Thirsty Pelican: 2018-Tribulation

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.

Copyright 2025 Royce F. Houton

Last Call at the Thirsty Pelican

Chapter Three:

2018-Tribulation

By Royce F. Houton

The great start to my day must have been written all over me in red, indelible ink. My administrative assistant, Madeline, was the first to notice and I don't know what tipped her off. More spring in my step? Possibly. A smile on my face in place of my customary pre-coffee, first-thing-Monday-morning, don't-talk-to-me-yet grouchface? Probably.

Whatever it was, Madeline's lady-radar detected it instantly.

"Well look who's struttin' in here on a Monday morning like he's king of the world!" Madeline said in her rich Mississippi Delta drawl straight out of her native Greenwood. "Musta had yourself one fine weekend."

"I guess I did, Maddy, and thanks for askin'," I replied. "Anything waiting for me on my desk that's going to harsh my Monday morning mellow?"

"Naw, but it's still early. Give it time," she said, her Delta sass as sharp as ever. "Oh, Waymon's new secretary left me a VM just before I got in and asked me to ask you to go see the boss this morning when you have a sec. Didn't seem to be Code Red."

Color coding is a little system Maddy and I worked out not long after I hired her three years earlier. It was four colors: Green the least urgent, yellow moderately urgent, red was urgent, and brown meant a full-on, crap-your-pants crisis. Maddy learned a version of it as a child raised by a single mother who worked overnights as a nurse in a hospital with a color code.

"K, will do. The new secretary have any idea what's on Waymon's mind?"

"Didn't say. She seems a bit overwhelmed with Glenda's old job," Maddy said.

So, I walked to the coffee machine on our floor -- one of those Kuerig devices -- read my morning emails and flagged those most important and time sensitive and scanned my Wall Street Journal -- the print edition; I'm old school. I called mortgage loan VPs in two banks whose emails required responses from me expeditiously, and by 10:30, I was on the other corner of Anchor's admin floor tapping on the open door of Waymon's corner office.

"You wanted to see me?"

"Oh, Kirk, yes. Come on in. Shut the door if you would," he said.

So this wasn't chit-chat. Whatever it was wasn't to leave his office, I surmised as I took a seat across the large, unadorned desk from him. I didn't have to wait long. He got to the point.

"So, I remember a few months ago when this LoanFast crisis started. That call I got from some suit at LoanFast, one of the claims he made was that your judgment in favor of WAS was a relationship with one of its product reps who was here during the side-by-side."

"I remember," I said, my stomach already beginning to churn.

"I recall that our own investigation and the FBI looked into it and found only an incidental meeting a year or so earlier, but only professional interaction during the try-out on both your part and the young lady's, so we were glad to have it all put to bed."

I could see it coming like a hanging curve ball: you know it's going right over the plate, you know exactly what it's going to do, but damned if you can get any part of the bat to make contact with it. The sunshine and unicorns my Monday started out with were gone and snakes and a moonless night had taken their place. He was right to this point.

"That's accurate Waymon."

"And now I'm told that you and this WAS employee, Miss Zanone, have begun seeing each other -- quite regularly as I understand it. The two of you were seen together in Tuscaloosa at the Tennessee game, in restaurants around Birmingham, at your condo building just down the street," he said, leaning forward in his chair and clasping his hands on his desk. "Are these reports accurate, Kirk?"

"They are. I've been seeing Sarah for about a month now and haven't hidden that from anyone, but none of it began until after WAS had been awarded the contract and the federal criminal investigation and arrests were announced and the government had cleared Sarah and me of wrongdoing. I didn't even have her phone number before that."

Waymon sighed heavily.

"Kirk, this has nothing to do with the FBI or the criminal case. This is an issue of perception. We tell the world LoanFast's claim that the fix was in because of a sweetheart relationship is bullshit, and then, lo-and-behold, it comes true! When the press gets hold of this, do you think anyone's going to believe that claim that nothing was going on between you two when you're now out there as a couple?"

"Sarah and I have the documented truth on our side, the fact we've done nothing wrong. Our own internal investigation validated that, as did the FBI," I said.

"Let's say all that's true. Do you think it's going to make a damn bit of difference to the public's perception? What's Anchor supposed to do, show the public our internal investigative files? Tell these press jackals, 'Oh, look, our own investigation says there was nothing going on'? We'd look like rubes, we'd get laughed at and it would smell like a whitewash," he said.

"Waymon, the FBI...," I said as he slammed his palm onto his desk.

"You think the FBI is going to release confidential investigative records in a pending criminal case to prove that you weren't playing grab-ass? Congress itself has to fight like hell to pry records from the FBI. The bureau eats like an elephant and shits like a tick," he said. "Kirk, I didn't just ride into town on a turnip truck and neither did you."

I felt silly. I felt puny. But I knew I was right. And it pissed me off that Waymon knew it, too, but this was his image in the power salons of Birmingham and within the banking world that was at stake and he was going to hang me out to dry. I bit my lip and sat silent as I felt my face redden.

"How serious is this affair with you and Miss Zanone," he said.

"It's not an affair. She's never been married and I'm divorced. Nothing untoward about it. But it's serious or at least heading strongly in that direction. I care for Sarah a great deal."

Waymon's shoulders slumped. His head bowed toward his desk and he was silent for a moment.

"Kirk, I think you know what you gotta do," he said in a low monotone.

"Pardon?"

"You've got to end this, Kirk, if you want to remain with Anchor Bank," he said, his head raised as he looked squarely at me. He was dead serious.

"Waymon, that's outrageous," I said as calmly as I could.

"That's my decision, Kirk. This is too important to this institution, to the trust we've earned among regulators, among peer banks, and particularly among our depositors and borrowers," he said.

"Talk it over with her. But I need your answer by close of business," Waymon said.

I stared at Waymon. I think my mouth was open: I can't be sure. I know it was as dry as dust. I was speechless. Being forced to choose between my career and Sarah was rash, poorly reasoned, unprofessional and grossly unfair, done out of the most cowardly and personal of motivations. But now, fear controlled my brain and disabled my ability to reason and calmly counter.

I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other. I opened Waymon's door, wandered out without another word and left it open. I made my way to the men's room and found an unoccupied toilet stall where I could regroup my senses, perhaps throw up, before I returned to my office. I sat in there for nearly half an hour.

Who can I talk to about this? How do I raise this with Sarah? It's a binary, Faustian choice. One option crushes the new love of my life. The other threatens my life's work and leaves a guy in his mid-50s -- hardly the prime hiring demographic -- without a job, a kid in college and no way to pay my bills without dipping way too early into my retirement savings.

I fished my iPhone out of my pocket. Atop the wallpaper -- a recent photo I had made of Sarah -- was the time readout: 11:18 a. m. Ron's analytical mind always helped me cut through the bullshit and make sense of things. Maybe he'd be up for an early lunch.

I thumbed a message into the text window. Hey, wanna slip out for an early lunch at Urban Cookhouse?

When? he replied quickly.

How's 11:30? Meet you downstairs?

His response, a thumbs-up emoji, was a huge relief. Without circling back to my office, I was waiting when he met me at the front door. He could sense from across the lobby that something was off. I held my tongue until we were well away from the office building.

"Ron, I've got to have your absolute secrecy on this. Promise me that or I can't say anything. Not a word, not to anybody. Agree?"

"Sure, Kirk. I agree. Clearly, something's upset you."

I nodded. "That's putting it mildly."

"Oh shit," he said.

"Remember a while back when you told me I'd come off the sidelines when the right girl came along?"

"Yeah."

"Well, she did."

"Don't tell me -- Sally, the girl from WAS that you'd met at the Pelican that time."

"Well, it's Sarah, but yes. Her."

"Read you like a damn book, Kirk."

"You didn't know about it? That we were dating?"

"No. Got a pretty busy life and I figured you'd tell me when or if it happened."

"Good to know, and I'll explain why in a minute," I said as we stepped into the restaurant and asked to be seated at a booth toward the rear of the dining room. I scanned the room from our booth and saw that we'd beaten the lunch crowd.

"So how serious is this," Ron asked.

"Serious enough," I said. "And you're the second person to ask me that in the past hour or so."

"Who was the other?"

"Waymon. And that's the problem."

"Oh fuck," Ron groaned. "What did he do?"

"Told me I had to choose between my job and Sarah. Gave me to close of business to let him know."

Ron's face went blank.

"Holy fuck. You're serious."

I nodded.

"Kirk, all Waymon cares about is how he looks. Even more than how the bank looks. He lives and dies by what his rich, snooty-ass country club pals he's so desperate to fit in with are going to say about something, not about facts, not about people."

"He obviously cares about this," I said.

"You know, when I saw how you looked at Sarah that day at the briefing just before the side-by-side, it crossed my mind that if there was something there and Waymon found out about it, he'd do something fucked up like this."

Again I nodded.

"Well, I got your back, buddy, but I don't think I can force Waymon to rethink this. So short of that, what can I do?"

"Well, just having someone to talk this through with is what I need most of all right now."

"OK. So you have two options. What are you thinking."

"Well, the business part of me who hires and fires people in lending is thinking being closer to 60 than 50 and being suddenly unemployed is not a good thing," I said. "You know how much money I'd be giving up."

Ron looked at me and nodded but couldn't maintain eye contact.

"But the better part of me says that I could spend the rest of my life with an office and a secretary and a downtown condo and a fat 401(k), and never meet anyone ever again as wonderful as Sarah. That part of me screams that if I betray her, I will die a well-off, lonely, miserable old man," I said.

That brought Ron's eyes back to mine and a broken smile formed on his lips.

"Old friend, I think you just made your decision," he said. "And for what it's worth, I think it's the right one. It's exactly what I'd do."

▼ ▼ ▼

I was sitting in Waymon McClendon's office when he strolled back in from a leisurely lunch with a visiting member of the bank's board of directors. He was surprised and a bit discomfited to see me there in the same chair where he had made his unholy ultimatum to me less than three hours earlier. Evidently, he didn't know what to tell his lunch guest. He didn't bother introducing me. He just shook hands with him nervously, asked to be excused for a short meeting and, in a last bid at brown-nosing, gave his best to the board member's wife and daughter. How saccharine fucking sweet.

"Hi Waymon," I said. I kept my seat, refusing to stand or even turn to look at him as he entered his office. "You might want to close the door."

"Did you make an appointment, Kirk," he asked as he walked around his desk to sit in his oversized leather swivel chair.

"Nah. Just told your new Glenda that you were expecting me. And you are. Remember? You gave me til close of business to tell you what I was doing vis-à-vis my job and Sarah."

"Yes. I did."

"Well I don't need til the close of business," I said.

"Oh?"

"Yep. I thought about it and I want to thank you for helping me see life clearly for the first time in a very long time, maybe the first time ever. Once I did that, the answer was easy: I'm gone."

I really wanted to just say "fuck you" and leave, but I knew enough about HR law to keep this process as clean and profession as possible. Waymon batted his eyes a couple of times and his mouth dropped open. "Pardon?" he said as his face reddened.

"My resignation letter is already in your inbox, nicely time-stamped for reasons I'm sure you can appreciate. It is my two weeks' notice, and I am spending both of those weeks burning accrued leave and vacation time I am due under bank policy and the law. I will take the other four weeks of the total six weeks I'm due due pro-rated in cash," I said.

"You're throwing away a career you worked for 19 hard years for? Are you sure about the irreversible step you're about to take," Waymon said, clearly not expecting the decision I had made.

"Oh yes. Quite sure. I'm a lot more sure of the decision I've made than you are right now of the ultimatum you made to me this morning. I am leaving with my conscience clear, my record clean and my pride intact. You were trying to avoid what you thought were unpleasant questions about my relationship rather than stand up for one of your trusted, dedicated senior staff of 19 years. You thought I'd destroy something precious for the sake of my paycheck and your appearance. You thought wrong, Waymon. I'm not like you," I said.

Now the chief executive officer's face seemed to lose its perpetually hale, ruddy color and seemed to become pallid the longer I spoke.

"But guess what. I will be gone, but the story you're so afraid of won't. I'll speak honestly about it. I have nothing to hide, nothing to lose. But you? You're looking at the worst of both worlds, Mr. McClendon."

"You will say nothing, Weeks. You forget the non-disclosure agreement required of all our employees."

"Waymon, it's pretty clear from this dialogue and from your awkward interaction with the visiting board member just now that you haven't run this by anyone. Not legal. Not the board. Not our human resources department. Not the reputational protection experts at our PR firm. You just went cowboy on this and thought I'd bend over for you and destroy a wonderful human being whom I love just for the sake of your... social standing, your appearance," I said with an airy calm that unsettled Waymon further. I could tell by his fidgeting and the dyspeptic look on his face that I was right on every one of my assumptions. Waymon McClendon has to be the world's worst poker player.

"Well, I did take the time over the past couple of hours to calm down and clarify exactly how I would do this. I checked with a very good friend of mine who supports my decision. I checked with colleagues in the industry who say I'd have no problem landing in a comparable job or working for myself and make damn good money doing it. And I checked with my attorney, R. B. Melton, and he assures me that your NDA can't withstand a subpoena in either a civil or criminal case and it can't prohibit me from discussing my personal life. And it was you, Waymon, who made me choose between this bank and my personal life," I said.

"But feel free to pick up your phone and ask Larry Brooks about that -- something a smart CEO would have done prior to taking the irreversible ultimatum you made this morning."

"You'll regret this, Weeks," Waymon McClendon said, trying vainly to affect a confident voice to hide the fear now manifest in the sweat beading beneath his baggy eyelids. I laughed and rose from my chair.

"You know, there's this old Chinese curse -- it might have been from Confucious himself, you can Google it -- that says, 'May you live in interesting times.' Well, your life and your job just got very interesting," I said, walking to open the closed door.

"Good luck, Waymon. You'll need it," I said, walking out the door without ever looking back at him. I left the door open.

I had already cleaned out the few personal possessions I kept in my office -- desk photos of Butterbean and Perry, a "World's Best Dad" coffee mug Butterbean gave me for my birthday when she was four years old, a plaque from the Alabama Mortgage Bankers Association for my service to the industry in 2007 and ceramic cartoon rendering of Alabama's elephant mascot, Big Al. By the time I had finished packing, a small crowd had gathered outside my door, whispering among themselves. Maddie was crying. Well behind them stood Ron Casey, leaning against a cubicle, his arms crossed and a knowing smirk on his face.

"What happened, Kirk," one of the support workers in my department asked as I emerged from my office from the last time with my box in my arms.

"That's a question I encourage you all to ask Waymon McClendon at his next all hands meeting. All I care to say right now is that he made me an offer I couldn't refuse," I said, smiling as I winked at Ron a few feet away.

Ron came to me and offered to carry my loaded Banker's Box so I could greet other well-wishers on the way out, but I declined.

"Then I'll walk you out," he said.

"Sure. One last walk in this place."

"I'm proud of you for the way you handled this. I'm not going to ask you now, but someday you've got to tell me what Waymon did when you went all Johnny Paycheck on him, told him to take the job and shove it," Ron said.

"Forgot who sang it, but that song was going through my mind as I walked into the CEO's office a little while ago. Felt good," I said.

We reached the main entrance. Navigating the revolving door with the box in my arms would have been ungainly, so Ron opened the regular access door just to one side of it.

"I'd hug you right now if my arms weren't full," I told my friend. "But I want you to know it was your counsel, friendship and moral clarity that lit the way for me to do this, to do the right thing. And I will treasure that til the day I die. And once I tell her about it, I suspect Sarah will, too."

"I'll miss you here," he said, swallowing hard and blinking back tears. "Be well, friend. See you 'round the Pelican."

▼ ▼ ▼

Damn. Looks like I missed her. Nobody answered the door of Sarah's apartment. The cute little Mazda she had bought with the raise from her recent promotion was gone, too.

I started tapping out a text message to her when a text from her popped up first.

Thought you'd still be at work but I see from my doorbell camera you're at my door.

Wasn't even aware she had a security camera, but now that I look at her door through my windshield, I wonder how I missed it before. I waved at her in case it was still transmitting.

Was trying to surprise you. I'll just hang out here and wait if you're just running errands.

I waited for a reply. And waited. Finally, it came.

Will call shortly.

Strange. But OK. Maybe she wants me to go handle part of her errand list. Maybe she wants to meet me for dinner somewhere. Something too involved to text.

In the passenger seat beside me were the flowers and champagne I had picked up after I dropped my box of office personal items in my downtown condo unit. I wanted to break the news to her with a bit of flair. I'm just hoping the bubbly won't get warm and the gladiolus won't wilt before she returns. So I sat and waited. When she called, I answered on the first ring.

"Hi beautiful. How long before I get to kiss you?"

"Oh, I wish I had called or texted you earlier, but I didn't want to bother you at work so I was waiting til after 5," she said. "I'm taking a little trip. I'll be away for a day or two, Kirk. Nothing's wrong, but there's just something I have to do. I have to do it alone and I can't really explain more than that right now."

"Something come up with the job?"

"No. It's -- how do I say this? -- it's something I have to do at this point for my own sake. Believe me when I tell you that I love you and in no way represents anything wrong between us. Quite the opposite. I just have to go back and... settle some things for the good of my soul."

I sat silent, essentially paralyzed.

