to clap politely, unsure what they were witnessing but knowing that it was special. Some snapped photos and video with their phones.

"Thank you," Captain Ordoñez said. Then he took a well-practiced step backward, stood at attention and smartly saluted her with military exactitude. He got back behind the wheel of his cruiser and slowly drove away.

▼ ▼ ▼

We returned to Meeker Cabin a little before 4 o'clock. It had been a mostly silent ride home from a harrowing day. As soon as Becky got inside the cabin, she stripped off her shirt and shorts, all stained with Jackson's blood, and examined her hoodie.

"Want me to go dispose of them," I asked, dreading the possibility that today's events might send her into the sort of protracted melancholy and reclusiveness that had pulled us apart so long ago.

She stood there in her yellow sports bra and panties staring at the blotted with crimson.

"Dried blood is hard to get out, but I'm thinking I'll toss them in the washer here and see what happens," she said matter-of-factly.

"You actually want to keep them?" I asked, encouraged that Becky's response was opposite of the night in our hotel room right after the bus crash when she shed the bloodied dress she had worn and directed me to dispose of it immediately, never wanting to see it again. That night, something broke within her. But now?

"This hoodie cost me sixty-five dollars at Nordstrom's! And that t-shirt is one of my favorites," she protested.

"Yeah, but my concern is you. How are you holding up? After what happened today?"

"I'm OK. I think I am anyway," she said, wrapping her arms around me. "And thank you for asking. I understand why you would be worried. But this is different, less horrible than that night. Plus I'm stronger, better able to deal with it."

I pressed her to my chest and kissed her silvery hair. "Good, Becky. Because I refuse to let you go again. Ever. No matter what."

"I know. And I'm not ever letting go of you," she said, looking me in both eyes. Each of us could tell that we meant that promise with all that we had. We had lived through the alternative and overcome it. And then the moment passed.

"You know that at the far end of that little meadow out front there's a short little footpath that leads to a creek running down the mountain with two Adirondack chairs in a tiny clearing right beside it looking off toward the sunset. Let me start the laundry and we can walk down there," she said.

"Sure. Toss on another T-shirt and we're good."

"T-shirt? Why?" she scoffed.

The white noise of the late afternoon breeze in forest's leafy canopy, the water gurgling in the creek as it spilled into a small natural pool and the two beers apiece that we brought with us were the perfect prescription for neutralizing the residual stress from the day's spent adrenaline. That and the last rays of the sun before clouds prematurely formed a curtain over it.

We pulled our chairs close enough to intertwine the fingers of her right hand with the fingers of my left and sat mostly wordless, just taking the opportunity to breathe, to sip our beer, to feel. To be. It stayed that way for a good hour until the wind picked up and we heard a distant rumble.

"Thought the forecast was for sunny weather through the weekend," I said.

"Maybe it's one of those pop-up spring showers. They come out of nowhere, it pours for 15 or 20 minutes and then it's gone. I don't even care. Let it rain," Becky said. Her eyes were peacefully shut, and a contented smile formed on her lips. I gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

Five minutes later, the first fat droplets and cool gust announced the rain's arrival. Becky opened her eyes and surveyed the low, leaden sky. Then she looked at me.

"Ready to get soaked?"

"I won't melt, but you got far less clothing on to get soaked. You're wearing what amounts to a bikini."

"OK then, let's level-set." In seconds, she had shed her sports bra and her panties. Naked, she draped one garment over each arm of her chair. "Your turn."

I was about to argue before I realized the futility of it. "What the hell," I grumbled, discarding my T-shirt, hiking shorts and underwear, draping them over the chair arms and the chair back before resuming my seat.

"Rebecca Parsons, I think you have a nudist streak in you," I said. I admired her breasts with their tight, ruddy nipples crowning still-shapely, natural breasts and her slim waist that betrayed scant evidence of the two daughters she had birthed decades ago. "And I approve."

She reached across and grasped my hand again. "And you're still easy on the eyes, too, Mr. Ailey."

The rain was beginning to fall in earnest now. We could hear the worst of it -- falling in sheets -- approaching from the west as it drenched the forest.

"Want to ride it out?" she said.

"Why not? First time I ever sat naked through a rainstorm."

The heavier the rain got, the colder it got. These drops had begun as droplets 30,000 to 40,000 feet up in the top of the angry cloud now hovering over us. As the droplets gained mass, they plunged down miles of chilled air in the before hitting our naked flesh.

