Chapter 145 - epilogue (part 2)

They arrived home at two on the dot. The kids were at play for a couple hours, leaving Christyn and Damian plenty of time for a tumble in the sheets. After locking the door, she pushed him to his back on the bed and couldn't wait to strip his clothes off. Ah, yes--he could tell she'd missed him.

Their shower in the aftermath was not so much about getting clean as making out under the water, and he'd barely toweled off before she attacked him again, this time pulling him on top of her.

By the time she was finally satisfied, he was spent and fighting for breath. She lay pressed flush against him, tucked between his arm and his doughy side. The pregnancies had rounded out her figure by about twenty pounds total, but she still felt small and feminine against his larger, much softer frame. It was nice; it made him feel like a comfort to her. He could have stayed with her like that indefinitely, but about that time, his stomach growled and gave away his hunger. All he'd had on the road was a sweet tea and a bag of chips that he'd bought at a gas station. Granted, it was a share-size bag of chips, but it was no substitute for real food. "If I could live off your love alone, I would," he said.

"There'd be too much. You'd explode. It would be a horrible way to die," Christyn responded matter-of-factly.

Damian rolled his eyes but chuckled in spite of himself, combing a hand through her hair. "It's good to have you back, sick sense of humor and all."

He would have made dinner, but she insisted he let her do it. "You cook for a living, and besides, I want to make sure my skills are still up to scratch."

Once downstairs, she enlisted Carmyn's help in putting together a veritable feast of shrimp skewers, noodle stir-fry with various greens, and some sort of rich, hearty Vietnamese beef stew served with baguettes. (After all these years she still couldn't bring herself to touch any meat other than shellfish, and everything but the shrimp had to still be in its shell, but she saw no reason to deprive her family.) Damian knew from sneaking samples of everything while his wife and firstborn worked that she definitely had not lost her touch.

As he set the table, Christyn turned to the two younger children, pulling from a shelf a special syrup she made by dissolving sour candies in water, and asked, "Y'all want shots, or you want it mixed?" It was a tradition she had invented when Carmyn and Mercedes were little girls so they would feel included when she and Damian were drinking. Carmyn was old enough now that they let her have a glass of wine with them--they figured if they gave it to her, it would discourage her from sneaking it.

"Mixed, please," said Mercedes, while Ventura exclaimed,

"SHOT!"

"A lright, kiddo, but you asked for it." Christyn filled a glass with ice and poured a five-count of the sour syrup into it for her middle child before topping it with lemon soda. Then, she filled a shot glass for her littlest. When Ventura downed his shot in one, his whole face puckered and he coughed, to Mercedes and Carmyn's hysterical laughter.

After dinner, Carmyn retreated to her room to gossip on the phone with her friends, while the younger two raced for the back door. "Hey, kids, remember to watch TV for thirty minutes to let dinner settle before you go outside," Christyn called after them. They groaned, but obliged.

As Damian stood up to help her with the dishes, he asked, "Do you really do that so they don't puke in the lawn, or are you tryna make them distrust the mainstream media? Cause they hate TV."

Christyn turned around and tossed the dish towel she was holding over her shoulder. "Who says I'm not just buying us extra time for another round in the sack?" She placed one hand on his waist and the other above his navel, where she playfully applied some pressure and looked into his eyes with the most devious grin on her face. "There's still some dessert left, and you, it appears, still have room."

That was all it took for him to spring yet another erection. If he didn't know any better he'd think this woman had him under a spell.

***

After dark, the kids came back inside and got ready for bed. Christyn and Damian were still wrapped up in each other. They knew Ventura knew how to brush his teeth by now, so they figured they could let the kids go through their evening routines unsupervised. Only, after the sounds of water running from downstairs faded, a knock sounded at the door. Damian quickly slipped on a shirt and some sweatpants, while Christyn put on her bathrobe and answered the door.

There stood Mercedes and Ventura, their eyes wide and eager. "Mom, now that you're home, Ventura wants one of your scary stories."

Damian knew the thing Ventura missed most when his mom was away was her scary stories, but he suspected it was not only for his sake that Mercedes asked on his behalf. Physically, she was the most like Damian, with her darker complexion and thick black curls, though she was tall and skinny like her aunt Lily. She had Christyn's mind, though, her quick sharpness, and her ability to get what she wanted without directly asking for it. Ventura, on the other hand, had straight dark hair that stuck out in every direction and blue eyes like Christyn's late father. He had her pale skin and distinctly Asian facial structure, too, but he was a shit-talker and a thrill-seeker just like Damian. They'd already had to take him to the hospital twice for jumping off of high things and meeting an unfortunate consequence.

“You want to hear a scary story? Alright, I actually have a new one." Christyn picked him up and carried him to his room, where she sat him down on the bed. Sure enough, Mercedes followed at her heels, sitting down on the floor once they'd arrived at their destination. Damian, too, lingered in the doorway, wondering what Christyn had dreamed up on her latest work voyage. "This is one of your dad’s favorites, although I don’t think he’s heard it quite like I tell it. I've been working on the delivery all summer. It takes place in what we now know as Saxony. The year was 1316, when the Great Famine of Europe was in full swing. Torrential rains had stunted the growth of crops such that food had become scarce, and even back then, scarcity was the mother of opportunity for capitalists. The lords of the land saw their chance to profit off the high demand for an unprecedentedly small food supply, and jacked up prices accordingly. For example, within a year, the price of grain had inflated by 320%, meaning peasants could no longer afford bread. Many starved to death, and many more lost the battle to illness, as malnutrition weakened their immune systems. If you walked into the city streets, you’d find the air reeked of death."

This didn't sound like any story Damian had heard before, but he was hooked, even if it was dark. "Damn, girl, you right, this is scary."

“As I was saying...about a week’s journey on foot from any of these streets, there was a cottage in the woods, and in the cottage, there lived a poor woodcutter and his second wife, his first wife having passed away tragically, and his daughter of about ten, and son maybe four years her junior. Most modern retellings depict the children as a pair of blondes, but I don’t really like that; I think the archetype of the blond-haired, blue-eyed, ‘Master Race’ protagonist is largely a product of Nazi propaganda."

Around the word 'woodcutter' was where Damian started to recognize the story. He chuckled softly and shook his head.

“But back on topic, I’ve always pictured the children as a couple brunettes, just like you two. They were intelligent children, and resourceful, and they cared for each other more than anything else in the world, and their names, we have learned, were Hansel and Gretel.”

She wound a riveting tale, full of deception and intrigue and nitty-gritty details on common cooking techniques of the fourteenth century. By the time she reached 'happily ever after,' Ventura was dozing, but Mercedes was still quite alert. "But what happened to the German economy?" she asked.

"That's a story for another night, darling."

"I think Auntie Aura told us this story before," said Ventura between yawns, "but her version was a little different. She said the kids were both eighteen."

Once the kids were all asleep, Christyn got on the phone, pacing the kitchen as she hissed into the receiver, "Auralee, have you been telling my six-year-old pornographic bedtime stories?"

Damian poured her a big glass of wine. She took it out of his hand and drained it.

"What do you mean 'not too pornographic'?" she demanded, slamming the glass onto the island countertop. "Any amount of pornographic is too pornographic, Auralee, he's six!"

The argument went on for another few minutes before Christyn hung up. "Is it too much to ask that our children be allowed to remain innocent?"

"I mean, I agree, Aura was completely out of line," said Damian. "But we was never innocent, and we turned out okay."

After some contemplation, she said, "I guess you're right," hit the kitchen light, and followed him back to bed.