It wasn't because I was angry. Or scared. It was because I needed her badly at the moment -- to share the life-changing decision I had made hours earlier -- and she wasn't there. I was torn between my heart's need to be there to protect her, wherever she was, and my mind commanding me to trust her, to give her space.

I was battling against impulse, against the instinct to plead or vent the sadness I felt at not being able to see and hold her at the moment. I was warding off the predisposition I have -- as Butterbean has admonished me on more than one occasion -- for condescension and "mansplaining." For reflexively subordinating the needs of others to my own. And all those impulses elbowing one another for primacy in my mind canceled themselves out, leaving me wordless for a moment.

"Kirk are you there?"

"Yes. Yes I am," shaking myself out of my fugue. "I... I'm just sorting things out for a moment here."

"I'm sorry, baby, I really am, but I will be back in a day or two, I promise, and I'll come straight to you when I do," she said, pausing for my response, leaving me listening to the drone of her car engine and the hum of the road passing under her tires.

Think, Kirk, think! Don't fuck this up. Either you love and trust this woman or you don't. She's given you no reason to distrust her. You know her heart. Give her this.

"Sure, baby. I love you and I trust you. I know this has to be important for you. So be careful, please, text me when you get safely wherever you're going and remember I'm a call away at any moment," I said. "OK?"

"Yes, Kirk. I will. And thank you. More than you know."

"Be safe, Sarah. You're my world."

She was crying now. It wasn't an audible sob, but I could hear it in the way her breathing clutched at her words. Whatever, wherever this was, it was emotionally vital to her. And I could accept that.

"You too, baby. I love you, Kirk," she said in a shaky voice. "Bye."

"Bye, angel."

And with that, the call disconnected. My news would have to wait.

I left the gladiolus in their vase on her front door stoop. The 2009 Dom Perignon I took home and stored it in my fridge. We'll find a use for it eventually.

▼ ▼ ▼

I probably would have risen at 6 a. m. whether the alarm sounded or not. Since I had forgotten to turn it off on my first morning post-Anchor Bank, it went off right on schedule, so I got up, took my brisk three-mile morning walk, brewed myself a cup of coffee and showered. Old habits tend to repeat themselves. But I stopped the process after I toweled off, refusing to shave or put on the shirt and tie.

The force of routine, however, is powerful. I found myself missing the short walk to work, striding through the lobby in my suit, chit-chat on the elevator, reading the Wall Street Journal that waited for me on my desk with my second cup of joe.

All of it was made worse knowing that Sarah wasn't at my place or just a short drive away this morning. So I picked up my phone and texted her, renewing the thread from the previous night when she sent a short text at 7:15 confirming that she had a full day ahead tomorrow and was safe at her destination.

My mind had spun until after midnight, trying to figure out where she had gone and why. What clue did I not pick up on during our Sunday of lovemaking and our first full night together? Eventually, exhausted, sleep took over.

Now, at 10:30 a. m., showered and in jeans and a sweatshirt, I found myself fidgeting, nervous and feeling unmoored after so many years looking after my employer's needs except for planned breaks during holidays or vacations. This was different. This was unemployment, and the vacuum it created in my day was suddenly frightening.

I began unpacking the personal items I had stowed in my Banker's Box the previous afternoon, looking for places to put them in the house, but there seemed nowhere in my home for objects I distinctly associated with my old Anchor office. Besides, I assured myself, I'd be unpacking them in another office before too long. A guy with my professional pedigree and a good decade or two still ahead before it was retirement time would have no problem finding a new, maybe much better gig. Right? Right?

Still no reply from Sarah, wherever she had gone. Text her again? That would seem needy. She'd reply when she could. She might be somewhere without reliable cell coverage. Who knows. Bide my time.

I thought about calling Ron to see if he wanted to go have lunch, but much as it feels like I've been gone for a while, it's really less than a day, so I forgot that and drove to the Pelican for my favorite -- a jalapeño Bama Burger with tots and a Blue Moon on draft -- but the place isn't known for its lunch crowd and without Little Carly or any of the regulars, I ate and left.

On the way home, I called Elmer "Hoss" House, the guy who gave me my first job after I got my business degree at a regional bank in Montgomery. He had retired and moved full time to a miniature mansion he had built on the beach in Gulf Shores on the site where he once maintained a tiny vacation bungalow he would let Siobhan and me use on weekends in our newlywed years before I went to work for Anchor and moved to Birmingham. (I suspect that's where Butterbean was conceived.)

Hoss's wife, Sybil, answered and informed me that Hoss was had been moved to a memory care facility in Mobile about a year earlier when the dementia that had been diagnosed in 2012 became too much for her to handle in their home. He had taken to wandering at night: once they found him in the middle of a busy highway, and another time he was waist-deep in the Gulf of Mexico on the beach by his home. I extended my deepest condolences to her and asked that she tell Hoss hello for me.

"I will, Kirk, but... he usually doesn't know who I am when I visit him now," she said. "But please give my best to your sweet Siobhan and tell her I remember her fondly from the old days."

I didn't have the heart to fill her in, so I thanked Sybil and promised to keep in touch, knowing damn well that I wouldn't.

I got home and checked anew for a text from Sarah. Nothing.

My melancholia deepening, I thought of calling Butterbean to tell her about my departure from Anchor but remembered she'd be in the middle of her workday in Atlanta. I called Perry, but it rang through to voicemail. This isn't the sort of news you leave on a recording.

Well, if this is what the leisure life -- unemployment -- looks like, then it's time I update my LinkedIn profile, hopped on Indeed and maybe worked a few professional contacts. I can't sit around all day drinking coffee and binge-watching "Bar Rescue."

Even as I took my first steps on finding new employment, I checked constantly for any new word from Sarah. Nothing. When 7 p. m. rolled around and I still had not heard from her, I called her mobile, but it went directly to voicemail.

"Hi baby, it's me. Just wanted to check in and see how you're doing. Give me a call when you can. I love you." I hit the pound sign, ending the recording and hung up. More than 24 hours had now passed without contact. My paranoia and panic were kicking in, and my brain was spinning.

Maybe she went to the beach. There's a resort near Destin, Florida, where the sand was sugary white and the Gulf water was so clear you could stand neck deep in it and see your toes, she has said more than once. But the week before Thanksgiving isn't prime beach season and the chill by now had made that prohibitive, even that far south.

I recall she still had some distant kin on her mother's side who lived in a little town just north of Memphis -- an uncle and maybe a cousin -- whom she had not seen since Derek's funeral. I pored over Google maps, seeing if any of those towns' names rang a bell -- Millington? Munford? Covington? Atoka? -- but none did.

All the meaningful memories of her past were in northwestern Alabama -- Florence, Sheffield, Muscle Shoals, Tuscumbia; they call them the Quad-Cities -- or, even farther back, in a little town not far across the Tennessee line from there. I went to Google maps again and this time, the name clicked: Savannah, where she lived when her father died, where he's buried along with her mother. And she had told me that David was laid to rest with military honors in her hometown cemetery in Tuscumbia, and that she had Derek interred there right beside his father.

"I bet that's it," I said.

On a hunch, I called the Alabama State Police office in Sheffield and asked if there were any reports over the past day or so of an accident involving a woman named Sarah Zanone (I spelled her name twice) or a navy blue Mazda with Sarah's plate number.

"Lemme check," the operator said as I heard her fingers dance across a keyboard. "I'm not finding anything matching that vehicle description or that name, sir, but you can monitor accident reports in real time if you want to on our website," she said, and gave me the dot-gov address.

I typed in the URL and searched scores of rows of data about accidents as different as fender benders and overturned tankers, and no blue Miata and nobody named "Sarah" or "Zanone."

Then I googled the Tennessee Highway Patrol district headquarters in Jackson, Tennessee, that served the Savannah area, called its number and asked the same questions. One accident involving a blue Mazda, but it had a Tennessee tag and it was driven by someone named Tyrone.

Feeling only marginally more relieved, I crawled in bed at 11 p. m. -- again, work-life force of habit -- when my phone buzzed just before I turned off my lamp. "Message from Sarah" the banner on the screen informed me, and my heart leapt.

Hi baby. Sorry you're worried. Something I had to do. Saying my last goodbyes tomorrow AM & coming home right after. Wish u were here. See u tmrw evening, she wrote.

So relieved to hear from you. Love you, Sarah. Wish I was with u too. Can't w8 to kiss u again. I followed it up with a half dozen ♥ emojis.

A few moments passed. Then, Phone's been dead most of day and about to die again. Was in the sticks waay out of phone range most of the day. I'm beat so going to turn this off & get some sleep. Love you, Kirk. A reciprocal profusion of heart emojis followed and that was that.

Without realizing it, she had given herself away. Well, I'm pretty sure of it anyway.

The small Zanone family plot was miles outside Savannah in the hilly backwoods, she had once told me. I'm betting she spent much of the day there, probably tending to her parents' headstones and remembering them.

Then, she had texted, there are final goodbyes tomorrow. I'm betting that's David and Derek. And that would be in Tuscumbia's city cemetery.

Finally, I could sleep, so I reset my alarm and called it a night.

▼ ▼ ▼

The morning of Wednesday, November 13, was cold, blustery and gray. It dawned on me for the first time of this new cold season that the trees were, at last, barren, their bleak, black branches naked and reaching toward an unbroken canopy of gray cloudcover. I had been sitting outside in it since just before dawn, about 45 minutes ago.

It was a risk on any number of levels, waiting in Tuscumbia Gardens on my educated guess that Sarah would be here visiting the final resting place of her only child, Derek, and his father, David.

There was no assurance that Sarah would be here, and that my rising at 4 a. m. to drive from Birmingham to Tuscumbia would be a waste. There was also the possibility that when/if she saw me, she might not be pleased. She had, after all, purposely embarked on this journey alone. True, she had said in her text that she wished I was here, but maybe it was a passing emotion that may not withstand a surprise appearance.

I was able to establish through online searches that this was the cemetery where Derek and David were buried. It had taken longer than I had hoped the previous night because obituary searches for "Derek Zanone" returned no matches. It was only when I added just his first name and Sarah's full name that I discovered why: she had given Derek his father's surname: Alexander. An online obituary for Derek Alexander revealed that he had passed away four years ago on this day: the 13th of November, 2014. He was buried beside his father, who died days before Derek's birth in 1995. Survivors included his mother, Sarah Zanone, and his grandmother, Laura Zanone White. A separate query turned up an archived newspaper story about David Alexander's burial with a full Marine honor guard.

Ideally, I would have found their graves ahead of time, but I didn't want to risk having Sarah find loitering around the graves of her son and her first love. So I parked my car behind a copse of trees and shrubbery in a corner of the graveyard near a caretaker's shed. I got out and sat on the trunk sipping my large cup of 7-Eleven coffee and shivering against the chill wind as I peeked over and through the brush.

Handling this, should Sarah show, would be delicate. I hoped she would be near enough that I might be able to take cues from her body language as to whether I should announce myself or let her have this time privately. If I guessed wrong, it could blow our relationship apart. This was extremely tricky, far more fraught with peril than I had imagined before I went to bed in the morning's wee hours.

As I waited, a 1980s vintage Dodge Ram truck, seemingly in mint condition, stopped on the gravel access road that formed roughly a figure eight route through about seven acres of headstones. A white haired woman holding a small American flag got out of the passenger side of the vehicle and walked gingerly on the arm of a younger man to a marker about 70 feet from me. She leaned over, carefully placed the stick holding the tiny flag into the ground by the headstone and stood together arm-in-arm for several minutes afterward before returning to the truck and driving slowly away.

A middle-aged man came striding briskly through the main entryway beneath the stone arch that spanned it and walked the entire figure eight twice, looking intermittently at his watch, then strode out of the cemetery as purposefully as he had arrived, his heavy breath visible in the cold air.

It was almost 10 a. m. My coffee was long since gone, I was shivering, and my confidence that my gamble would pay off was almost depleted. I'll give it til 10 sharp before I call it a day, I reasoned to myself as I pulled my phone from my jacket pocket again to make sure I hadn't missed any texts. I had already seen the text she sent at 8:30 wishing me a good morning, a good day at work and assuring me that she'd see me afterward. Nothing since.

That's when I heard gravel popping and crunching beneath car tires just beyond the stone arch and caught the front of a cobalt blue sportscar entering the cemetery, so I ducked to make sure I wouldn't be spotted.

At the point about 20 yards into the cemetery grounds where the single roadway branches left or right into the figure eight design, the car turned to its left, in my general direction and followed the route around until it reached the point nearest me and then turned right. I could see, even through the evergreen foliage, that it was Sarah's car. I could even make out her red hair beneath the same crimson beret she had worn a month earlier for the football game. She stopped the car, killed the engine and sat there for a couple of minutes. It became clear what she was doing when my phone buzzed.

As quietly as I could, I retrieved it from my coat pocket again and read Sarah's text.

I'll tell you about it tonight, but I feel so sad and alone and nervous right now and I wish I had you to hold my hand.

My heart melted and I fought every impulse to rush toward her immediately.

Her car door opened and Sarah exited her Miata with a bouquet of flowers in each of her hands. She used her knee to nudge the car door shut. She walked left from the car for about 10 yards to a chest-high granite monument and stood there silently for a moment. Then she bent forward for a few moments, stood up, took a few steps to her right, and repeated the process. When she stood again and took a few steps back, there were no flowers in her hands.

She stood there in silence, her head bent forward, either in prayer or looking at the graves before her. It was impossible to tell from my vantage point which was her son's and which was David's.

It wasn't until I saw her bring her right hand to her mouth and her shoulders begin to quake slightly that I realized she was softly crying.

This seemed to be the right moment.

Wish I was holding your hand, too, baby. Do this for me - close your eyes, imagine I am there and I will be. Say to yourself SLOWLY & OUT LOUD 5 times 'Kirk, I wish you were here. ☺

I thought for several seconds. This could be really sweet or the creepiest thing ever. But I could come up with nothing better, and it was act now or forget it. I hit send.

From a distance of about 30 yards, I could faintly hear the chimes she had assigned as alerts for arriving texts from me. I saw her pull her phone from the pocket of her jeans and read it.

She dabbed her eyes, I guess to clear away the tears clouding them, and studied the screen for several seconds. She placed her free hand over her heart, looked skyward with what appeared to be a bemused smile on her face and shook her head, as if saying, "that sounds just like something Kirk would say." Then she shrugged, which, to me, was body language for, "Eh, what can it hurt?"

I saw her close her eyes, her head tilted upward. I could see her mouth move and hear her voice faintly as I emerged quietly but quickly from my cover. I figured I had 20, maybe 25 seconds max to cover the distance, but to do so silently. I stopped about three yards to her left and slightly behind her her when she finished reciting the sentence out loud for the last time.

My words were just above a whisper.

"Open your eyes."

Startled, she spun, cat-like, to her left, her eyes wide and mouth open, instinctively landing in a defensive crouch and dropping her phone in the brown, winter-killed grass in the process. It took a moment for her to form the word, and when she did, it emerged as a shriek.

"Kirk!"

Adrenaline had supercharged her momentary fight-or-flight instinct. Had it not been me, I realized, this woman was fully prepared to fight. Initially, she seemed unsure whether what she was seeing was real. Her hands flew up beside her face and seemed to tremble for a second. "How... what... how are you here?"

I opened my arms and walked toward her and she rushed into them.

"After you texted that me you wish I was with you last night, I wanted to make that happen and so I racked my brain to remember things you've told me and maybe figure out how. Did a little research and made an educated but very lucky guess and then got up at 3 this morning to see if I'd guessed right," I said.

She buried her head into my chest and wept quietly.

"I parked just over there," I said, nodding toward the caretaker's shed. "That's where I was when I got your text saying you wish I was here holding your hand. Well... now you can."

I cradled her and pressed kisses onto her beret and her hair as she let the emotional cargo of an emotionally draining two-day odyssey into her past spill from her, and in that moment, I think I understood. Sarah had made this trip -- pointedly on the fourth anniversary of her son's passing -- to reconcile her life as it had been with her life ahead. A life with me.

She wrapped her arms tightly around me beneath my parka and squeezed, her fingers clutching the back of my heavy flannel shirt as tears formed a small wet spot on the front. It made sense now. After two days spent honoring and remembering those whom she had loved -- and always will -- but who could no longer hold her, feel her cry, kiss her, caress her face and reassuringly whisper "I love you" in her ear, she was ready, at last, to move on, to have her love reciprocated.

She had come here to tell them about me; to let them know they would remain in her heart, a heart where she has made room for me. She didn't tell me any of this, but I knew it as surely as I felt her warmth, pressed her near to my own heart and savored the sweet cleanness of her hair on this colorless late fall morning in this city of the dead steps from where the remains of her son and her son's father lay.

For uncounted minutes, we stood there, locked in each other's embrace as Sarah took the time she needed for this profound moment of transition. And in that time, I felt I had come to silently understand more about Sarah Elizabeth Zanone than any conversation had conveyed. We had never been closer.

"So... you know why I'm here," she eventually said in a soft voice.

"I think so. Four years to the day."