Becky was laughing, squealing, rejoicing in it. She widened her arms as though to welcome the deluge. Her wet hair looked like tight strands of sterling. The chill caused her nipples to stiffen and the stippled areolae ringing them to crinkle.

Part of her day had been spent denying death's claim on a little boy; now she was soaking in every drop, every new sensation that life and nature could send her way.

Watching her was beautiful and enchanting. It was as joyfully pure as a child cavorting in a backyard sprinkler on a hot afternoon. I didn't want it to end, but a creek quickly growing into a stream and encroaching on our chairs was our cue to seek higher, if not dryer, ground.

We scurried back up the footpath wearing only sandals, relishing our nudity and a feeling of total connection to nature, forgetting garments we had left on the Adirondacks. When we emerged into the clover meadow in front of Meeker Cabin, Becky again closed her eyes and twirled about as she had two days earlier, her face turned skyward and her mouth open to capture the purest water earth offers. Then she brushed the wet hair strands away from her eyes, saw me and scurried to me, kissing me upon her arrival.

"You ever felt so free and alive, Rick?" she said when the kiss broke.

"No. Because there hadn't been you, and you make me feel free and alive," I said, wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her tightly to me as we kissed passionately, unreservedly. I felt the warmth of her breasts contrasting with the chill of the rainwater against my bare chest. I felt her tongue as it sought out mine. I felt my manhood rising until it brushed against the inside of her thighs and the heat of her core. She responded by pushing her hips against mine.

I loosened my grip momentarily, bending as I kissed my way down her jawline, her ears, and neck. I trailed my tongue down her chest to one nipple, capturing the rainwater that gathered on her peak just before the drops fell. Then, I trailed my tongue across her chest to the other nipple where I repeated the process of gathering the nipple droplets and kissing her breasts.

Then I kneeled on one knee as my trail of kisses meandered down her belly, taking a leisurely exploration of her navel, and then continuing my circuitous route to the points of her hips, down the front of one thigh and back up the inside of it until her clean, musky arousal filled my nostrils. Becky moaned as I detoured around her mound, brushing the edges of her muff on my way to her opposite thigh -- down the front and back up its inside, kissing her tender skin at such a lingering, lazy pace that she growled her frustration and pressed my face into her pussy. Its pink inner petals were already slick with excitement. She sucked air through her teeth and jammed her crotch forward into me as my tongue made its first contact with her puffy clitoral shroud.

I grasped Becky's hips to steady her and helped her loop her left thigh over my right shoulder to maximize access to her pussy for my lips and tongue. She groaned as I buried my tongue into her opening as she ground into my face. I followed her furrow upward, toward her forward cleft and her yearning clit, before working my way back. I did it over and over, feeling her control quickly disintegrate. Her uninhibited cries got louder as she surrendered to a primal drive we all possess at some level, indulging it without restraint, naked in a meadow as the hard rain fell.

"I'm... I'm cumming," she gasped before her torso bowed and she unleashed a howl. She jammed my face hard into her. I could feel the involuntary climactic contractions of her pelvic floor muscles. A salty warmth, separate from the rainwater, dripped from my chin onto my chest in the midst of her orgasm. As it subsided, I felt her weight-bearing right leg falter, exhausted from her exertion, and I caught her as she slid to the ground. She came to rest on her knees with her chest, face and shoulders flushed and her lungs heaving as if she had run a sprint.

I sat in the clover with my legs crossed. I pulled her gently to me and seated her in the sanctum created by my crossed legs. I held her gently to me as she caught her breath and the last random tremors of her orgasm ricocheted through her. She let her head rest against my shoulder.

"I love you, Rick," she said in a loud whisper. "But I'm cold and exhausted now. Can we go inside?"

This overwhelming day had finally caught up with this flesh-and-blood wonder woman of mine. I helped Becky to her feet, and she leaned into me as we walked a few dozen feet through the clover, up the steps and into the cabin. I toweled the rain off her, checked areas she couldn't see for ticks and put her in the heavy, terrycloth guest robe as I dried her hair. She was asleep on the sofa beside me within minutes, and I draped her in a soft quilt as the skies cleared outside.

The LED readout on the satellite television receiver said 6:45. Except to take Becky to our bed, she would remain asleep until the next time the clock read 6:45. Saturday morning.

▼ ▼ ▼

Becky was awake and finishing her first mug of coffee on the screened-in porch before I poured my own as the sun emerged fully into the sky to begin the final full day of our Blue Ridge retreat at Meeker Cabin. She was in her terrycloth robe, though she confided to me that she found it constricting during the night and shed it, sleeping nude for who knows how long.

"Why even bother putting the robe back on?" I asked.

"Step out here and find out," she said. I did. The sky was cloudless and deep blue, and the steady breeze was brisk bordering on mid-March. "Shrinkage, am I right?"

I chuckled and shook my head.

"That's right, George Costanza. Shrinkage." I said. "Season four, Episode 17."

In that installment of "Seinfeld," titled "The Outing," George, played by Jason Alexander, is caught by his girlfriend changing out of his swim trunks after a dip in a very chilly pool, causing his manhood to retract ("like a frightened turtle," Jerry's character explains) from the cold. "There was shrinkage! There was shrinkage!" George frantically protests after his love interest snickers at his shortcomings. It's one of the series' most famous lines, but only hardcore fans like Becky can recite chapter and verse.

"So, you seem full of yourself and in good spirits this bright morning," I said, landing a soft kiss on Becky's lips.

"I am. Remind me to thank you for that, too," she said.

"Me?"

"Yeah, you. I wanted cool, and look at this," she said, letting the 49-degree reading on the thermometer speak for itself. "I wanted secluded, and behold," she said, sweeping her arm toward the clover meadow and the forested mountainside beyond.

"I wanted time alone with you, and we definitely got that," she said, her leering smile leaving no doubt about her reference to our robust al fresco lovemaking, most recently the afternoon before in the soft clover just before us.

"Well, you're welcome," I said. "So far, so good... mostly anyway."

I was referring to Friday's emergency in which 4-year-old Jackson suffered a life-threatening mauling by a black bear on the trail leading to Humback Rock just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. Becky's years of nursing ensured that the child was safely and expeditiously entrusted to emergency medics in an ambulance and, ultimately, the University of Virginia Medical Center.

"No, not mostly. Totally," she said.

"That's super. Say more."

"As you know, for years I had nightmares after that bus accident in 2012. Last night, I had the most amazing dream. I walked into a room and there was little Jackson, and it was his birthday party. He was turning five. His mom and dad were there. But the most striking thing is that those boys, the track team members from that bus that night, they were there, too, and they were all still teens, just like they were that night, except not hurt! The only one who had grown up was the one who looked me up and invited me to his wedding, Rob. He was there and with him was a little boy, I think it was his little boy, and he was the same age as Jackson."

I listened raptly. It was clear this was important to Becky and to me.

"So, when it came time to blow out Jackson's candles, the cake magically turned into many cakes, I guess one for each of the boys I tended to, and they all wanted me to blow out the candles. I asked why, and it was Jackson who said that because I was the reason they were around to have birthdays," Becky said. Tears began filling her eyes.

"Then I turned around and you were there behind me. All the boys noticed you in that moment and somebody asked me where you came from. My answer blurted right out: 'He's been there all along.' It was only after the words came out that I recognized the deep, dual meaning and just how true it all was," she said. She smiled and a tear raced down her cheek.

My mouth moved but words weren't there.

"I felt the most complete sense or peace and joy after that dream," she said. "I'm not Sigmund Freud, but the dream meant something because I almost never remember dreams. Maybe it was God... or the universe or karma. Maybe it was just my own soul finally telling me that I can move on. Like a test that I passed. Like graduation. Whatever it was, it -- and you -- have finally healed whatever it was inside me that still needed healing."

Now my lip quivered, and I batted back my own tears as I embraced Becky.

"Nothing could make me happier," I said. "Maybe yesterday was something of a bookend, a last chapter that puts all of this happily in your past, baby."

She gave me her seat in the large wicker chair and then she curled herself into my lap as she had so often before as we watched the sun climb, warming us as it did, until our growling stomachs took over and we collaborated on a breakfast of French toast, eggs and sausage links, which we ate on the porch in the fresh mountain air.

When we were finished and I collected Becky's plate and mine, she noticed a protrusion in my pajama bottoms. It attested, in part, to the fact that I had not yet relieved my bladder from a night's sleep.