She nodded. "Sometimes, Kirk, coming here brings back the pain of losing him as sharp as I felt it on the morning I held his hand as life left him," she said, her breath occasionally coming in the shudders we all feel after a hard cry. "I knew that's how it would be as soon as I drove beneath the arch, and that's the reason I texted you after I stopped the car. I needed to steel myself for this; not to tell them goodbye but to tell them all about you. I know it's right. I just wasn't sure..."

She fidgeted in her coat pocket, likely for a tissue for the sniffles that lingered from her weeping. I handed her my handkerchief. She dabbed her nose and continued.

"I knew that even if I couldn't physically have my hand in yours, just hearing from you and knowing you love me would help."

"Then hold my hand, Sarah. I do love you. Introduce me to them. Then I can pay them my respects. If you want, that is."

I saw her smile for the first time that day. Her face brightened.

"Yes," she nodded. "I'd like that very much."

So she took my hand in hers and held it tightly as we stepped slowly forward. To my left was a brownish-bronze headstone sitting flat and just above the winter-killed but well-mown grass. On its raised inscription:

DAVID MARTIN ANDERSON

Corporal † USMC

August 14, 1974 - July 7, 1995

Beloved Father of Derek

I removed my black felt fedora in a show of respect and cleared my throat.

"David, I'm honored to be on this hallowed ground where you rest. Sarah has told me so much about you. Both of you. You were, are and always will be great loves in her life. And I know that you both loved her, too."

I squeezed her hand for a moment and continued.

"That gives us much in common. I love Sarah very much. As you did. I am grateful beyond words that she loves me. And that's why I joined her this morning. I am here to say that I will give all I have to Sarah -- all my heart, my mind, my earthly possessions... my love. If you can hear these words, and I hope you can, then I want you to know that I will love her as you did, and I hope it brings comfort and peace to you."

I moved a few steps to the right, my hand still enfolding Sarah's, stopping before a nondescript, gray stone that read:

DEREK Z. ANDERSON

July 9, 1995 † November 13, 2014

Beloved son of Derek and Sarah

"And Derek. I wish I had known you. I wish I had witnessed the fierce, unbreakable love and devotion your mama had for you and your love for her every day of your life. I know she misses you. Very much. I honor your life, I honor your memory and promise that I always will. Sarah's loves are my loves."

"Finally, Derek, I especially hope that you know I will take care of your mom for however long God gives us together with the same fierce, unbreakable love that she had for you. And I hope that gives you peace."

Sarah was no longer grasping my hand. She had pulled my arm against herself, clutching it to her chest with both of her arms; her cheek was pressed into my jacket sleeve. When I turned toward her, she looked up at me. I could see the streaks of tears on her face, even as she smiled and nodded.

"That was perfect, Kirk. Perfect. I love you so much."

She released my arm, wrapped her arms around my neck, stood on her tiptoes and kissed me softly.

▼ ▼ ▼

It didn't take long to order. All I'd had to eat was a ham biscuit I'd picked up at an all-night truck stop somewhere around 4:30 a. m. just north of Birmingham on my two-hour, predawn drive to Tuscumbia. And all Sarah had eaten was an overripe banana and a small cup of peach yogurt from the specious offerings in the "complimentary continental breakfast" that a Best Western in Muscle Shoals offered its guests from 6 to 9 each morning."

Our stomachs were growling by the time we left Tuscumbia Gardens. She suggested hitting a Sonic drive-in before it shut down its breakfast offerings, but I had my mouth set on something more sumptuous. I hit my Open Table app and right at the top of it was Big Bad Breakfast, a chain of premium breakfast and lunch cafes that had spread like kudzu across the Deep South after nationally renowned chef John Currance opened his first in Oxford, Mississippi, more than a decade earlier.

"I'll have French Toast and a Mimosa," Sarah said, handing Maurice our menus.

"And I'll have the Big Bad Skillet with eggs over easy, biscuits and a Bloody Mary," I told the server, a thin, friendly college student named Maurice.

I looked at Sarah and smiled. I stretched my hand across the table and she put her hand in mine. The smile she returned showed her weariness and fatigue, but it was clear that her curiosity about why I watched the sun rise in a Tuscumbia graveyard on a work day was even stronger.

"So... you took a vacation day or sick day? Played hooky? What?"

"A little more than that," I said.

"An extended holiday week?"

"I quit. I am no longer employed by Anchor Bank."

She batted her eyes as, for the second time in just over an hour, she had trouble believing what she was seeing and hearing from me. Her mouth was agape, but she had trouble pushing words out. Finally she just shook her head as if to clear it.

"You... uh... what? You like... resigned? Retired? Were fired?"

"Option A. I resigned Monday afternoon."

"You're serious? This isn't a joke?"

"Dead serious."

"Oh my God, Kirk. What happened?"

"Our old friend Waymon McClendon made me choose between keeping my position at the bank or a life with you. I chose you. Easy choice. One I'd make 10 times out of 10."

Again, she was speechless. So I filled in the blanks.

"Waymon got word that we were seeing each other after the dust settled on the LoanFast investigation and we had been cleared. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to know that. I've always been proud of you, of our relationship: we have no reason to conceal it," I said.

"Anyway, Waymon is supremely protective of his image and standing among Birmingham's social upper crust and somehow he got the idea that the optics of a senior manager dating a representative of a company that won the Anchor data contract in this high profile case might raise an eyebrow or two among his hoity-toity cohorts."

I sipped the coffee Maurice had refilled.

"I told Waymon what he already knew and what the FBI and Anchor's own internal review had confirmed: that neither you nor I did anything remotely improper. That truth didn't calm his nerves, so he made the ultimatum."

Sarah still sat in dumbfounded silence.

"I had lunch with Ron -- you remember Ron, the top IT manager -- to calm down and get some perspective. Ron supported me leaving the job for you. Then I talked to my lawyer and mentally structured how I'd tell Waymon to shove it."

"I had already packed my personal belongings from my office and had them boxed in a corner before I walked back into Waymon's office before he got back from lunch with a board member. When I was done, I picked up my box, said goodbye to the mortgage loan team and walked home. I went by your apartment to tell you personally, but you'd already left. That's why I showed up at such an odd hour on your doorbell cam."

"Oh my God, Kirk, I'd have turned around right then if you'd told me," she said squeezing my hand.

"I knew, but I could tell that you were doing something that felt very important. And it's not as if my news wouldn't keep for a few days. Now that I know what your mission was, I'm glad I didn't lay that on you then."

"What are you going to do? Are you retired?"

"First thing I'm going to do is take some time, de-stress, think about what I want to do, and then after all the Thanksgiving week craziness is over, I'll decide whether I want to go back to work for another bank or open my own consultancy. I've had bank executives tell me I could make a multiple of what I was making at Anchor if I wanted to, depending on how busy I want to be. I plan to talk to a lot of people, but the one who will have the most influence is you."

"Me?"

"Yes. I can find another job. There's no other you. The part about 'what I want to do'? I'm not sure what that will be, but I do know that whatever it is, I want you to be part of it."

"You gave up your job. Nobody's ever chosen me over anything. It's not something that I could have ever asked someone to even consider. Yet you just did it. I... I have no words."

"No words needed, Sarah."

"I love you so much, Kirk."

If Maurice hadn't arrived with our meals right then, I am certain I would have stretched across the table from my side of the booth and kissed Sarah. But our eyes stayed locked on each other's as the server did his work.

We ate like starved stevedores, and when we were done, we were too full and languid to move. Since the lunch crowd would be another 30 minutes to an hour before arriving, Sarah filled me in on what she had done the day before. I had guessed correctly there, too. She had traveled to a cemetery in Hardin County, Tennessee, just east of her early childhood home in Savannah, and visited the final resting place of her father and mother. As she had today, she had told them about me, something she felt a spiritual/ancestral calling to do. It had been a long and mentally exhausting day, she said, for many of the same reasons her morning visiting the graves of David and Derek had been. There were sweet memories and bitter ones, all swarming around her like gnats in August. Even the sweet ones stung because it made the sense of loss deeper.

"This is probably hard for people to understand, going all this way to visit the dead, but you've got to remember, until there was you, they're all the people I loved most in this life," Sarah said. "I felt I had to reconcile the loves past with the love present and future so I could move on and begin life with you, Kirk."

"I want that," I said as Maurice brought the credit card slip for me to sign.

We rose slowly and sorely from the cushionless wooden booth seats where we had spent the past 90 minutes, tried to stretch out the kinks and walked to our cars parked side by side.

"So, Sarah, when do you have to be back on the clock for WAS?'

"Monday. I took the whole week; told them I had pressing family business. I didn't lie," she said.

"Well, clearly I don't have to be back," I said. "I can see from your eyes that you're even more tired than I am. Care to extend the stay and pamper ourselves?'

"Here? In Florence?"

"Sure. Ever been to the Marriott spa hotel by the river over near Wheeler Dam?"

"They were building it when I was at UNA. Never stayed there."

"Would you be opposed to staying there tonight?" I said. "Neither of us feels like driving two hours and being dog tired when we get to Birmingham."

"You sure?" she said, her arm curling around my waist and hooking her thumb inside my belt.

"Very."

"Fine, but it's on me. You just lost your job and I just got a promotion. No argument, either. Got it?"

I kissed her forehead.

"Yes ma'am."

▼ ▼ ▼

Sarah used her American Express to cover the room -- one on the top floor with a balcony and a lovely view of the Tennessee River down below on its slow journey west and then north, impeded by the massive Tennessee Valley Authority dam a short distance away. The morning's monochrome sky had finally broken and the sunset turned the few clouds that stuck around a brilliant orange and magenta. We watched it from our veranda as we sipped Chardonnay I had ordered from room service and paid for without Sarah knowing it.

We had never been this relaxed together. It was as though the strains of the side-by-side data services tests and the enormous national scandal that briefly rattled Wall Street and the financial world happened years ago. The awkward uncertainty of our first meetings, our early courtship, our groundbreaking recent intimacy, my resignation the next day and her sojourn into her past were behind us.

"Who knew this day would have a picture postcard ending," she said.

"Oh yeah. Just look at that."

We sat quietly for a while, our faces bathed in the last rays of the sun before it slipped behind the far shore of the Tennessee.

"Kirk," Sarah said, finally breaking the silence. "Those words you said at Derek's grave this morning: did you write them? Memorize them? Recite them?"

I shrugged. "I just said what was on my heart. Don't recall it word-for-word. If those who've passed on can hear us, I wanted Derek to know that I was going to love and protect his mom and that he doesn't have to worry about that. I knew that's how I felt, that it was on my heart."

"Pretty profound words. They touched me very deeply," she said, smiling toward me.

"The thought you'd put into it -- it was clear that you had paid careful attention to me from what you said. More than that, it's the way you accepted them into your heart. That's the opposite reaction of every other man I've ever confided to about David and Derek. They all turned and ran. But you, Kirk: you not only stayed, you came and found me."

"I can't speak for those guys, but I'm glad they ran because I might not have met you. As I fell in love with you, Sarah, I fell in love with all of you -- your past and your present, who you were and who you are; your laugh and the way you cry; your smile, your eyes, your hair, your freckles, your gorgeous boobs, your cute bottom and the way it wiggles when you walk."

She snorted and slapped my knee. "Horny old man."

I nodded. "Yeah. I own that."

"Good." She entwined her fingers with mine.

When the sun had fully retreated behind the horizon and stars filled the sky where it faded from purple in the west to indigo in the east, the chill went from bracing to uncomfortable and we retreated from the balcony and closed the sliding glass door behind us.

Sarah had packed a two-day change of clothing, but that was three days ago. I had packed none and wore the same jeans and gray sweatshirt pulled over a red polo shirt that I had put on almost 17 hours earlier and would put back on for the drive to Birmingham the next day. We knew we weren't dressed for the white-linen-tablecloth in the hotel's five-star restaurant. It had been a long time since Big Bad Breakfast and we were hungry.

"Room service?" I said.

I could tell from the approving way her eyebrow lifted that the question was also the answer. We ordered two DelMonicos, medium rare, with mashed potatoes and a bottle of Pinot Noir -- it felt like a red meat/red wine evening -- and were told it would arrive in about 45 minutes.

"I'm starting to feel pretty stale and grungy. I need to hit the shower soon," I said.

"Go ahead. We've got time. I'm going to turn on the TV and vege a minute," Sarah said.

"Care to join me? You know... conserve water?"

She regarded me with an amused smile.

"As I just said...," she said before I interjected.

"I know -- horny old man. Had to ask."

I closed the door to an unusually spacious bathroom even for a hotel. It had a huge walk-in shower with two nozzles on opposite walls. Two heavy terrycloth bathrobes hung beside the shower.

My eyelids were clenched tightly to keep shampoo lather out and the warm water was starting to relax my shoulder and back muscles when I was startled by a sensation along my ribs and belly. I looked despite the shampoo lather and saw Sarah's hands roaming from my chest to my bellybutton.

"Thought about it, and I'm all about conserving water," she said as I turned and saw her naked and smiling impishly at me.

"Now that's my girl."

I bent slightly to kiss her as she stood on her tiptoes, our mouths met and our tongues began their lovers' dance while steamy water sprayed onto both of us. After a few moments, I moved my hands beneath the muscular globes of her ass so I could lift her and let her secure herself by cinching her legs around my waist, just as we had done a few weeks earlier in the kitchen of her apartment.

My penis had hardened almost instantly and pressed against her as she shimmied up me to tighten the lock her arms had on my neck and kiss me fiercely. Feeling my need straining against her lower abdomen and mound set her passion ablaze. She moaned from deep within.

Sarah shifted her bottom, freeing my erection that had been trapped between us so that it now arched upward, grazing her slickened folds. As she reached her left hand down to seat the swollen head of my twitching cock in the vestibule of her vagina, I moved forward and pressed her backside against the shower's solid granite wall.

"Now, Kirk," she growled as she relaxed her leg muscles slightly and slid herself downward and onto my hardness. In seconds, I was fully inside her. She arched her back for maximum penetration as I began thrusting into her with abandon. "Yes... yes...," she yelped as I buried myself into her center with each stroke. Her breathing was heavy and her eyes took on an unfocused look as she abandoned herself to carnal pleasure.

As I felt my own crisis building, I held her tightly to me as my thrusts pressed her into the wall and she answered each stroke with one of her own. When she began moaning loudly, I knew she was approaching her crest.

"Oh god... oh god..." she repeated before she moaned, shot her head backward, closed her eyes and held her breath while the first jolt of her climax seized her. Her legs tightened around my waist as she smashed her pussy hard onto me, tripping my hair trigger.

Her grasp around me was so complete I couldn't have withdrawn from her if I had to. Mindful of what she said after we made love the first time and I pulled out and sprayed her belly with cum, I pushed myself into her to the hilt as my seed surged, burst after burst, into her warm wetness. The feel of it seemed to intensify her orgasm. She would exhale and suck in another deep breath and hold it. And another. Three more times before I felt Sarah relax, restore her regular respiration and slightly loosen the lock her legs and arms had on me. I leaned into her, holding her steady against the tiles until my softening manhood released from her followed by a stream of our milky love fluids. I slid her gently down the slab of polished stone until her feet were once more on the shower floor.

She steadied herself against me despite my own rubbery legs as I ran my hands soothingly against her back as the water cascaded down us.

"Oh honey... that was... indescribable," I said. She nodded, still trying to catch her breath.

"Yes... it was," she gasped. "Never did anything... like that... ever."

I continued holding Sarah, her head pressed to my shoulder; her chest to my upper belly; her nipples, still bright pink and swollen, languidly grazing the hair of my chest. I kissed the wet, auburn hair atop her head.

"Let me finish washing you off, baby," I said.

She just nodded. I grabbed a clean rag, wet it and lathered it with the hotel's signature "premium moisturizing bar" soap and then stroked gently it across her shoulders and down her back as far as I could reach while still embracing her from the front. At that point, I released her from my embrace and gently washed her pretty face, her flushed neck arms and armpits before moving to her breasts. I marveled at their supple firmness and the way her nipples proudly capped them.

Then I knelt before her to wash her tummy and lower abdomen and get my first look at her untamed tuft, the almost-orange color of burnished copper, and the prominent pink folds beneath them, starting with a prominent clitoral hood. I washed her gently there, looking up to see her hiding her face with her hands.

"You're beautiful, Sarah. Everywhere. Every way possible."

She peeked at me between two fingers as I applied the soapy rag to her tender flesh.

"Never feel ashamed. I love all of you, every precious centimeter."

To make the point, I placed a soft kiss onto the amber tuft covering her mound just above her cleft.

She hid her face again but I could see the contours of a smile forming behind her hands.

After I washed her legs, front and back, and turned her to finish with her bottom, I backed out of the way to allow the shower nozzles to finish the job and rinse her clean of the lather. Then I grabbed one of the oversized, plush towels, told her to raise her arms as she stepped from the shower and wrapped her in it when she did. I patted her dry and massaged her shoulders for a moment before I took the smaller of the two bathrobes from the hooks nearby and helped her into it. Then I carried her to the bed and placed her gently upon it while I attended to my own toweling and donned the larger robe just before room service knocked on the door.

We had dinner in bed. When we were done, I set the trays with dishes on them in the hallway outside our door and secured the deadbolt. It was not quite 9 o'clock, but we were spent, physically and emotionally. I turned out the lights, leaving only the large flatscreen TV to illuminate the room. I sat behind Sarah, my back against the bed's headboard. She sat between my spread legs and reclined into my chest with my arms draped over her shoulders and my hands clasped over her beating heart.