"Morning wood or just happy to see me?" she said, flashing a sassy smirk.

"Yes," I said, my smirk equal to hers.

"No shrinkage for you," she said, tweaking my bulge as I passed by her.

"We never did finish up what we started out in the meadow yesterday afternoon," I recalled.

"That's right," Becky said, shedding her bathrobe and standing naked in the morning light. "And I believe I owe you a full-body check for ticks."

▼ ▼ ▼

It was noon before we left Meeker Cabin. We had no hard plans other than visiting an antique shop in Bedford that Becky had found on the Internet.

I had barely deposited our plates in the sink when Becky reached her hand through the fly of my PJs and found my cock, already plumping on its way to full rigidity. She gave it several strokes before pulling my bottoms down below my knees and took it into her mouth. She swirled her tongue over its flanged head several times. She stood, helped me step out of my PJ bottoms pooled at my feet, then took my manhood firmly but gently in her hand and used it to guide me as though I were a pull toy through the cabin to the bed.

When we got there, she turned me around with my back to the still-rumpled sheets, pulled my Norfolk Tides T-shirt over my chest and my sleep-matted hair and slung it to the floor somewhere. There we stood, naked and facing each other, so she stood on her tiptoes to kiss me as my bobbing boner nudged her pubic patch and lower abdomen. Our tongues sparred for only a few seconds before she abruptly pulled away and then used her fingertips to topple me backward, sending me onto the soft mattress immediately behind me, my legs dangling over the side and my erection pointing at the ceiling.

For a moment, Becky looked at me lying there fully sex-ready -- a self-satisfied leer on her face, her hands proudly on her hips and her arms akimbo -- before she climbed onto the bed beside me. She stroked my penis a few more times, using long, languid strokes. Then, happy with its hardness, she kissed me again and growled against my lips, "I'm going to ride this cock until we both cum."

With that, she extended one leg over my torso, positioning one knee on either side of my waist, and lowered herself onto me. Her wet warmth left a trail from my navel to my cock befpre she grasped me, nuzzled the tip of my hardness against her entrance and filled herself with it, sharply inhaling as she did.

She pressed her belly flat onto mine, her breasts jiggling against my chest as she ground herself onto my cock and into my pubis. In less than a year together, Becky had given herself the gift of surrendering to her sexual needs and pursuing her pleasure without inhibition in our lovemaking. In doing so, she had freed herself from old presumptions and restrictions she carried since her teen years and found new depth and pleasure in our shared intimacy. Now, she was already abandoning her body to what she wanted and drawing an equally ardent response from me.

"That's it, baby, you're so beautiful riding down your climax," I told her.

I had learned that words of encouragement like that always help her kick it up a notch, affirming her license to take charge of her own pleasure. And that's what she did. Her pace increased, her moans got longer and louder, her neck and shoulders flushed and perspiration began to form. My hands, clasping her ass to exhort her on, felt her powerful gluteal muscles contract and release, heaving her pussy onto me. Her breathing got heavier and then became ragged as she sprinted toward orgasm.

"Gonna cum on that sweet cock, Rick," she said between breaths. "Getting close."

"That's right, baby, let yourself go," I growled.

She was on the precipice, around to plunge into ecstasy. Her body effectively had seized control of her movements from her conscious self, and her hips lurched and jerked.

"Cum with me, Rick," she gasped. "Cum deep in me."

She wailed and her eyes rolled behind her lids as her hips and legs trembled. Her vulva was pushed tightly onto me, taking in every available centimeter of my hardness just as I felt the tingling down my spike and behind my balls that triggered my own climax. When she felt my hot load gushing into her core, it seemed to deepen her orgasm. I was vaguely aware of sounding somewhat like a beast as I felt bolt after bolt of semen filled her.

When the crest had passed and Becky had exhausted herself, she draped herself on top of me, lying inertly on my chest as she regained her bearings and caught her breath, drifting slowly down from her pinnacle. Somehow, I remained mostly erect within her, and neither of us were in a rush to change that.

After a few blissful, wordless moments, I gently brushed Becky's hair away from her face, still glowing from her amorous exertions. She turned her face toward mine and smiled.

"That was perfect, Rick," she whispered, still a bit winded.

I smiled and nodded. "Yes, you are."