It was soon clear to me that Sarah had fallen asleep in that posture, and I didn't have the heart to disturb her. I kept pressing kisses into her still-moist hair as her slumber deepened and eventually took me under with it, my head drooping against hers as I fought to stay awake. When it became unsustainable, I tried to carefully extricate myself from behind my lover without waking her, tangling her robe and bunching it beneath her armpits in the process. In re acclimating ourselves, it became clear that while the robes were excellent for lounging, they are lousy sleepwear, so I shed mine and slowly peeled hers off her semi-somnolent form. When that was done, I pulled the plush covers over our nakedness, spooned against her back, put my left arm protectively around her, kissed her neck tenderly and whispered into her ear, "I will always love you, Sarah."

She smiled, more asleep than awake, scooted backward to be closer to me and draped an arm over my arm that encompassed her. It was a perfect end to a long day that began as a high-stakes gamble. The morning sun would wake us still in each other's embrace.

▼ ▼ ▼

Even if it is a bachelor's condo, my place should be more accommodating to feminine sensibilities, Sarah had flatly told me at noon Sunday during a leisurely weekend here with me.

"It's sparse. A little cold. Too much a man cave and not enough a nest."

I shrugged, thinking it was a predicate to her decision to take me up on my invitation to move in. So I was happy to hear her say it.

"Well, I suppose you're right. Pretty much left the place the way it was staged for sale," I said. "Whatcha got in mind."

"A trip to HomeGoods for starters. Maybe the Farmers' Market if it's open today. In three days, your Butterbean will be here and I would want it to feel a little more girl-friendly for her," she said.

"Never thought of that."

"You're a guy, Kirk. You wouldn't. Not in a hundred years. It's a blindness associated with testicles."

"Then I guess me and my testicles are going with you to HomeGoods."

Sarah raised an eyebrow.

"You sure? It's Sunday and football's about to start."

I grabbed my jacket, wallet, cap and car keys. "I'm sure."

"Wow. I guess you really do love me."

By Sunday evening, with the expenditure of less than $400 total, Sarah had transformed my apartment into something warm and homey-feeling with a decidedly autumnal air. It wasn't exactly a girly-girl vibe, but it didn't feel like a cross between a factory floor and an NFL locker room anymore, either.

It didn't occur to me until Tuesday to me that what Sarah was doing is putting her calling card out for Butterbean and to make it as welcoming as possible for my daughter on the occasion of their first meeting. It was her way of creating a strong woman-to-woman bond. Meghan would know in two seconds that Sarah had worked her magic on my place and, consequently, that she was a daily part of my life. It would signal that she not only cared about me but about my kids.

Had it not been for that, I'd probably be a frantic mess now, the day before Thanksgiving and just a few hours before my daughter and her beau, Neil, would arrive for a long weekend stay. I still needed to finish some grocery shopping -- from Sarah's list -- and run the vacuum cleaner, but I felt pretty decent about things.

That's when my phone lit up with a chime informing me that my old workmate Ron Casey was texting.

Happy T'giving, pal. You may have already heard but Waymon wants to see you.

I scoffed. I had not heard, but I wasn't surprised. I suspected he was starting to feel his seat getting hot.

He does? Haven't heard from him. He knows where to find me. He may recall I don't answer to him anymore.

With each passing day, I had made remarkable progress shedding my old persona as a senior manager at Anchor Bank. And my concerns about being unemployed for a long period of time were now gone. As word of my separation from the bank made the rounds -- and the specious pretext for it -- I had gotten inquiries and entreaties from other banks (one a major southeastern regional player in Atlanta and a lesser-known multi-state enterprise about the size of Anchor based in Tampa) and an invitation to apply for a senior position with a major nonprofit mortgage bankers' organization in Atlanta. Another state bank based in Mobile with designs on the Birmingham market invited me to come down for a "chat."

Word is the Board tore him a new turd chute for forcing you out w/o consulting them or Brooks. He's afraid he's about to walk the plank himself and he's trying to cut some kind of deal with you, Ron texted.

I shook my head, unsure I was reading it right.

What kind of deal?

Just guessing. Probably hush $, maybe offer your old job back so he can control you, Ron said. That's the grapevine anyway.

Enough of this by text. I hit Ron's avatar at the top of the text screen and he answered on the first ring.

"Ronzo! How you doing, pal?"

"Another day of meeting my supervisor's expectations. You?"

"Enjoying the free time and living the dream," I said. "So is Waymon nuts? What does he think he's going to keep me from saying that the standard employee nondisclosure language already prohibits? And who does he think I'm going to say it to?"

"My guess? Larry Brooks or the board."

"What?"

"Word is they want to talk to you and get your side of how this shit went down. Brooks is especially pissed because he thinks Waymon created some serious legal and reputational risk for the bank. I think he shared those concerns with some board members and that's why they're upset. They're afraid you're going to sue and the whole LoanFast scandal will be right back in our laps in open court," he said.

"I haven't thought about suing anybody," I said. "Not because I'm interested in doing Waymon any favors, but I'm not really sure that's in my interest professionally or personally."

"I get it. I suspect there's no shortage of jobs open to you, or will be, and I can see why you wouldn't want a high profile court case scaring people away, right?"

"Well, you wouldn't be wrong."

"And if I figure the personal angle right, then things are advancing quite well between you and Sarah?"

"We're doing well. Very well since I left Anchor."

He chuckled.

"What's so funny, Ronzo?"

"I just like being right," he said. "Remember that time a year or two ago when you were woman-shopping on Match. com and I told you that for all you know, the love of your life could walk into the room and sit down right beside you? Well, she kinda did."

"Ron Nostradamus. You nailed that one."

He was quiet for a second. "Good. She's a keeper, Kirk. You may think you didn't have a thing for her from the start. You may even make yourself believe it. True, you kept your professional distance and were a good boy when it mattered. But I saw it in your eyes. Hers, too."

"Again, my friend, you're not wrong."

"Ha! Took long enough for you to admit it. Just make sure I get an invite," he said.

"Invite?"

He snorted. "You're really going to doubt me again?"

▼ ▼ ▼

I recognized the caller. It was still identified in my contacts as "Anchor CEO." It had been that way since before Waymon McClendon assumed the office seven years ago. Having been warned of his likely intention, I got a sense of satisfaction pushing the button to decline his call and send it directly to voicemail. I'd check it when I was damn good and ready. Or maybe never.

That was particularly the case the Wednesday before Thanksgiving as I waited for the elevator to take me from my floor to Level One of the parking deck where I could direct Neil and Butterbean to the parking slot I had arranged for them in my building over the long Thanksgiving weekend. As I had asked, she had texted me when they were about to take the downtown Birmingham exit off Interstate 20, and I had no time for Waymon. I planned to enjoy this time with my kids and the woman who had moved to the center of my world.

I was waiting when Neil and Butterbean pulled up. I waved my building ID over the card reader and Neil parked the car. Meghan hugged me as if she hadn't seen me in years. Neil extended his hand for me to shake but I wrapped him in a hug instead, to his surprise and Meghan's delight. I helped Neil with their two rollaboards and used the same card key to summon the elevator.

Butterbean had been through plenty of ups and downs. As a child, she was often full of wonder like she was this Thanksgiving eve, even into her teens. She never became the surly, cynical high school kid that many of her contemporaries seemed to be when they would hang out in our house. When things began to go south between Siobhan and me and she noticed changes in her mom, a melancholy set in that eventually spread to her little brother, and I despaired that I might never see my happy little girl again.

Meghan reserved most of her scorn for her mother, particularly after she realized the extent of her infidelity, but she had also found it hard to engage with me. During the divorce, with a fresh bachelor's degree from Alabama in her hand, she kept a distance from us by moving directly from Tuscaloosa to Atlanta and embarking on a corporate career, fully independent of her feuding parents. As time passed, she regained her equilibrium, accepted the dissolution of her parents' union and began to smile again. I am convinced that credit for that is owed to Neil. And for that I am deeply grateful.

Since she was anticipating a big Thanksgiving feast with her mom the following morning and afternoon and then chili, beer and college football that evening with Sarah and me, I recommended that we order out. I hoped Meghan would want her favorite eatery, and I was not disappointed.

"Can we do Bubba Wong's?" she said, referring to an Asian-Dixie barbecue fusion restaurant whose eclectic menu with unique offerings such as chitlin' won tons, mu shu pork cracklin' cornbread and pan-fried chicken fried rice. "I've been telling Neil about this place almost from the day we met."

"That's my Butterbean. Some things stay the same. You're going to want the usual, and so am I. Why don't you and Neil figure out what he'll have and I'll text Sarah to see what she'd like."

"Yes! When do we get to meet her?" she said.

"In about an hour, give or take. She's pretty prompt."

Neil deferred to Meghan on what to order. Sarah was more the purist and asked for what most Chinese restaurants call General Tso's chicken, renamed General Lee's chicken at Bubba Wong's. Because the place is on the edge of downtown and the order was over $50, delivery was done by the restaurant itself. The owner, Elaine Zhang, was a high school classmate of mine and daughter of the restaurant's founders, and none of them trusted services like Grubhub or DoorDash. I met the delivery driver as promised about 50 minutes later near the front door of the building and tipped him just as Sarah's Miata eased into a curbside slot (now free and with no time limit since it was after 5) a few steps away.

I could tell she was nervous.

"Jittery about meeting Butterbean?" I asked.

"Does it show?"

"A little. But don't be. She's eager to meet you and she loves knowing that we're together."

"Will all that be true after she meets me?"

"Yes, baby. Just be Sarah. I love Sarah and so will she."

That seemed to relax her as we stepped into the elevator, but as we neared the sixth floor I could feel her grip tighten on the hand that wasn't holding the large Bubba Wong's bag. Just before I opened the door, I pulled her to me and kissed her.

"You've got this. And I've got you."

Meghan had left the door cracked open so I wouldn't have to fumble with a key, so I pushed it open. She and Neil were already in the kitchen getting plates and utensils out when they saw us.

"Butterbean, Neil, meet Sarah."

Meghan couldn't have looked more thrilled had Beyoncé appeared before her.

"Oh, you're beautiful," she told Sarah. "I'm so glad to at last meet who's made my daddy smile again."

Sarah glanced momentarily over her shoulder at me, her apprehension now vanished. She was touched by Butterbean's words.

"And that goes double for me to finally meet the Butterbean that Kirk adores and is so proud of all the time," Sarah said.

Neil and I had the good sense to stand back and let this moment happen. I had expected this because Sarah and Butterbean are, at their essence, kindred sweet souls. It was clear to me that my daughter had spent a lot of time thinking about the new woman in my life. The next few days between those two would be important, but none more critical than the next few hours when first impressions are made and bonding either begins or is lost forever.

The fatigue of a short but busy week, the apprehension of Wednesday's eventful first meetings and, for my guests, an afternoon of travel on jam-packed roads had an almost sedative effect on the four of us after we had finished our Chinese/redneck repast, staked out spots on the chairs and sofas in the den and sipped on wine. Neil was sound asleep by 9. Meghan draped a cashmere afghan over him.

"He's done for the night," Meghan said as she reclined on the corner of the sofa opposite Neil. "He's been working like a dog -- 16, 17 hours a day -- on this big appeal his firm is arguing before the Fourth Circuit in a couple of weeks up in Virginia."

That left Sarah sitting respectably next to me on a reclining half-sofa -- basically a love seat -- facing Butterbean. The two of them struck up the get-to-know-you girl talk that I knew would ensue, and I knew my proper role was to sit there, pay attention as best I could and speak only when it was clearly expected of me.

When the subject came to Sarah's college years, her family and such, she hesitated a minute, reached over and squeezed my hand. I held her hand and gave her a reassuring nod, my way of silently signaling, it's OK. Tell your story. Meghan is family and the most empathetic person I know.

So Sarah did. The whole story. Even admitting that what she had said about Derek being her brother at the family tailgate at Alabama to be less than the whole truth. She told Butterbean about her first love, David, and how she had gotten pregnant early in her second semester in college.

The story played out like a tragedy, one crushing event after another: of her father's accidental death; of David's death in a Marine Corps training exercise just before their child was born; of Derek's profound disabilities; of her singleminded devotion to him; of how she lost him, followed a short time later by her mother's terminal illness and her passing. I could see Meghan's hands pressed to her mouth and tears gathering in her eyes as she heard it.

"I begged God every day. Pleaded. Maybe it helped. The doctors told me after he was born that Derek might not ever leave the newborn ICU. He did. Then they told me that he might live to age nine or 10 if he's lucky but would probably die of an infection long before that because of his underdeveloped and vulnerable lungs," Sarah said, her voice cracking at times.

"Over and over, I told the Lord, 'If you give me more time with my baby, I will devote all I can to him, every spare moment I have, every dime I have.' Maybe it worked. His bad days were days spent clinging to life in a respirator. The good ones were when we got to bring him home from the long-term care center where he lived most of the time and take him outside. He loved being in the sunshine. And those good days made all the bad ones worth it."

Sarah paused to compose herself. I moved closer and put one arm around her shoulder and held her hand with the other.

"When I saw my baby take his last breath just over four years ago, a little after 6 o'clock in the evening on November 13th, 2014, the Lord had given him 19 years, four months, four days, and 14 hours, give or take a few minutes. That's a lot more than anybody ever gave him credit for."

By that point, Meghan was weeping. It was contagious. Even though I knew the story, I was crying. Sarah was, too. Butterbean insinuated herself between Sarah and me, embraced her, and together they cried. Unrestrained.

It had awakened Neil, who had no idea what had happened. He had slept through Sarah's story and saw Meghan weeping in the arms of her father's girlfriend, a woman they had just met. He was perplexed. Should he join us on the small half-sofa and attempt to comfort Butterbean. I discreetly put out a hand to assure him that things were OK and mouthed the word "later" to him.

It was a scene more powerful than I thought was possible so early in their relationship, but I knew in that moment that a connection was forged between the two women I love most in this world.

For the rest of the evening, they talked. And drank. Neil excused himself around 10:30 (it was 11:30 where he had begun the day in Atlanta) and went to bed. I uncorked another bottle of wine for Sarah and Meghan and moved over to the spot Neil had abandoned on the sofa, giving the women a perfect spot for conversation where I finally dozed off.

Around 1 a. m., Butterbean shook me awake.

"Hey, we're out of wine, but that's fine because... we're... tipsy," she said. The truer word would have been drunk.

"Where's Sarah?"

"She's looking for her keys and thinking she's going to drive home. I told her hell, no, she's staying here, but I think you need to tell her, too," Butterbean said, totally right even if she was a bit unsteady.

I got up and found Sarah, took her jacket and keys from her, hugged her and told her I wasn't letting anyone who'd had this much wine leave my house, "because you belong here."

"But... you know... where's everybody going to sleep?" Sarah said in a drunk-whisper that everyone could hear.

"You are sleeping in the main bedroom, my dear, and I won't hear any more about it," I said. "Now give me a goodnight kiss," I said as I pecked her on the lips, "and go this way." I got behind her, placed a hand on each shoulder and gently steered her from the kitchen through the den, down the short hallway, into the primary boudoir and closed the door.

I went to the kitchen to rinse off the empty long-stemmed glasses and load them into the dishwasher as Meghan looked on bemused.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Just tidying up before I hit the hay."

"And where do you plan to hit the hay. You guided Sarah into the bedroom and closed the door behind her."

"I thought I'd just sack out here on the sofa."

She cocked her head at me as if she'd just caught the powerful odor of bullshit.

"Dad," she said in a low but steely voice, "don't try to tell me you sleep on the couch when she stays here. Now you're going to listen to me as I throw your own words back in your face. 'You're a grown-ass man and you decide where you sleep and who you sleep with, not your daughter."

Busted. She had recalled what I had told her a couple of weeks earlier when she made sure there was no problem with her sharing my guest bedroom with Neil, and to the best of my recall, pretty much verbatim.

"I did tell you that, didn't I," I said.

She wasn't done. She hugged me.

"Besides, Dad, I know love when I see it," she said, again throwing my own words into my face. She put her hands on both sides of my face, stood on her tiptoes and kissed my chin. "You love her, Dad. I see why and I'm glad you do."

She smiled at me then cocked her head and cut her eyes in the direction of the hallway leading to my bedroom. "Now... off to bed."

▼ ▼ ▼

Thanksgiving morning was laid-back and minimalist. That's the way I've come to prefer it, especially since my marriage to Siobhan slouched southward a decade ago. The pretense of a Norman Rockwell-style family gathering with a massive, genetically engineered and force-fed turkey and all the trimmings held no appeal for me.

Butterbean and Perry were resigned to just that sort of gathering at their mother's house, replete with their maternal grandparents, that would chew up the back half of the morning and most of the afternoon.

Sarah was up early, ready with fresh coffee and apple strudel for Butterbean and Neil before they drove to Siobhan's rented house on Birmingham's eastern suburbs. After they were out the door shortly after 9 o'clock, Sarah and I made the most of our time alone.