"Until there was you, I never knew that making love could be so much better than sex," she said, her finger tenderly drawing invisible doodles on my two-day-old razor stubble, my nose and brow. "That's what you gave me: the 'love' part."

"Becky, love is what we give each other."

She kissed me softly on my cheek and rested her head against my shoulder and neck. When she exhaled, it cooled the thin sheen of perspiration that had formed on my chest. It wasn't long before she dozed off and I joined her for a short, post-coital nap -- something else that distinguishes mature, unhurried lovemaking from the rushed trysts of youth. What we have is born of patience, trust and commitment; it's what makes it so fucking hot.

▼ ▼ ▼

The plan for our last full day in the Blue Ridge was to make as few plans as possible. So we hopped in the car, rolled the windows down and began a slow drive southward, stopping to linger at overlooks and other attractions along the Parkway. Because the route is so twisting, it's a good way to drive for a long time and not get that many linear miles away. We had toyed with the idea of shopping in the storybook town of Bedford, but that would force us to conclude the trip back to Meeker Cabin in the dark, so we turned around near Peaks of Otter and retraced our route.

The funny thing about the Blue Ridge Parkway: passing the same points going the opposite direction looks completely different. Things we missed in the southbound lane stook out starkly to us on the flip side in the northbound lane. It also looked different because the sun was dipping lower in the afternoon sky, imparting a more golden hue.

Had we not chosen to reverse course, we would have missed a spot we had not seen in 13 years: the Boston Knob Overlook. It was there, in August of 2011, where we had stopped, exhausted near the end of a six-mile hike, to rest on a bench and let the cooling breeze wash over us. We had regarded each other as friends for about a year before that, since we had been introduced by a mutual friend. She was divorced and I was in the process of a divorce, so we the "friend zone" suited us at the time. We had mutual interests in a love of the outdoors, sports, travel and food. We went to basketball and football games at her alma mater, North Carolina State, and mine, the University of Virginia, and were often at Harbor Park to watch the Tides, Norfolk's triple-A farm club of the Baltimore Orioles.

That afternoon at Boston Knob, however, things changed. In hindsight, they already had. We both had feelings for each other. We teased and joked about them, but never addressed them seriously, much less acted on them. As we sat on the bench, Becky leaned into me and my arm draped lazily along the backrest of the bench and my hand rested on her arm. She remarked on the beauty of the moment. Extemporaneously, I took it a step further, noting that my proximity to a beautiful, wonderful woman made it perfect.

She looked up at me and her hand gently beckoned my lips to hers. We had shared the sort of chaste pecks that friends or siblings might, but this was different: the sort of kiss lovers share, our lips parted. It's the geographic pinpoint on this planet where we both know our romance proclaimed itself for the first time.

"Rick, we've got to go see it," she said, knowing the sunlight was limited and sharing my aversion to navigating backroads after dark.

"Absolutely," I said, turning onto the paved aside.

There it was, still keeping watch over the valley as it had in 2011. It seemed to show its age -- the boards more separated and grayer, the bolts securing them to the frame visibly looser -- but it was sound and seemed to welcome us back nonetheless.

We got out of the car and walked together to it, situated maybe 20 feet from a short fence and a sharp drop-off down the western face of the mountain a little farther beyond. We sat there, just as we had before. I ran my hand again along her bare arm and felt goosebumps on it.

"You chilly babe?"

She looked me in the eyes. "No. It's just... being back."

I leaned to her and kissed her forehead. "I know. It's powerful."

She nodded, staring contentedly across the same vista we beheld in that moment when we knew we were in love. She leaned into me again, as she had on that afternoon.

"There aren't too many places you say with certainty, 'My life changed here.' But this is certainly that," she said.

"I wondered if I'd still feel that way. The years we spent apart -- would that, you know, diminish it? Put an asterisk beside it?"

She paused a minute.

"I never told you this but several years ago, I made a drive up here by myself. It was after I attended the wedding of one of those boys who were in the bus that night and my feelings about all of that began to soften. I was looking for ways to forgive myself, to get past the years of damage that had been done. I made progress getting past the crash that night, but it wasn't so easy getting over what I knew -- for certain, for the first time, in this spot, on that afternoon during the hike -- was this great love. A great love I assumed I had lost forever," Becky said as her voice began to falter.

"It was a cold, gray afternoon when I came back here alone. The trees were all bare. The breeze that's so comfortable now was an icy wind that stung," she said as her voice began to falter. "I stared at this spot. It had a hold on me, but not a comforting one. It was like staring at a photo of a loved one who had died. I left, promising never to return but knowing I could never forget the love that first bloomed here."

I pulled her tighter to me. She nestled closer, as if to hide herself in me. Her cheek was against my chest. Her right hand clutched the fabric of my shirt like a frightened child. I could hear her sniffle, feel her body gently quake as she started to cry. I ran my hand soothingly along her arm. She pressed on through the tears.

"Just now, when I saw the Boston Knob sign, I had to see it again, to break that promise not to come back. And this time, it's the most redemptive thing I've ever felt because life wasn't done with us. Because what was born here that day long ago endured; it hibernated through all those hard times; it triumphed over the distance and the pain and the loneliness and the detours we took in those years. But those detours somehow brought us back together in the most unlikely of places at just the right moment."

"Becky, you never lost me. You never left my mind, but more importantly, you never left my heart. I wish I'd known you were here that cold day. I wish I could have stood with you here and held you and spared you that agony," I said.

"You never lost me either, Rick. I never quit loving you. I just didn't know how to emerge from my own cave and let you know," she said, burying her face into my chest as she wept. As she did, my own lips quivered. The professions of devotion we had made to each other were deep, but it was Becky who had the courage to recount the sad pilgrimage she once made here alone. It touched me to my core. So, I shared an extended silence with her as her tears left a cool, wet circle on the shirt directly over my heart. Eventually, she raised her head, kissed my cheek and whispered, "Thank you."

"Becky, do you remember yesterday after we got back to the cabin after the adventure with little Jackson. You had taken off your bloodied clothes and I was concerned that the incident might affect you the way the bus accident had. I told you then that I refuse to let go of you ever again, no matter what."

She smiled and nodded. "I remember."

"I love you more than words can convey. You're not just the love of my life, you're the meaning of my life. I would no more part from you than I could part from myself. I can't relate to or even remember my empty life before I bumped into you at the Snooty Fox. I don't want to remember it. The only thing I want is you," I said.

I took her left hand in mine and brought it to my lips before I held it before us. The large diamond in the ring I had put on her third finger the year before threw off fiery glints of gold and magenta from the sun, hanging low in the sky just over the Alleghanies. The engagement ring was a placeholder, an intention to marry at some date to be mutually determined, provided two people who had survived divorces decided they needed the sanction of lawful matrimony and perhaps the church to formalize their love. If people chose to believe we were already wed, there's no harm in that, we thought. It was an outward clarification of our monogamous commitment.

Now, at the Boston Knob Overlook, we both looked at the ring. I'm not sure if Becky read my mind or I read hers.

"Maybe it's time," she said.

"It is. Will you?"

"Yes, Rick, I will."

"Perfect. The sooner the better."

Once again, on the exact spot where our love first took flight, Becky and I kissed -- a sweet, tender, unhurried kiss; almost a sanctifying act, the kind you remember until death.

▼ ▼ ▼

The heat had broken by the time we returned to Norfolk Sunday afternoon. A northeasterly breeze blew off the Atlantic and into the mouth of the Chesapeake, and Ocean View felt more like Martha's Vineyard when we parked in my driveway.

We took a bottle of Chianti and two glasses along with a beach towel to spread on the sand where the beach gave way to modest dunes a couple of hundred feet from my house. We watched massive tankers and cargo ships drift slowly by, laden with goods heading into or coming from ports such as Baltimore and Richmond as we sipped in the fading afternoon light.

"So, Friday?" I asked.

"I think so. It'll give our kids and grands time to be here, even though it is short notice."

We planned to discuss it on the eventful ride back home from Meeker Cabin, a trip lengthened by an impromptu hospital visit.

Just before we reached Interstate 64 atop Afton Mountain, we regained cellular service, and our phones lit up with missed calls and text messages. The one that alarmed us showed up on Becky's phone only as State Police. Becky listened to the voice mail.

"This is Captain Ordoñez of the Virginia State Police calling for Miss Parsons. I had the VSP headquarters in Richmond dig up your contact information. I hope you don't mind. This is in regard to Jackson Reager, the little boy you helped on Friday. Well, his family reached out to me because he hasn't quit asking when Miss Becky was going to come see him. This is Sunday morning, so I figure y'all might have already left the area but if I'll give you their phone number if you want to call and talk to him. It's Marissa Reager's phone and the number is...," the officer said, fumbling his phone as he found a piece of paper and recited the number from it. "I know they'd be thrilled to hear from you. Thank you."