Since she hadn't intended to stay over, Sarah had slept in her modest panties the night before. The next morning, she appropriated one of my several flannel shirts -- its tail extending nearly to her knees and its sleeves drastically rolled up -- as she fixed breakfast. We retreated with 0ur pastry and coffee to my sofa where I reflexively clicked the television on, losing sight of the fact that the networks would be focused on the Macy's parade in Manhattan, winding along Central Park and 6th Avenue before wrapping up on the street most synonymous with Christmas, 34th Street. My intent was to find news, but Sarah stretched out against me and we watched the parade as though we were in third grade again. At some point between the Bullwinkle Moose and Rocky the Flying Squirrel balloons, we dozed off.

When I awoke, I found my left palm nestled atop Sarah's breast, separated from it only by a layer of flannel. Whether my hand had drifted there in my sleep or Sarah guided it there, I don't know, but I know when she detected me stirring, she flashed an impish grin, unbuttoned the top half of the flannel shirt she wore and guided my hand beneath it to her bare nipple.

That's all it took. Game on.

"Good to see somebody's up and at 'em, sleepyhead," she said, her fingers dancing over the sudden protrusion in my pajama bottoms.

"Seems you've brought every part of me to life," I growled as I enveloped her puffy, pink nipple in the webbing of my thumb as my fingers kneaded the firm, supple swell of her breast. I craned my neck downward to kiss her and she met my lips.

Sarah took control and changed our bodily positions. She straddled my hips, unbuttoning the rest of my flannel shirt to free her tits. Then her mouth found mine and my tongue sought out hers.

She was finding herself sexually, becoming more assertive and direct in pursuing lovemaking with me and overcoming her initial fear of having me see her naked. She had seen how I revered and adored every inch of her and had allowed herself to accept that it was real, that she was not just beautiful but irresistible, certainly to me. Now here she was, her breasts bobbing in time with her hips as they ground the gusset of her panties into my stiffness straining beneath the combed cotton bottoms I would soon shed.

Ten minutes in, we were both lost in our shared lust and on the glide path to our orgasms just from dry humping. A streak of wetness had formed in her camel-toed panties. Precum had created dots on my bottoms just beneath the drawstring where the livid plum topping my erection threatened to peek over the waistband.

"God, I want you," she whispered. "Bedroom?"

"Bedroom," I replied breathlessly.

She rose from me and I stood beside her when the impulse seized me to pick her up, as a groom would his bride for their first nuptial threshold crossing. I did, quite to her momentary surprise, and a pleasant one it seemed. I deposited her gently on the still-unmade bed we had shared overnight. She shrugged off my shirt and discarded it before she leaned backward, lifted her bottom and began peeling off her soggy panties.

"Wait," I said, removing her hand. "Let me do that." And I did.

I climbed onto the bed beside her and took first one nipple and then the other into my lips, teasing each with my teeth and then lashing the puffy bud with my tongue. She put her hands on my neck and pressed my face into her breast as she whimpered her contentment.

"Yes, baby. Kiss them. Suck them," she cooed.

And I did. With a raw sexual hunger I've never felt with Sarah. Maybe because her nipples are so responsive, the way they engorge and turn a darker shade of pink. Or maybe it's the way it drives Sarah's arousal, the way her hips heave, her pussy wets and she advances well toward climaxing before I've even touched her down there. This, I decided, would be an excellent moment to assess how far she would go from nipple stimulation alone.

As my tongue teased and tormented one nipple, my hand kneaded and stroked and swirled the swell of her other breast as I lightly pinched and twirled her nipple and its stippled areole between my thumb and forefinger. I continued for long, unbroken minutes as her breathing quickened, her hands stroked my hair and her hips heaved and rolled. Her thighs occasionally scissored against themselves in a quest to apply a measure of friction to her needy slit and clitoral hood as it stood demanding attention. It was all I could do not to accommodate it, but the moment was dedicated to Sarah's breasts.

It was getting results. She began whimpering as her hips strove, with limited success, to satisfy her pussy as nipple stimulation pushed it to a drooling, musky lather. Her breathing became raspy, her sentences fragmented. Sarah's eyes focused on something distant from behind heavy lids.

"Oh... Kirk... I'm about to cum," she said between gasps just as her torso bowed and became rigid. She clutched a pillowcase in her right hand. Her eyes clenched shut. She inhaled and held her breath as her body tensed, then exhaled and repeated the process several times, thrashing and trembling through her orgasm.

When her eyes opened at last, Sarah seemed disoriented but ready to continue her erotic pursuits. She crooked her arm around my neck and pulled me atop. My cock, stiff in my pajama bottoms and peeking out its unbuttoned fly, grazed her naked hip, leaving a thin, clear trail of pre-ejaculate leaking from its tip.

When our kiss broke, she smiled contentedly at me.

"That's never happened to me before," she purred. "Kissing my boobs has always gotten me excited, but... I never knew I could climax just from that."

"Happy I could help you with that discovery, baby," I said. "Now there are other areas that need my attention."

With that, I kissed her again, beginning a circuitous trail of wet kisses and lingual probing that, over the next five or 10 minutes, would meander down her slightly sweating body, from her jawline, her neck, her armpits, her breasts again, her flanks, her navel, her hips, outside her thighs and the backs of her knees on the stretch run up the inside of her thighs until my nose hovered directly over her coppery vee.

All along my journey, she squirmed and feebly protested that I wasn't immediately mounting her, confused at what I was doing yet too aroused and enjoying the apparently new experience too much to do anything about it.

"Honey, what are you doing," she asked in a breathy voice.

"This," I said as I my mouth made its first contact with her folds -- slick, pink and brooding -- and my tongue pushed upward between them, finding the base of her clit. She responded as she might to an electrical shock, jolting her whole body from the epicenter of her pelvis.

"God!" she shrieked. I didn't reply other than to continue.

I held my hands on the points of her hips to mitigate her upward thrusts sudden and powerful enough to loosen my teeth or bloody my nose. I alternated between gently kissing her inner and outer lips, dipping my tongue to taste her clear, tangy and salty arousal, before moving it to her passion bean, swirling figure-eights and lashing it up and down and side to side.

The transformation in Sarah was radical and rapid. The initial look of confusion on her face was quickly supplanted by one of utter abandonment to lustful longings she never knew she had and the new feelings overwhelming her nervous system. Time is often hard to judge in the throes of sex, but I would swear under oath that her third orgasm of the morning came within half a minute of my oral ministrations.

She met the moment with a primal yell -- too coarse to be a scream but too loud to be a moan. If neighbors were home in the adjacent units, they heard it. I could feel her Kegel muscles clenching in her powerful climax just before she pressed her palms onto my forehead and pushed my head away from her hypersensitive pearl.

Because I was applying pressure to her hips, her contracting abdominal muscles thrust her shoulders and head upward, though her head was thrown back as she grunted and wailed in unbridled sensual rapture.

Now pulled back from her straining twat, I could see that the juices that had gathered in her opening freely leaked from her, flowing over her taint and pooling on the sheet below as her orgasm had its way with her before exhausting itself. The film of perspiration glistened on her belly, chest, neck and face.

I moved back beside her and stroked her hair as she caught her breath and descended blissfully back to reality. She cut her eyes toward me at first and just looked at me, more than a little confused, perhaps a bit scared and momentarily wordless.

"I love you," I whispered near her cheek as I pressed a kiss onto it. "You OK?"

She swallowed and nodded her head affirmatively, her eyes never leaving mine as her breathing continued to slow.

"Good," I said. "Can I get you anything? Water?"

As before, she mutely nodded without taking her eyes off me. So I got up, fetched a bottle of cold Dasani from the fridge, opened it and handed it to her. She pressed the cool plastic bottle to her brow before taking several gulps.

"I'd try to tell you how beautiful and sexy you are at this moment, but I'm not that great a poet. For that matter, I'm not sure there's a poet alive who's that great."

Sarah capped the bottle and it clattered to the floor. She pulled my face to hers and kissed me as lewdly as I had just kissed her all over. Tasting her womanhood on my mouth seemed to drive her desire and I responded in-kind, my arms pulling her languid form to me as our tongues thrust and parried, seemingly for long minutes. What had I just unleashed in this woman?

She pulled away from me, her eyes searching mine, and then nudged me onto my back. Once I was supine, she unbuttoned my pajama bottoms fully, liberating my balls as well as my rigid dick, now straining perpendicular to my belly. Then, faster than I could imagine, she was astraddle me with my cock's livid head nuzzled amongst her shiny, swollen folds at the foyer of her vagina. In one downward move, she impaled herself fully on it and moaned in rapturous pleasure.

I started to speak, but she put a cunt-slickened finger to my lips in a shushing motion.

"Shhhh," she whispered. "Let me do this."

As she spoke, her hips began rocking upward and back, her slit mashed hard against my public bone, stimulating her clit, as her nipples grazed my chest and the area between them up to her neck began to flush pink.

Other than to stroke her flanks, the muscular globes of her ass as they drove her sex onto me and her swaying tits, I did as she wished -- I lay there as she took full control, watching her fourth orgasm of the morning build while trying to hold off my own at least until she came.

I marveled at how this woman, almost unpracticed in the art of sex beyond the basics a few weeks earlier, was learning and improvising, gaining the confidence to assert herself and satisfy her yearnings. And in so doing, she gave me in the most intimate of tutorials on how to love her.

As her thrusts gained speed, she began to grunt from her sheer aerobic exertion of mercilessly grinding herself into me and the powerful sensation coming from her clit and my hardness as I pistoned deep into her. At last, I could feel her small body tensing, her movements becoming more abrupt and irregular, a warm and wet sensation spreading along my pubis and scrotum.

"Cum with me," she said as her breathing quickened.

Her noises got louder and perhaps an octave higher -- the almost keening sound more familiar to me in the buildup to her release. Finally, her eyes lost focus, her eyelids clenched shut and she cried out loudly as her neck strained backward. She sucked in breath and held it as the muscles of her womanhood began their familiar contractions that inevitably sent me into my own climax.

From the morning's buildup, I had amassed a significant load. I buried myself fully into her spasming pussy and growled as I released my seed while Sarah's abdomen shuddered.

"Aaaaah," she growled as she exhaled, gulped in more air and held it again.

Sarah lay her chest against mine and her face against my neck as the last tremors of her climax rippled through her and she exhaled and resumed her regular but heavy breathing as sweat trickled down the delicate slope of her breast.

We lay still and silent for some time, spent but still coupled. We were both sweating. The wet spots on the bedsheets would resemble a Rorschach inkblot test when we at last summoned the energy to stand and clean ourselves.

Finally, she sat back upward, still astraddle me, and looked at with an expression that was equal parts exhaustion and fulfillment.

"Good?" I said.

"Divine," she said. "You?"

"Life-changing."

I sat up, softening but still inside her, wrapped my arms around her and lazily kissed her brow, her ears, her nose, cheeks, chin, eyelids and neck before concluding with her lips.

"You did things to me that I'd only heard about before or read about in magazines. I never gave it much thought, didn't imagine I'd much like it," she said.

"Did you?"

She blushed at the same time a leering smile crossed her face.

"What do you think?"

"I'm going to guess... yes."

She kissed me, swirling her tongue over my lips to taste whatever remained of her essence there.

Then she leaned backward, the playful smile still there. "What was your first clue?"

I idly teased a nipple she displayed proudly before me. "There's plenty more where that came from, honey."

"Good. I'll hold you to it," she said, then looked around at the disarray our lovemaking marathon had created on the bed. "I hope you've got some clean sheets because these need washing. And if you don't, we'll have to do a load of laundry right now."

I nodded. "I'll take care of that. You can have the shower first if you want."

"What am I going to do about a change of clothes?" she said.

I had forgotten about that. We could race out to her apartment, let her pack an overnight bag and come back here, but that risked Butterbean, Neil and Perry arriving to an empty condo unit. Sarah read the uncertainty in my face.

"Here's an idea. Let's do this evening at my apartment. Do you think the kids would be all right with that? That pot of chili can be heated up on my stovetop just as easily as it can here. All we need to do is load up that and the beer and take it there. You could stay there with me tonight and Meghan and Neil would have the place to themselves to do... whatever. Or Perry could stay here with them if they want."

I texted Meghan and Perry with the idea, and they responded with thumbs-up emojis. So I texted Sarah's address to boot.

Late that afternoon, Meghan and Neil along with Perry joined us nibbling on spicy chili -- Sarah's family recipe -- and sipping beer after they had spent the day gorging on Siobhan's turkey and stuffing. Then we chose to huddle around a small fire pit -- a cast-iron chiminea with a stubby, cylindrical smokestack -- on Sarah's patio that perfectly offset the evening chill while we talked for hours. It was the first time both of my children had been around Sarah at the same time. I figured things would be fine because both had signaled their initial acceptance of her and seemed comfortable around her, but I was a bit apprehensive anyway.

The only tense moment arose when Perry, who can be quite blunt even when he hasn't put away the better part of a sixpack, asked the obvious but unspoken question that stopped the conversation for a moment.

"So Dad, what's stopping you and Sarah from marrying," he asked.

Sarah, sitting in a lawn chair beside mine with our fingers entwined, momentarily clenched her fingers in startlement. Meghan was taking a sip of wine and almost did a spit take. Neil, acting as the designated driver and refraining from drink, looked wide eyed at Perry with a Did-you-really-just-ask-that-question? look on his face, then shot his eyes at Sarah and me to see how the question landed with us.

I don't know how I looked but I floundered as I searched for words. I suspect I blushed. My mouth opened and closed but nothing came out. I looked leftward, to Sarah who was smiling and comfortable. When she saw my face, she started giggling at the flummoxed and trapped look on my face. And that was the best antidote of all.

The giggles spread to Meghan, who sat on a love seat with Neil. When the subdued Neil finally cracked a smile and chuckled, I relaxed, though I still had no reply for my youngest child. Again, it was the quick-thinking Sarah who leaped into the breach.

"You know, that's a very good question, Perry, and it's not something either one of us have talked about, but I'm flattered that you'd ask," she said.

It was simple, direct, empathetic and honest. She let it sink in for a minute, grabbing and slightly lifting my hand, a body-language pause as she looked my way and smiled.

"I can't speak for Kirk, but that's a bridge both of us will cross if or whenever we get to it. And though we first met some time ago, we've only been together for not quite a quarter of a year," she said. "We learn more about each other every day, and I like that."

Her words calmed me and gave me confidence. I looked at Perry and grinned reassuringly.

"Sarah and I love each other. I don't think that's news to anybody here. As for the future, I can't say it any better than she just did," I said. "But if that's something we decide to do, the people right here in this circle will be the first to know."

I felt her hand tighten affirmingly on mine as I spoke the words. When I turned back toward her, she looked at me softly, clearly touched at what was said. It wasn't until my children got into Neil's car for the ride back to my condo downtown -- Perry was way overserved and could sleep on the fresh sheets I had put on my bed -- that I realized what it was that Sarah had found so moving.

"Tonight you openly proclaimed your love for me and mine for you for the first time to the most important people in your life. It was genuine, unrehearsed, and I could tell that they liked what you said," Sarah observed after I helped her clean up from our chili feast, toss a trash bag containing empty beer bottles in the dumpster and close up the chiminea.

"I did, didn't I," I said, almost as an epiphany. "I didn't think about it at the time, but if it weren't for your calm and the confidence you gave me, I'd still be searching for words. You saved me."

She draped her arms lazily around my neck and smiled softly.

"Whatever we decide to do, we are a good team," she said.

I stroked her cheek, still rosy from the late-evening chill, and kissed her tenderly.

"And whatever we do, I will love you."

▼ ▼ ▼

Black Friday was a sleep-in day. But for Perry and Meghan, it was more like sleep-it-off day. Neil, Sarah and I had moderated our intake, but my offspring like to party. So it didn't surprise me when the first sign of life back in my condo came from Neil.

Megs & Perry still sleeping it off, he texted me at 10:30. I knew that Perry was heading to Auburn later in the day for Saturday's rivalry game, and that meant Neil would have to drive him back to Sarah's apartment where he had stranded his vehicle the previous night because he was in no condition to drive.

Megs & her mom are planning to see a movie this afternoon & go shopping. Any chance you can show me the famous Thirsty Pelican and let's watch some ballgames this afternoon? Neil continued his text thread.

Let me see if I can get a hall pass from Sarah, but that sounds great, I replied. Sarah jumped at the chance for an afternoon of unencumbered down time and I texted a thumb's up back to Neil.

I handed my bleary-eyed son a couple of hundred dollars in cash two hours later as he picked up his car outside Sarah's apartment and admonished him not to think of it as bail money. Still groggy from the previous day's overindulgence, I could tell that alcohol wasn't on his immediate agenda, but that could change on a dime if the right circumstances arose.

"You boys behave at the Pelican," Sarah said before Neil and I climbed into my Blazer and left for my preferred bar. We found the place packed and settled for side-by-side stools at the bar.

He was interested in his law school alma mater, Georgia, in its annual rivalry match with Georgia Tech on one screen. On an screen adjacent, LSU was trying to shake off the previous week's loss to my Crimson Tide by spoiling Arkansas's season finale.

I introduced Neil to Little Carly Butcher, the Pelican's proprietor, explaining that he was Butterbean's boyfriend. At one point, Carly must have thought I said fiancé, asked him if they'd set a date, and I corrected him. And in so doing, I created a momentous segue.

"So Kirk, mind if I ask you a serious question," Neil said as the Georgia game went to halftime and the room quietened a bit. I was happy that he had finally yielded to my pleas not to call me "Mr. Weeks," though I could tell it still unnerved him.

"Depends on the question," I said jokingly, as one might sitting at the bar of the Thirsty Pelican watching football. Neil's weak, preoccupied smile caught my attention..

"Pretty big question, actually," he said, uncharacteristically unsure of himself for the first time since Butterbean had introduced me to him more than two years earlier. And with that, it clicked. I knew what was coming and I froze.

"You know I grew up on a farm and my family respects the old ways. So do I. That's why I wanted to ask your blessing for me to ask Meghan to marry me."

I have no idea how my face looked. I am sure that, at least momentarily, it appeared shocked. Because I was. That's now Neil read it and he seemed to cringe. It wasn't because it was an idea I opposed. I hoped it would happen eventually. It wasn't because of any antipathy toward Neil, because I adored him.

It's because this was my baby girl, my firstborn, who soon would form a home and family of her own with this man she loved. You just don't experience that every day and on this day, at the Pelican, at halftime of the Georgia-Georgia Tech game, I hadn't seen this coming.

When words elude me, I default to physical expressions. So my response after the few awkward seconds it took my brain to process everything was to hug Neil.

"Neil, the only person who will be happier about this than I am is Meghan. You have my enthusiastic blessing. I couldn't dream up a better son-in-law," I told him.

I could hear him exhale, a sigh of relief. He swore me to secrecy. He planned to pop the question to Butterbean the next day and give her a ring on a scenic hike at Moss Rock Preserve just outside Birmingham. He said the two had spoken broadly and hypothetically as some distant eventuality, but she had no idea that his proposal was imminent, and he wanted to keep it that way.

"Well, of course you can share it with Sarah," he added. "I trust Sarah."

"Your proposal, your rules, son. I'll honor them," I said. "Have you told Siobhan?"

"No. Please don't take offense, but it would be all over Birmingham before supper if I did that," he said.

"No offense taken."

"Besides, for whatever reason, these unwritten, patriarchal 'old ways' only call for asking her dad. That seems a little sexist these days, but...," he shrugged.

"Welcome to the family, son," I said. I picked up my Pilsener glass and lightly tapped his, toasting the moment.

He smiled. A look of profound release washed over him, from his face to his posture. For the first time this whole weekend, he seemed truly relaxed. Neil took a deep swig of his draft beer.

On the TV over the noisy bar, Georgia was about to receive the second-half kickoff.

▼ ▼ ▼

It was relaxing to have Friday night to ourselves. Sarah and I finished up the leftover Thanksgiving chili. That's when I told her Neil planned to propose to Butterbean the following afternoon on a hike just outside Birmingham.

"You're the only person besides Neil and me to know that, so we've got to keep it on the down-low for another day," I told her. "Neil said it's OK to tell you. He trusts you."

Sarah's eyes widened. "That's so exciting, but I'm not surprised. Are you?"

"I figured it was coming, but maybe not this soon. Kids these days, they take their time taking the big step. So I was a little taken aback when Neil asked for my blessing this afternoon at the Pelican."

"I didn't know guys did that asking-the-blessing stuff anymore," Sarah said.

"Me either. But Neil grew up in the country. He's old school, and I was touched by it. And of course, I gave it happily."

"When's he going to ask Siobhan?"

"He's not."

"Oh? Is he going to tell her in advance?"

I shrugged. "Evidently not. He said telling Siobhan would be like telling the whole city. I can only infer that he got that impression from Butterbean, which might give you some insight into why you two hit it off so well the other night."

"You think so? Felt like there was a connection but I couldn't be sure. You know, all the wine," she said, half-smiling as she crinkled her nose.

"Oh yeah. Meghan's an open book with me. She may try to hide things, but I can tell when something's for real with her and it's not. I saw that from the moment you two met, just like I saw it the first time she introduced me to Neil. I knew right then there was something special between you and her."

"How do you know. About Meghan, I mean."

"Two nights ago, when you and she got tipsy, I refused to let you drive home and put you in the primary bedroom. I was going to sleep on the sofa for appearances' sake. I didn't know how Butterbean would react. She asked me what the hell I thought I was doing and essentially ordered me into the bedroom with you."

Sarah stopped chewing and stared at me. "Really?"

"Yeah. She threw my own words back at me that I had spoken to her that you heard on our phone call a couple of weeks back. She told me that I was a grown-ass man and that I, not my kid, decided where I slept."

"I remember that," Sarah said.

"And then she went double-or-nothing that told me, 'Besides, I know love when I see it.'"

"She said that?"

"She did."

Sarah nodded her head, her lips pursed together as she searched for words.

"That's special," she said softly. "Very special."

I nodded too. "It is. You're right."

We were in bed and sound asleep in each other's arms by 9:30 that night.

▼ ▼ ▼

It turned out to be a perfect day for a hike: cloudless, blue sky; high of 78 degrees; slight northwesterly breeze and plenty of dry leaves rustling under Meghan's and Neil's feet. The trail in a small park north of Birmingham was nice and offered a lovely view toward the west with the sun slowly dropping toward the horizon from an overlook atop a sharp 250-foot drop. It wasn't much of a challenge for a couple used to hiking the Appalachian Trail from its southern terminus at Springer Mountain, Georgia, about a two-hour drive north from Atlanta. But Neil chose that promontory to drop to a knee and ask Meghan Weeks to marry him.

The details would emerge in an impromptu gathering Meghan had convened at the Thirsty Pelican via a mass text to hometown family and close friends to announce her happy news. Included in the text were Perry (who was already in the Jordan-Hare Stadium in Auburn ready to root for the hated invaders, the Crimson Tide), her high school besties Kelsey Stoner and Moira Bingham, Sarah, me... and Siobhan.

The text didn't say what the gathering was about, and most days it would be instantly interpreted as attendance at the Tide Club watch party. Because Sarah and I knew the reason, I understood Butterbean's feeling that she could not exclude her mother from the engagement announcement, but it sent a shudder through Sarah and me.

"I understand if this makes you too uncomfortable to attend, honey," I told Sarah.

"It'll be awkward, that's for sure," she said, the jitters evident in her demeanor.

"For both of us. I haven't laid eyes on Siobhan since the morning she stumbled into the house at daybreak before I had her served with divorce papers," I said.

Sarah shook her head. "That's not the reassurance you think it is."

I hugged her. "Want to stay here? I think as Meghan's dad, I've got to be there."

"You do, but I think I owe it to her to be there, too. She wouldn't have looped me in on that text if she didn't want me there, I think. Am I wrong?"

"You're right. She included you because she specifically wants you there. She included her mom because... she's her mom."

She looked at me nervously.

"I won't leave your side the whole time, baby. Promise," I said.

Sarah nodded. "If you say so."

By the time we arrived, the game had begun, playing on all 14 of the 70-inch monitors arrayed around the dining room packed with obnoxious, howling Bama fans. Finding Butterbean would be no small feat, But Meghan had been coming to the Pelican with me since she was in third grade and considered Little Carly as something of an uncle, so she was able to procure a table in a corner slightly elevated above the rest of the floor and somewhat to ourselves by confiding in him the unique nature of our gathering.

Nico, the Pelican's longtime doorman/bouncer, was under orders from Little Carly to direct me to the corner where Butterbean and Neil awaited, but wading through the Tide Club crowd who thought I was there just for the game took forever, particularly after Darlice Dunton spotted Sarah and me and pounced upon us like a velociraptor.

"Oh, I knew it all along... you two were just maaaade for each other... high time y'all came back for a Tide Club paaaartaaaay... woooohooo! I'm sharing this with aaaaaall my friends..." She went on and on. Sarah and I just politely nodded for the most part, which was fine with Darlice because nobody gets a word in when she's in full-bore, life-of-the-party, more-than-tipsy sorority-fraternity swap mode. There wasn't much we could do but say "cheese!" when she whipped out her phone and shot a photo that she would post on the Birmingham Tide Club's Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Darlice was still blathering about us with other Tide Clubbers and oblivious to our disappearance as we pushed through the crimson throng, all glued to the monitors, toward the back corner where I spotted my little girl and her brand-new fiancé beckoning us toward them. Tears were already streaming down Butterbean's face as she reached to hug me.

"Daddy, Sarah, look!" she said, her fresh, tear-streaked face radiant as she thrust her freshly bejeweled left hand toward Sarah and me.

"That's beautiful, Butterbean. The only thing brighter is the joy on your face right now," I said as she hugged me again, then hugged Sarah as I sidled over to Neil to hug my new son-in-law-elect.

"Thank you for loving my little girl the way we've loved her. I couldn't be prouder or happier, Neil," I said.

We stood together, largely silent, having said most of what we needed to say the afternoon before when he asked me for Butterbean's hand in marriage. I watched my daughter and Sarah, huddled together as the former filled the latter in on all the day's developments. Sarah did an Oscar-worthy job of not letting on that she already knew.

"You told her, right?" Neil said, leaning toward me in a stage whisper.

"Yep."

"You wouldn't know it. Impressive."

"That she is, Neil."

We were on our second round of beers and Bama was in the process of annihilating Auburn when I spotted Siobhan speaking to Nico at the front door and Nico pointing toward our corner table. A chill ran down my spine. With one arm already around Sarah, I pulled her to me and whispered in her ear.

"Heads up. Siobhan just walked in."

I could feel Sarah stiffen momentarily and then breathe deeply.

"Well, I'll follow your lead. Let's do this," she said.

It took Siobhan almost five minutes to sidle and elbow her way through the jubilant Crimson Tide crowd. She had known many of them from the days when, as an Alabama alumna herself, we often attended these gatherings together.

As she drew nearer, I could see that the intervening years since our separation had taken a toll on her: deeper lines on her face, gray visible in her hair where artless efforts to dye it brown had been less than thorough. There were bags under her eyes.

Meghan wiggled her way through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd to meet Siobhan and hugged her. They stayed in their embrace longer than I would imagine. If they were saying anything, no one at our table could tell.

Butterbean first took her to Neil, whom she had met just two days earlier for the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. They hugged for a long interval, too. Then to Kelsey and Moira, who had remembered Siobhan from better days. Finally, I rose to greet her.

"Hello Siobhan."

The awkwardness was as thick as tar. I dared not offer an embrace. She extended her hand in a formal handshake gesture, a thin and fragile smile on her face, before Meghan rushed to the rescue.

"And mom, this is dad's friend, Sarah Zanone," she said, making the ice-breaking introduction before I could -- perhaps, mercifully, so I didn't have to.

Siobhan, who stood to one side of me, leaned forward and extended her hand. "Very nice to meet you, Sarah," my ex said to her with the steely polish of the corporate HR professional that she was. Then it was Sarah, again, who redeemed the day.

"Siobhan, here's an open seat," Sarah said with a grace that is natural to her.

Siobhan batted her eyes for a moment, not immediately sure what to do before cutting her eyes toward Meghan who nodded her approval. So she sat next to Sarah, the lone wine drinker at the table, who offered to share her bottle of Pinot noir with her.

Perhaps sensing a set-up, Siobhan nervously accepted Sarah's gesture and began what started as a stilted conversation. That was understandable. Siobhan was seated perhaps three feet from the man she had last seen a day before he sued her for divorce with my new girlfriend in between us.

The longer they talked, the more at-ease Siobhan became. Perhaps it was the wine. Perhaps it was realizing that Sarah was without artifice or ill intent. And it occurred to me that it's exactly what Butterbean had in mind all along, gambling -- correctly -- that Sarah and her mom possessed the grace to make it work.

Within half an hour, the woman of my past and the woman of my future were chatting comfortably. I watched, skeptically at first, but with increasing relief. When I heard them laugh together, it seemed to be a turning point. I just smiled, listened and nodded when it was necessary, marveling at what I saw.

After we had said our goodbyes at the Pelican and were driving back to Sarah's townhouse, I had to ask her how she pulled off the near-miracle I witnessed up close. "You two looked like old friends by the time we left there tonight. It exceeded all my hopes and, more importantly, avoided all my worst fears."

Sarah turned in her seat and smiled.

"She was scared, Kirk. More like terrified. It was seeping out of every pore of her body. Can you imagine the courage it took to show up there tonight, knowing she would face you, probably me, but feeling compelled to do it for her little girl," Sarah said calmly, compassionately.

"I admire her for that, and I told her so," she said. "And then to keep her from having to venture into unfamiliar and perhaps treacherous topics, I just started asking her questions about herself and Butterbean, her childhood and such. Stuff that was easy and comfortable for her to talk about."

Sarah paused a moment.

"I know she hurt you. But she was there for Meghan today. And a woman who would do that in these circumstances has a lot of good in her. I saw that."

Only Sarah, of all the people on the face of the planet, could speak that truth to me and make me not only accept it but embrace it.

▼ ▼ ▼

Waking up alone is foreign to me now. It's the Monday after a hugely eventful Thanksgiving weekend. Butterbean and Neil had left Sunday morning and made it safely back to Atlanta, a new ring glittering on the third finger of her left hand. Sarah had to catch a 7:30 a. m. flight to Tampa for three days of management training after a long break from WAS Solutions. And Perry had driven straight back to Tuscaloosa from Auburn.

Waking up alone after getting a text message alert was concerning.

"Who the fuck," I grumbled to myself as I reached for the phone on the bedside table beside the reading glasses Sarah had forgotten to take with her. Sure it was almost 8 o'clock, but I had gotten accustomed the past couple of weeks of waking up late without a salaried job to enforce rise-and-shine discipline on me.

I squinted into the small screen hoping my aging eyes could make out the words without the aid of my own reading glasses. The name on the alert said in all caps ANCHOR BANK but I recognized instantly that it was from Waymon McClendon, the now-embattled bank CEO who gave me the ultimatum to either leave Sarah or leave Anchor.

What the fuck does he want? I thought, but then I knew. I remembered my conversation with Ron Casey just before the world recessed for the Thanksgiving weekend when he told me Waymon was in deepening shit with the bank's board of directors over my abrupt firing and was looking for a way to save his ass. I opened up the full text.

Wondering if we can chat sometime today, maybe work something out.

I was in no mood to humor this puffed-up fop. Besides, he wasn't the only game in town. In checking my personal email Sunday night after some tender parting lovemaking with Sarah, I found emails from two longtime lending industry colleagues who were now senior executives at banks and savings and loans -- one in Atlanta, one in Nashville, Tennessee, and the third a start-up based in Jacksonville, Florida. All three had read about my dismissal in the trade publications and had heard about the specious circumstances behind it through the robust industry grapevine. Each of them, in different ways wanted to know if I had any plans and whether I might want to talk to them about "various opportunities."

That gave me choices and leverage over Waymon. And I planned to use it to make the son of a bitch sweat and twist in the wind while I checked those choices out. Time was now my friend and his enemy with an impatient board of directors on his ass.

Sorry, Waymon. Not available this week, I typed onto the screen. Then I thought better of it, reasoning that it gave him hope for something the week after and perhaps obligated me to follow up later. I erased the final two words and replaced them with right now.

That didn't feel right either. What happens if I don't respond at all? If he doesn't know if I ever read the damn message or even still have the same cell phone? Or, as was the case, he just suspects that I'm ghosting him?

"Yeah. Let his ass twist in the wind," I muttered into the empty room, discarding the text and tossing the phone onto the unmade bed beside me before getting up to empty my bladder then fill my mug with the day's first coffee.

Rather than waste my time with my old boss who was eager to either lick my boots or try to intimidate me in an effort to keep his job, I put on some jeans, a sweatshirt and some running shoes to at least impart the feeling that I was ready to do daytime things and resolved to place phone calls to the old colleagues who had emailed me over the previous seek -- two of whom had served with me at Anchor before leaving for sizeable promotions.

I scratched out a few personal goals and talking points longhand.

√ Inventorying my options to see if lending is what I want to do with the rest of my life.

√ If I come back, I want something that's fresh, new and challenging.

√ Things at Anchor had gotten a stale except for the side-by-side loan software trials that had made headlines all over the world.

√ What can you tell me about the opportunity you have in mind?

I had thought about texting Sarah with news of the three emails but held off lest I wake her ahead of an early morning ahead. So I texted her shortly before 10 and asked her to call in between those eye-glazing training sessions.

The talking point I did not write down but that would be dispositive was how any move would affect my relationship with Sarah. I wanted to check in with her before I made anything more than a friendly, casual inquiry.

It was an unusually warm day for late November, so I shed my sweatshirt for a Polo and took off on a brisk morning walk along my usual downtown course, killing some time waiting for Sarah's callback. It came during the walk.

"Hi babe. How's your Florida trip going?"

"Boring. I've got a half-hour break to load up on some stale Danish, some watery hotel coffee and head back into Salon G for 'Essentials of Building Effective Teams.' Good times. What's up?"

I told her about the emails and my plans to respond to each with generalized phone calls feeling out the opportunities. I told her the cities where the institutions were headquartered and that one of them had significant operations here in Alabama. Then I told her about the text from Waymon and my non-response

"Good. You've got him by the balls. Don't turn loose," she said. "Glad to hear all of that, but what does that have to do with me?"