"Take me to that hospital," Becky said. She dialed the number and Marissa answered. She identified herself and asked how Jackson was faring. Marissa told her he could be discharged as early as that afternoon but probably Monday as the hospital monitored the child for everything from dangerous infections to the possibility of a concussion.

"We'll be there in about half an hour. What's your room number?" Becky took it down and hung up.

Jackson was in the children's floor of the sprawling hospital complex. The boy was asleep when we got there. His arm was swaddled in gauze, and the portion that was visible was livid, inflamed and swollen. It was causing him pain, so he had been given mild painkillers and sedatives.

Marissa hugged Becky fiercely and began sobbing when she met us just outside the room.

"You're the reason our little boy's not only alive but is going to be OK," Marissa said.

She was bleary-eyed from lack of sleep. She and Todd had taken turns keeping watch over Jackson ever since he had emerged from emergency surgery Friday evening.

"I know I'm emotional, but you have no idea how important a role you played in the life of this family," Marissa said. "And Jackson -- children can tell -- he saw the goodness in you, and he can't stop talking about you. He thinks you were some sort of angel."

That description again. It follows Becky around. Captain Ordoñez had used it. She's not going to go into a self-congratulatory, albeit objective, recitation of the lives she's saved under any circumstance. I would, but this wasn't the time.

"I'm was blessed to have been there at that time and had the medical training to know what to do. That's all. I'm no different than anybody else," she said. "Can I see him?"

"Sure, let me wake him," Marissa said, leading the way into the brightly colored room.

"Jaaackson. Sweeet peeea, are you awake? You've got a visitor."

His eyelids slowly opened and he looked around the still unfamiliar surroundings before seeing his mom with Miss Becky standing behind her. His eyes flew open, his face lit up and he let out a squeal when he recognized her. His uninjured arm reached for her.

"May I," Becky asked Marissa.

"Please do," she replied.

Becky moved along the rail to the children's bed and leaned in toward the boy's face.

"It's the first time he's smiled since Friday," Marissa said.

Becky stroked his fine, blond curls, and spoke in a soothing voice barely over a whisper.

"You're so brave and strong, Jackson," she said. "You're getting better by the day. Miss Becky told you you'd get better."

"I got snitches," he said. Marissa chuckled. "That's what he calls stitches."

"So tell me about this place. Have they been nice, all the doctors and nurses?"

"They give me ice cream and I get to watch Paw Patrol, but I have to get shots and I don't like that," he said.

"Well, what kind of ice cream do they give you," Becky said, her attention locked on Jackson alone.

"There's... chocolate and they have vanilla, but what I really like is strawberry," he said.

"Have they brought you any strawberry?"

"No."

Marissa interjected. "We tried to bring in some Ben & Jerry's but were told we're not allowed to have outside food in here," she said.

"Let Miss Becky see what she can do about that," she said. "I was a nurse for 20 years. I know a few tricks."

She walked down to the nurses station where the floor nursing shift supervisor worked. They spoke for five minutes, and by the time she returned to Jackson's bedside, you'd have Becky and the chief floor nurse were colleagues and drinking buddies for years.

"Jackson, Miss Becky's going to give your mommy her phone number and I want you to let her take pictures and videos of you as you get better and send them to me so I can see how you're doing, OK? And whenever you all come down to the beach, let Miss Becky know so Mr. Rick and I can see you. Does that sound good?"

He nodded his head enthusiastically. When Becky leaned over to hug him, he extended his good arm around her neck and gave it a squeeze. Becky gently kissed his forehead. When she turned to leave, she saw Marissa and Todd, arm-in-arm, struggling not to fall to pieces in front of their little boy.

Becky wrote her cell number and her email address on a napkin and handed it to Marissa. "Use this. Please. Keep in touch."

She gave Marissa and Todd a quick embrace and was quickly out the door. Entering Jackson's room as we left was an orderly carrying a tray. On the tray was a bowl with two heaping pink scoops of ice cream.