"Everything. Whatever I accept has to be compatible with our life together. I didn't tell one boss to go to hell for making me choose between my career and you just so I could take another job that could effectively pose the same obstacle. So, as I start down this road, I want to involve you, and I don't want anything to be a surprise to you."

She was quiet for a moment.

"Kirk, you didn't have to call me to tell me that. I know that. Just like I wouldn't make a job move that would take me away from you."

"Right. I knew that, too," I said, feeling a bit stupid, maybe clingy. "I miss you. That's all."

I had slowed my pace before resting on a bench in Kelly Ingram Park, the same bench where I sat with Sarah that day I reassured her that she had nothing to fear from the LoanFast scandal and the investigations into it.

"You too, babe. Gotta get to this next lecture. Love you."

"Love you."

▼ ▼ ▼

By Thursday morning, three days after informing Sarah of interest from potential financial services sector companies and how I planned to proceed, I had one outright job offer, an invitation to have dinner with the CEO and chairman of a major S&L (meaning I would be offered a job in person provided I didn't blow it) and a request to submit an application for a C-suite opening at the bank in Nashville, suggesting I would be at least a serious candidate if not on the inside track. I assumed that I didn't have a lot of runway to accept or reject the open job offer from the bank in Jacksonville. I was quite interested in having dinner in Atlanta with the chairman of AmeriBank, a regional bank in an aggressive growth mode and on its way to becoming a national brand, and my old Anchor boss and friend, Harvey Mitternicht, who is now AmeriBank's CEO.

I had gotten two more voicemails and a text from Waymon McClendon, each laden with more desperation, frustration, aggression and fear than the last, and I had responded to none of them. You'd think he would get the message.

Sarah had been due back in Birmingham the previous night, but severe thunderstorms in Tampa had canceled departing and incoming flights so, dog tired and not willing to spend hours at an airport departure gate for a flight that might not happen, she rebooked on the first flight home this morning. I parked and was waiting for her in the concourse when she arrived just after 10. She abandoned her carry-on rollaboard and ran the last 10 yards to me and into my arms. We kissed as if no one was watching.

"Damn I missed you, angel," I whispered into her ear, my face nuzzled into her soft hair.

"That makes both of us," she said. "Let's get the hell out of here. I'm taking the rest of the day off and I've had it with airports."

I drove her to her apartment where she wasted no time shedding the clothing she had worn two of the past four days and showering away what she called "travel grime." After half an hour, she emerged from the bathroom in her bathrobe with a towel wrapped turban-style on her newly shampooed and conditioned hair and plopped onto my lap as I sat on her sofa.

"Now, where were we," she asked, referring to our Sunday lovemaking session that began on the same sofa and ended in her bed.

"I believe here," I said as I loosened the knot holding the front of her robe together and let it fall open, exposing her breasts. I ran a hand over the stiffening nub of her nipple and then gently twirled it. Our kiss was wanton -- lustful and searching. Almost instantly, she straddled me, her naked womanhood hovering over my swelling cock as her fingers worked with deliberate and practiced efficiency to unzip my jeans and set it free. As soon as she did, she impaled herself on it, both of us starved for physical release after four days apart. Sarah ground and rocked herself to a fast orgasm before we adjourned to her bedroom, never disconnecting with me fully seated inside her, to play out the rest of this intimate interlude. Another ten minutes of vigorous missionary-position sex and we climaxed simultaneously before collapsing together to catch our breath.

"I needed that," Sarah said. "I think I've developed a physical addiction to you."

"Same. Can't live without these," I said, kissing the pink peaks to her tits, "or this," I said, squeezing her bottom and trailing my hand across her pussy. "But most of all, I missed this," I said, planting gentle kisses in her eyelids, her nose and ears before finishing up with her lips and a languorous statement kiss.

"Should we shower off? Again, in my case," Sarah said.

"Why? I don't think either of us are done for the day. Let's do GrubHub for lunch and just spend the day wearing nothing, or next to nothing, and catching up on us."

"Good plan," she said.

Over a couple of Jimmy John's subs and Sarah's iced sweet tea, I filled her in on the options now before me.

"Are you going to take the offer on the table?" she said.

"Not until after I see what Bobo Mitternicht and his boss at AmeriBank have to say over dinner," I said, using the nickname Harvey Mitternicht went by when he was the chief operations officer at Anchor Bank before he left for what became AmeriBank after a large recent merger.

"AmeriBank is a WAS customer," Sarah said. "They're still converting the banks acquired in the merger, including some that were using LoanFast software. I will be overseeing some of that work."

"Maybe you ought to come along for the interview," I said. "It's tomorrow afternoon in Atlanta."

"I might be able to make that happen," she said.

Sarah spent about half an hour on the phone with her boss, also in Atlanta, and reported to me that she could make the trip work under one condition.

"What's that?" I asked.

"That we go to Atlanta tonight and I finish out this week working in the Southeast Region hub there tomorrow," she said.

I nodded. I had not yet booked a flight to Atlanta, but given Sarah's new opportunity, we had enough time to drive there, arrive in time for a late dinner, go about our business on Friday and stay the weekend if we want.

"Let me run to my apartment, pack a suit and I'll swing back by to get you in about 90 minutes."

So I called Bobo Mitternicht, told him I was driving up tonight and he said a suite would be waiting in my name at the Ritz-Carlton half a block from the AmeriBank headquarters. Four hours after that, Sarah and I checked in to a room on the eighteenth floor with a stunning view of downtown Atlanta.

"Should we let Butterbean and Neil know we're on their turf?" Sarah said.

"Maybe we keep this our little secret. We just spent five days with them, and they may be tired of us. Besides, I think they're heading up to Elijay to show her new jewelry to Neil's parents," I said. Standing behind her as we stared out our window at the big-city skyline, I enfolded her in my arms. She exhaled and I could feel her relax, draining away the residual tension and fatigue of a day that started before dawn in Tampa, a plane change in the world's busiest airport a few miles from here in Atlanta, a few sensual hours at her home in Birmingham, and now back in Atlanta.

"That sounds dreamy. What do you say we do room service for dinner, eat naked and see what happens," she said.

"I'm in," I whispered into her ear.

Two hours later -- bellies full, exhausted, naked and thoroughly spent sexually -- we slept soundly in each other's embrace.

▼ ▼ ▼

It wasn't like Bobo Mitternicht to keep me waiting. I was in the anteroom outside the small conference room on the 34th floor of the AmeriBank tower at the appointed hour, 3 p. m., to meet my old colleague and a handful of other executives from the C suites of what was now one of the largest banking chains based in the banking hub of Atlanta.

"Mr. Mitternicht will be with you very shortly. He's been detained with an unexpected matter," said the pleasant, immaculately groomed young man who seemed to be filling the role of receptionist on this corner of the power floor for AmeriBank.

"Thank you," I said, hoping the sour feeling in my gut about the circumstances of this meeting, now almost 20 minutes past its start time, didn't show.

"May I get you coffee? Water?" the young man said, his face almost aglow from what had to be foundation and even a whisper of blush on the apples of his cheeks.

"I'm good," I said, manufacturing a smile. "Thanks."

It would be another seven minutes before Bobo strode into the waiting area with its sparse yet comfortably upholstered chairs. His right hand was extended toward me before he even spoke.

"Kirk! You ol' reprobate! Been too long! You're looking great," Bobo said as the cluster of two men and one woman behind him stood, waiting with their practiced smiles for Bobo to introduce them.

"And you're no worse for the wear either, Bobo. Looks like AmeriBank's working out well for you," I responded as our handshake continued. I awaited the bro-hug that used to be standard in the old days, but it never came. Whether it was the formality of his new colleagues behind him, the passage of time or just something else wasn't clear.

He escorted me into the empty conference room, lights automatically illuminating as we entered. A short oval table with seven plush, leather-upholstered swivel chairs around it. Behind the chair at what appeared to be the head of the table was a flat screen monitor that spanned the width of the wall on that side of the room, a total of roughly 12 feet. Bobo took his seat there, in front of the dark monitor, making it clear this was his meeting. The two men and woman with him sat along the sides. I sat at the end opposite and facing Bobo, until a year ago my equal at Anchor.

"Well, no secret why we're here and there's not much I don't know about all you can do and have done, Kirk. Your portfolio pretty much played out in front of me for, what?, seven or eight years. No question about your record or your qualifications," he said.

"That's true. Not often the prospect and the hiring exec know as much about each other," I replied. "So, what can I tell you that might be on your mind?"

"Well,... why you left Anchor I guess is the obvious question," one of Bobo's underlings asked.

I took a deep breath and looked around the table, reconstituting the spiel I had rehearsed in my mind for days.

"You know about all the stuff that was in the papers of late about the scandal that sank LoanFast and that it all unraveled at Anchor. Well, I did it all by the book. The FBI and the FDIC cleared me of that. Waymon McClendon had high praise for the way Ron Casey and his IT team and my loan ops team and I handled the side-by-side trial with LoanFast and WAS. He told me that the fact that it was so objective is what put us above suspicion once everything went down and we discovered how LoanFast was trying to cheat and game the system," I said. I poured water out of a crystal decanter with the AmeriBank logo etched on it into a glass before and took a swallow. "I have copies of that correspondence if you want it."

Bobo shook his head silently, as if to say "not necessary."

"Well, the WAS company rep was a woman I had met a couple of years earlier at a Tide Club baseball watch party at a place you remember well: the Pelican," I said. That brought a smile to Bobo's face and a nod of affirmation, but he remained mute. "The head of the Tide Club took it upon herself to try and fix me up with this woman by surprise, which I didn't appreciate at the time because, as you might also remember, that was in a really dark time after I filed for divorce from Siobhan."

"I remember," Bobo said, nodding. "I could see how hard that was on you."

I took another sip of water.

"Well, after LoanFast made the blunder that showed their hand and ultimately revealed its extensive spying operation, the shit hit the fan -- sorry, please pardon my language," I said.

"We've all heard much worse, Mr. Weeks," the woman executive said. "Continue please."

"Well, once LoanFast hunkered down at battle stations to fight for its survival, it made the claim that I had gotten close to this woman who was heading up the WAS team. That was utterly and provably false. Throughout the entire side-by-side and well after I had prepared and tendered my recommendation to Waymon and the board, and even during the subsequent federal investigations, my contact with this woman, Sarah Zanone, was deliberately distanced and professional. Ron Casey and any number of people on his team or mine can vouch for that," I said.

"But there ultimately was a relationship with Miss Zanone, correct?" Bobo asked.

"Yes. But only after the feds had cleared both of us from any wrongdoing or conflicts of interest. She had also been a model of scrupulous, professional conduct, but I knew she had to be terrified by this scandal. She was getting visits from the FBI and banking regulators. Her bosses up in Chicago had to be getting jittery, she didn't have the on-site support group that I had, and I thought it was horribly unfair. Once the U. S. attorney cleared me, the government cracked the case and the first arrests became public, I reached out to her because she was totally in the dark and scared to death. So, I arranged to meet her for lunch and, without disclosing anything I had come to know about the investigation, I showed her the news that was breaking that morning and let her know she was going to be all right. With the probe behind us, things developed from there."

"Where do things stand now? With Miss Zanone?" one of the men asked.

"We're in a committed relationship. She got a promotion to oversee the regional sales staff and is working today in the regional WAS office in Buckhead just up the street," I said.

Bobo interlaced the fingers of his hands, almost as if he were praying.

"So how does this figure into your departure at Anchor," Bobo said. "Why is Waymon telling me you just cursed him and stormed out one day?"

I shook my head as a sardonic grin tugged at the corner of my mouth.

"Because Waymon is in deep shit with Anchor's board and he's trying to get me to either return to Anchor or take a payoff and sign a NDA to save his ass."

I explained how Waymon started getting questioned by all his country club chums over the gossip they were seeing on social media about Sarah and me. All that got amplified in the echo chamber of Waymon's well-to-do social circle in Birmingham. That's when Waymon made the ultimatum -- my career or Sarah.

"He gave me til the close of business to tell him my decision, but I didn't need that long. I boxed up my stuff in my office, walked into his office and told I chose Sarah," I said. "I called him on his bullying attempt, but I never cursed him."

Bobo's brow was furrowed. "So how is this a problem for Waymon with his board?"

"Because he told some lies that are contradicted by an independent audit, a federal investigation and his own earlier written correspondence, copies of which I have in this binder," I said, tapping the leather portfolio on the table before me. "He knuckled under and overreacted and thought he could crush two innocent people to make an inconvenience for himself disappear. He never dreamed I'd pick Sarah over Anchor, but the choice was never even close. I'd pick her a thousand times out of a thousand," I said, my jaw flexing. I waited a beat to calm myself before I proceeded.

"When I left and the way I left sent shock waves throughout Anchor and the industry. You saw all the talk on the banking blogs and social media. When he sensed there would be blowback, he made up more lies about Sarah and me, but too many people on my team and Ron's know they're lies, word of that began to spread all over Anchor and board members started getting wind of it. That's when Ron began secretly circulating the email Waymon wrote to Ron and me in which he laid out, step-by-step, how we had done everything objectively, precisely and by-the-book."

I paused again.

"And how did that become a crisis for Waymon?" Bobo asked.

"You know better than I how nothing stays secret at Anchor. We're not a big operation like you have here. Board members know middle managers and even hourly workers, and they talk. Once they saw written proof that Waymon was gaslighting them, the board asked him about it. Granted, all this is secondhand because I haven't been in that building since I left, but my sources -- as you can imagine, Bobo -- are numerous, deep and impeccable."

That seemed to bring the meeting to a pause. The room was silent for uncomfortably long moments. Bobo was staring out the window to his right. One of the men and the woman executive were jotting down notes. The other man had picked up his smartphone and tried to look busy. Finally, it was Bobo who broke the quiet.

"Look, Kirk, everyone at this table knows you have every qualification to fill this position. The only possible question was this... stuff Waymon is putting out there, so we needed your side of it. For what it's worth, I believe you. Hell, we all believe you. But you need to understand that Waymon McClendon is doing everything he can behind the scenes to stir up trouble for you and anybody who's considering you, and he was doing it as recently as this afternoon."

"That's good to know, Bobo. Thank you."

▼ ▼ ▼

Hi Waymon. Bobo Mitternicht tells me you and I have some things to discuss.

I texted the message to Waymon at precisely 9 a. m., the hour I once began my workday at Anchor Bank. It was the second Tuesday of December, and I knew the bank's business operations would be working overtime to finish up the year-end reports that were due for a handful of federal and state regulatory bodies as well as the independent auditors who would soon dive into all the bank's books. I knew Waymon would be up to his ass in busy work. That's why I picked this time to finally respond to him.

Top of the Town at 11:30 was the reply I got from him about five minutes after I sent my text. He was referring to a white-linen tablecloth penthouse restaurant atop Birmingham's second-tallest downtown building that was a favored haunt of the city's business brahmins and decision makers.

No. Thirsty Pelican. 2 pm, I replied.

There was a short pause. Then my phone rang. It was an Anchor Bank number.

"Hello. This is Kirk Weeks."

"Kirk. Waymon McClendon here. I am not familiar with this Pelican place and 2 doesn't work for me."

"Well, Waymon, you're the guy who's been pestering me for weeks to talk. If you want to talk to me, that's where and when you'll find me. And if you haven't realized it yet, I don't work on your schedule anymore."

The only sound on the other end of the call for a good 10 seconds was Waymon huffing, sort of like an agitated bull. When he was pissed or frustrated, his face would redden, he'd clench his teeth, his nostrils would flare slightly, and he would breathe heavily through his nose. This former Marine officer bristled when people he saw as subordinates, professionally or socially, dared dictate terms.

"All right, Weeks. Your place, fourteen-hundred hours," Waymon snapped, reverting to his full military persona as if he were back in the barracks.

"See you then," I said and immediately pressed the red icon that ended the call before he could say anything more.

"Well?" I said, looking across Brantley Melton's desk, seeking his input as I slid my phone back in my pocket. I arranged to make the call there so I would have a witness as well as legal counsel if it came to that.

My lawyer nodded his satisfaction. "OK. I like having him out of his comfort zone. Now let's see what he says. And who he brings with him."

In the three days since I had met with Bobo and his AmeriBank C-suite colleagues in Atlanta and Sarah and I had had dinner with him and his wife, Sophie, that Friday night, I had learned a great deal about the one-man smear campaign Waymon was waging against me. The apparent strategy was to make me untouchable within the banking industry and force me to yield to whatever hush-money scheme he was cooking up.

I had also learned from old friends still working at Anchor who spoke to me on the down-low that Waymon's support on Anchor's board could be counted on one hand with the pinkie chopped off. He knew he needed my help -- coerced, purchased or both if necessary -- to save himself from the corporate guillotine.

Essentially, I learned from my sources, all I would have to do was not dispute his distorted account of the whole WAS-LoanFast software side-by-side try-out, specifically that Sarah and I had begun our courtship during that period. That was a goddamn lie and poisonous slander on the character and professionalism of both Sarah and me, and nobody with a shred of honor in his soul would ever stand for it. I guess that's why Waymon thought it might work.

What he hadn't realized was that his Hail Mary gambit could expose him to jeopardy well beyond getting bounced by the Anchor board. And because he had embellished his fiction with provably false, lurid accounts of Sarah and me having sex at several spots within Anchor's Birmingham offices, he had made this intensely personal as well as defamatory.

As I recounted the story by phone to R. B. Melton, he saw a potential flashpoint and admonished me.

"You know you've got to bite your tongue and keep your hands at your sides at all times whenever we deal with this guy, right? I can't have you cursing and certainly not grabbing or hitting him," he said.

"I know. I promise," I said like a scolded schoolboy.

"And you'll let me do the talking if you sense control slipping away," he said.

"I will."

Now, my lawyer pursed his lips and clasped his fingers across his belly, looking down at his desk in thought.

"I was a little worried about tossing in the Bobo Mitternicht reference. It was good bait, but I was afraid it might scare him off. It still might put his guard up. That's why I want to see who shows up with him at the Pelican this afternoon."

I shrugged. "I'm not worried about Waymon. He might have been a Marine but so were Big Carly and Little Carly Butcher, and I've seen them bring badder dudes than Waymon to their knees."

Brantley shot me a patronizing smile and shook his head.

"I'm not talking about rough stuff. I'm talking about legal counsel," he said. "If McClendon shows, my guess he'll be alone because no lawyer worth his license would let him take this meeting knowing the circumstances as you've explained them."

I chuckled. "I'm surprised you're letting me."

Melton leaned forward over his desk, removed the reading glasses slouched low on his nose and looked me in the eye.

"This meeting isn't without risk, Kirk, but if it goes the way I hope it does, you could wind up owning a respectable chunk of Anchor Bank and all of Waymon McClendon's ass. Hell, if everything goes right, I could probably retire just on my contingency. So, hell yes, we want this meeting."

▼ ▼ ▼

I was preoccupied as I ate an early lunch with Sarah at the Urban Cookhouse downtown. Evidently, it showed.

"You're not going to tell me what's eating you, are you," she said after an uncharacteristic lull in our conversation as I picked distractedly at my trout almondine.

I shook my head. "Can't, honey."

"You're going to talk to McClendon, aren't you?"

I said nothing but my silence spoke for itself.

She nodded. "Thought so."

"If I told you anything, Sarah, I could turn you into a potential witness so...," I said with a shrug. "You don't need that. In this case, ignorance is bliss."

"Can we just let this go?" she said, a pleading quality to her voice.

"We could if not for the fact that this is driven by factors and persons and actions outside our control. There's some risk in what I'm going to do but I've got sound legal guidance and I like my -- our -- chances."

She pursed her lips, a tacit body-language expression that she didn't agree with whatever I was about to do, but she accepted that I had a good reason for doing it.

"OK, Kirk. Please be careful."

"I will. I promise you that."

We didn't tarry in the restaurant. She had to get back to work and I had to be in Brantley Melton's office by one o'clock for one last run-through before we left in separate cars for the Pelican.

It all had the feel of a bad spy novel, but what was about to happen involved ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Sure, I trusted my lawyer, but I had butterflies the size of bowling balls in my gut by the time I arrived at Brantley's office.

▼ ▼ ▼

Little Carly Butcher seated me at a table in the back corner in the area where Butterbean and Neil had chosen to show off her brand-new engagement ring a few weeks earlier. I got there early and parked conspicuously near the front door, assuming Waymon McClendon would recognize my car with its University of Alabama Alumni Association sticker on the rear window.

Brantley Melton had arrived about five minutes before I had and quietly staked out an obscure booth near the front where he was unlikely to be observed but could easily see me and I could see him if I needed him.

The key to making this work was that Waymon not suspect that I was acting under the rehearsed guidance of an attorney and that my iPhone, innocuously laid face-down on the table, was surreptitiously doubling as a recording device.

I had already finished one glass of icewater when I saw Waymon push his way through the double doors wearing his gray, Brooks Brothers business suit, a muted blue tie and the usual dyspeptic, bad-mood look on his face. I put my hand up slightly to help him spot me in the back left of the bar, which was empty except for a couple of regulars sipping beers at the bar and Brantley Melton hunkered inconspicuously in a booth. As instructed, I had taken the only seat at the table that put my back against the rear wall, forcing Waymon to keep his back to my lawyer.

Against every natural inclination and the screaming protests of my masculine pride, I rose and extended my hand. Awkwardly, and after a moment's pause, Waymon reciprocated, coldly grasped it, nodded at me and said only, "Kirk."

We sat, looked around nervously and said nothing else until I ultimately broke the ice.

"You've asked for this meeting. What's this about?"

"That's a bit abrupt for someone here to do you a favor," he said.

I scoffed so forcefully I made something of a snort. I thought he was joking until I saw from his face that he took umbrage.

"It's been a long time since I took Latin in high school, but I remember a line from Virgil's Aeneid that said something like 'beware of Greeks bearing gifts.'" The smirk on my face that threatened to expand into laughter at any second further chafed Waymon.

"I didn't come here to be insulted," he said.

"Neither did I, so why not stop insulting my intelligence. You unethically forced me to make a choice between a long, loyal and highly regarded banking career and a woman I love who had done nothing even vaguely wrong against you or the bank. You did it so you could save face against the false gossip of this town's richest and most privileged. You did it despite abundant evidence by the FBI and our own auditors that my actions toward this woman were in no way improper, professionally or legally. So why don't you drop your pretense and tell me what it is that you want me to do and how you propose to persuade me to do it."

More silence. I could tell he was grinding his teeth behind his thin, clenched lips. I can't be sure but it also appeared his nostrils were beginning to flare. The military officer in him had never gotten used to a perceived underling baiting the chain of command.

"Don't play stupid with me, Waymon. I know that the only reason the board hasn't fired you yet is that it would create a whole raft of bad headlines right after last summer's LoanFast incident when you came out smelling like a rose in large part because of the careful work Ron Casey and I did. The last thing the Anchor board wants is bad headlines, Waymon, but they know you fired me without consulting any of them, without checking with HR or without talking to Larry Brooks or anyone else in Legal. Now they know that your basis for firing me was arbitrary, cowardly and based on lies, as a whole raft of internal emails proves," I said, a smile still on my face. "Yes, Waymon, I have the emails. A lot of people do."

"None of that is true," he muttered without conviction. The color draining from his face betrayed the lie slithering from his mouth.

"Right. I may have left Anchor but I've got more friends there than you'll ever have or ever know. Just as I have friends throughout the lending and banking industry across the country, particularly the Southeast. They talk to me too, Waymon. They tell me things. Things they're hearing from you. Legally actionable things."

Now he swallowed hard.

"I'm betting that neither the board nor Larry Brooks knows about this little meeting right now, do they? I have to hand it to you, Waymon: it took some balls for you to do this. Not much brains, but cods the size of melons."

His silence confirmed my suspicion.

"So what is it, Waymon? What do you need from me?"

Now his nostrils were flared, his face was regaining its normal ruddy tone and then some, and his respiration had ticked up noticeably. Damn, this man was easy to read. He cleared his throat.

"Weeks, I had considered offering you your job back along with a raise, but I can't stand the goddamn sight of you, so that's off the table," he said, words tumbling out of his mouth in an angry rush.

I laughed in his face and it seemed to confuse him momentarily. "What's your Plan B?"

"I will pay you $100,000 a year for the next five years -- an arrangement between us that we will call a 'separation agreement,' conditioned on your binding promise to say nothing ever about the circumstances of your dismissal other than to say that I had sufficient cause," he said.

"But you didn't have sufficient cause, and you know it, and you know there's proof of it. That's why you're here," I said.

"Read your terms of your employment agreement that you signed years ago when you became a senior officer. It says the bank -- that being me -- can dismiss you any time for any reason or no reason at all. So legally, I did 'have cause' to dismiss your sniveling ass."

I nodded as I stifled the impulse to tell him right there to go fuck himself, but my task, as defined by Brantley Melton who sat just 40 feet away, was not done.

"If this was about mere legalities, then we wouldn't be huddled in a corner of a mostly empty sports bar early on a Tuesday afternoon. Would we, Waymon?" I said. "If that were the case, Brooks or someone from the bank's general counsel office would be sitting beside you right now."

Waymon swallowed hard. "I can go as high as $150,000 but that's it. That's more for doing nothing than you were making working five days a week," he said, growing frustration plain on his face.

"So you're boosting your offer when I haven't spoken a word about money? That doesn't sound much like a savvy business negotiating technique Waymon," I said. "But just to summarize: you're offering me $750,000 over five years in hush money for... what?"

"Don't ever call this hush money, you pathetic piss ant," he growled through clenched teeth.

"OK, then what would I have to do in exchange for that pile of whatever-you-want-to-call-it money?"

"Keep silent," he said. He paused and batted his eyes a few times. I'd like to imagine that he had just realized the comical paradox of those words with his visceral denial seconds earlier that he was offering "hush money." The years had taught me that introspection and self-awareness are not Waymon McClendon's strengths. Then, as if remembering an equally important point, added, "Just confirm, and only when asked, that your dismissal was legal and warranted."

I sighed, leaned forward unable to hide my weariness with this conversation.

"Waymon, tell me: how is this -- using your term -- 'keep-silent' money not a bribe?"

I saw a vein on his temple begin to pulse in time with his heartbeat as his face reddened to an alarming shade of fuchsia. His hands, which had been folded on the tabletop, clenched into fists. Those words had hit his trip wire when repeated back to him and he was fighting a losing battle to restrain his temper.

With startling quickness and practiced precision learned long ago in his Marine basic training at Parris Island, South Carolina, his right hand seized my throat and tightened like a vise before I could move or deflect it. He had risen slightly from his seat, leaning across the table. His face was contorted with rage. His eyeballs bulged. Spittle flew from his snarling mouth.

"If you make a fucking sound, I'll crush your goddamn windpipe and kill you right here," he said. Making a sound was not an option for me at the moment. Neither was breathing. Panic seized me as my arms flailed helplessly.

"You don't ever use the word 'bribe' in my presence or about me," he hissed. "You ever accuse me of a crime and I will fucking end you."

With my carotid artery constricted, I could feel consciousness ebbing just as a great commotion suddenly rocked the table, forcing Waymon's hand from my throat. I slumped to the floor as bodies struggled and the table overturned. That's the last thing I remember.

▼ ▼ ▼

I don't recall how I wound up sitting on the curb in front of the Thirsty Pelican staring across an asphalt parking lot now filled mostly with emergency vehicles with their lights flashing. I was still a little dizzy as a medic examined me for signs of broken bones or a concussion. He shone a pen light into the pupil of one eye and then into the other.

"You sure you don't want to go to the emergency room, Mr. Weeks? Get checked a little bit more?" asked the sandy-haired young emergency medical technician who wore a Birmingham Fire Department logo sewn onto the left breast of his shirt and a brass tag that identified him as Cpl. Woolery pinned over his right pectoral.

I waved him off, but Brantley Melton thought better of my decision as he approached. He and Little Carly Butcher had just spent 20 minutes giving a statement to a Birmingham Police sergeant who was among several who rushed to the Pelican after Waymon McClendon attacked me. It was Little Carly, a much younger and stronger former Marine, and Brantley, my sixties-something lawyer, who had rushed McClendon to pull him off me and subdue him after his hand clutched my throat. The struggle demolished the table where we had sat.

"No, Kirk, do as Corporal Woolery suggests and get checked out at the E. R.," Melton said. "Make sure we get a full, written record documenting any injuries this may have caused you."

"Do I have to ride in this ambulance?" I said.

"Might as well," Melton said. "More damages we can prove."

I shook my head and sighed, but got to my feet, resigned to doing this for legal reasons more than medical ones.

"You want to wait for me at the E. R. so I can hitch a ride back to here and pick up my car after they check me out?"

"Your call, but you know my hourly rate," Brantley said, a wry smirk creasing his face. He wasn't kidding about billing me.

"Never mind, I'll Uber," I grunted.

"Have the attending doctor give you a full copy of all his findings and test results and bring those to me tomorrow," he said. "For what it's worth, you took things a little farther than I thought you would, but you got me dynamite stuff. McClendon is done."

"Glad to know I could be of service to you, R. B.," I said, snapping off a smart-ass parting salute as I shuffled toward the ambulance. Little Carly stood there by its rear door, chuckling as he waited for me.

"First time I ever had to break up a fight at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday," he said, putting an arm around my shoulder. "I think you're gonna have a nasty bruise on your neck, Kirk. You think your girlfriend's gonna believe you when you tell her it was from a fight with your former boss and not a hickey?"

I laughed. Carly could be as funny as he was badass.

"Thanks, pal. Just damn glad you saw what happened and were able to stop it. Looks like he put up a fight but was no match for you," I said.

"Motherfucker's going to pay for my busted table, I tell you that," he said, "jail or no jail."

I nodded hugged Carly as Corporal Woolery waited to help me into the rear of the ambulance. "He's going to pay for a whole lot of shit, Carly. Bank on it."

Around the corner, in the Pelican's smaller side parking lot, a tow truck was loading up Waymon McClendon's BMW per Little Carly's instructions. McClendon was taken away in the back seat of a BPD cruiser, handcuffed and on his way to police headquarters where he would be booked and photographed before taking another cruiser ride to the Jefferson County Jail where he would cool his heels awaiting a bond hearing before a magistrate. His attack on me and his scuffle with Little Carly had resulted in his arrest on two felony counts of felonious assault and a misdemeanor count of destruction of private property. But that would be the tip of the iceberg.

Once word of his arrest reached the Birmingham News and the city's four television stations, it would become a sensational scandal not just in Birmingham, where he was a bona fide member of the social elite, but across the financial industry thanks to his high-profile role in the LoanFast corruption case. He would likely be suspended by the Anchor board before he made bail and doubtless terminated for cause a day or two later.

Waymon's real jeopardy, however, would come from Brantley Melton. What I had recorded my former boss as saying using the voice recording app on my iPhone as it lay face down on the table between the two of us is enough to have additional felony charges of blackmail and bribery brought once it is turned over to the Jefferson County District Attorney. And that doesn't count what state and federal banking regulators could do to him.

Beyond that, it's a gold mine for the civil defamation lawsuit that Melton would bring against him in federal court on behalf of Sarah and me once it's buttressed with corroborating testimony about knowing lies he had told Bobo Mitternicht and at least a half dozen other senior banking executives across the South in a bid to damage my re-employment prospects. His brutish tactics had made them all his enemies eager to do whatever they could to bury him. Brantley looked at his one-third share of a settlement or jury award from this case as his ticket to retirement and upgrading from a vacation house on the Elk River to a beach house on North Carolina's Outer Banks.

▼ ▼ ▼

Sarah was sitting the waiting area of the emergency room watching nursing home patients struggling to breathe and young people bloodied in a car crash being rushed into waiting treatment bays when an intern retrieved her and brought her to me.

"Whoever grabbed you knew what he was doing," a young-looking resident told me as Sarah walked in. "You're lucky it didn't snap the hyoid bone up here at the top of your throat. If that happened, you wouldn't be going home. You probably would be going to the state medical examiner."

I kept my mouth shut and merely shook my head in dismayed agreement. No need prolonging this and further upsetting Sarah, but the resident wasn't picking up my cues.

"Mr. Weeks, I don't need to know the details, but this was a very serious attack and I would encourage you to report it to the police if you haven't already," he said.

"Got it, doc. Thanks," I said. He handed me a prescription slip, turned and left.

Sarah stood there with her mouth gaping, transfixed by the already livid marks visible just beneath my jawline and on my neck.

"My God, Kirk... he tried to kill you," she stammered.

"He certainly attacked me, and he certainly meant to shut me up, that's clear enough," I said.

She touched my throat gently but I pulled away. Even minimal pressure hurt and swallowing, the resident had said, might be difficult for a day or two.

"I wish you hadn't gone through with this," Sarah said.

"Had to. Otherwise, I was handing that son of a bitch control of my life and yours, too. We never bargained for this to become a criminal case. R. B. Melton was just looking for enough to seal our civil lawsuit against him. I guess I triggered him," I said.

"How, exactly?"

"He was offering me hush money -- seven hundred and fifty grand over five years -- to go along with his lie that my firing was justified and that we were hooking up during the software tryouts. I didn't ask him for anything, he just put it out there. Evidently he is very afraid of something, three-quarters of a million dollars' worth of afraid," I said. "I wasn't interested in it and told him so. Then I sort of gave in and taunted him and called it a bribe. That's when he came over the table."

"Why did you feel the need to taunt him? Couldn't you just get up and leave?"

"See, that would have been logical and I should have, I guess, but it's just a guy thing. He pissed me off, particularly his demand that I betray you. It's hard to explain it in a rational way, but as you said, this behavior just comes with a set of testicles. Guys do dumb shit."

"He really could have killed you with his hands. The doctor just said you're lucky that he didn't," she said.

"I'm lucky Little Carly was there and he's a younger, badder former Marine than Waymon. Without Little Carly, he might have killed me... or at least hurt me really bad," I said. "But for what it's worth, Brantley Melton is happy. Waymon's going to jail, we've got a jim-dandy lawsuit against him and Brantley thinks this is his ticket to retirement on the Carolina Outer Banks.

"Men," she said, smiling ruefully as she shook her head. "Is it too late for me to turn lesbian?"

I kissed her forehead. "Drive us home and let me answer that in private."

NEXT CHAPTER:

2019