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The emotion of visiting Jackson's hospital room preoccupied us for more than an hour. We were nearly to Richmond before the topic of wedding logistics moved to the front burner. We considered a big event that would take months of planning but scrapped it for the sake of simple immediacy. Too much time had lapsed since that first kiss at Boston Knob. We already had the ideal venue -- my beachfront backyard. All we needed was our children and their families. The few issues remaining such as the few decorations, obtaining our marriage license, finding an officiant and hiring a caterer, were achievable over the next four-and-a-half days ahead of our outdoor sunset nuptials. But step one was notifying the kids.

Becky's daughters, both living nearby and already expecting to attend their monthly Sunday at Nana's, were able to accommodate the date with minimum hassle: just take off work and start the weekend a few hours early. My son, Temple, could make it down easily enough from Alexandria with my daughter-in-law, Abby, and my first grandchild, Cooper. My daughter, Sarah, and her husband, Mike, would have the toughest time of it, driving from Philadelphia, where Mike was an associate in a national law firm, Gladney & Watson. Their journey was complicated a bit by the sixth month of Sarah's pregnancy with her first child. But her happiness at my pending marriage to Becky -- with whom she had developed a strong bond the past year -- overcame her annoyance at the short notice. "We'll be there, dad."

I thought catering and music would be a much tougher ask than it was. As it turns out, Fridays nights are slow because everyone wants Saturday weddings. So rather than let equipment sit in a warehouse or the back of a van making no money, they were happy to pick up some Friday night business. The officiant was Becky's Episcopal priest, who had been a friend of hers for years and knew firsthand that she knew how to throw a great party. The only attire requirement: not a tie in sight, not even the catering staff.

A cellist and a two violinists provided all the music for the small ceremony. To the tune of "Unchained Melody," my beautiful Becky walked barefoot down the sandy path between the dunes toward the beach where I waited along with my son and best man, Temple, her daughter and maid of honor, Alyssa, and the Rev. Kyle Martin. Becky's granddaughter, Margaret, was the flower girl. My grandson, Cooper, was the ring bearer.

There, at 6:47 p. m., after we had exchanged vows and rings, the good reverend pronounced Rebecca Irene Parsons and Richard Talbert Ailey wife and husband. We didn't wait for his permission to kiss. It was instant, joyful, passionate and a little long for comfort.

"Get a room, you two," Becky's son-in-law, Doug, bellowed, drawing good natured laughter from everyone, including the bride and groom.

After a few photos for posterity, we uncorked the wine and opened up the buffet line -- fittingly, a seafood surfeit of lobster, shrimp, grilled sea bass and scampi along with asparagus and brown rice with wedding cake for dessert. When that was done, the caterer rounded up the tables, stowed away the leftovers and the DJ began spinning a counterbalancing mix of Motown and Southern rock that had been the college years soundtrack for Becky and me. From Aretha to Skynyrd, Al Green to the Allmans, the Temptations to Tom Petty, we danced on the sand and drank until almost midnight until finally, we bid farewell to the last of our wedding guests for the first time as Rick and Becky Ailey. (I was fine with Becky keeping her name, but she said she saw no sense lugging around the surname of a man she divorced at the expense of the one she just married.)

"What now, Mrs. Ailey?" I said with the house finally all to ourselves.

"I just want to soak it all in a little more. Maybe just go take a beach towel, sit on the dunes and have some more champagne?"

I grabbed one of the last two unopened bottles of champagne and a towel and we walked barefoot back to the spot on the beach where we had married just a few hours earlier. On this moonlit night, the sand was dull gray and the bay before us was vast and black. Other than waves gently lapping at the shoreline and an occasional jet zeroing in on a runway at Norfolk International, the world was quiet, peaceful.

"Nothing has ever felt so right as this does," I said as I stretched out on the blanket and Becky nestled in beside me.

"It does. Perfect. We were meant for this. Somehow, I've known that for a long, long time, even if it was a bit of a mystery. You solved that mystery, Rick. Loving you completes me."

"And I will love you with all that I am for as long as I am, Becky."

She leaned over me and ran her fingers through my hair as a cool breeze off the bay caressed us. Her eyes locked onto mine.

"That's as good as happily ever after can possibly be," she said. Then her lips found mine.

When we woke on Saturday, the beach towel, the champagne bottle and two glasses and every stitch of clothing we wore for our wedding remained on the beach. Exactly where we left them.

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Check back for occasional updates on the life and love of Becky and Rick Ailey.