rafevincennes

New Way to Read About Rafe

2012-02-07T11:42:00.000-08:00

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Sociopath? Book One - Chapter One

2011-07-03T06:01:00.003-07:00

CHAPTER 1

He laid claim to her from the day she came home from the hospital. Everyone thought it was cute that he took such a proprietary interest in his infant sister when he was only going on three himself. And they did make a precious picture. He with his hair as straight and black as pitch, his eyes dark as midnight and his skin as brown as a gypsy’s and she with her rosy round cheeks, big sea blue eyes and wispy white-blonde hair. There were nine of them so, honestly, no one paid too much attention to yet another baby. If anything, everyone was glad he seemed willing to be her caretaker, albeit, a very young one.

The Vincennes family was extremely wealthy and devoutly Catholic with the children ranging in age from 20 down to these last two, Rafael Alain and Elena Justine, although everyone called them Rafe and Lane until eventually it almost began to seem like one name, RafeandLane. They were all busy with their own affairs so Rafe and Lane were left to their own devices. They were the last two to still be sleeping in the nursery, the rest of them having grown old enough to move into their own rooms. There had always been a nurse when the first seven of the brood were younger but when the last one was let go after Annecy started school, no one remembered they might need to hire another for Rafe and Lane, stuck down there at the tail end of the family.

Renny Vincennes, the father, was tall, dark and handsome. A former Air Force pilot (Vietnam) and now financier extraordinaire (being always near the top of Forbest Richest Americans list), spent most of his time planning how to make the family even richer. Magdelene, the mother, (her coming-out year’s most desirable debutante) was still tiny, blonde and beautiful. She spent most of her time involved in planning charity events, a job which required many long lunches with her women friends. Renny and Magdelene were passionate lovers even after all their years of marriage. Would they have produced nine children if that had not been so? It wasn’t that Renny and Magdelene didn’t love their kids, because they did, but that they adored each other more. They simply weren’t the kind of parents who took an active and personal interest in their children’s day to day lives and that quality became more pronounced with each additional child so, by the time they got to numbers eight and nine…..

Those children included Morgan, a sophomore at Princeton, where Vincennes sons had gone since there was a Princeton. Morgan, a tall, rangy young man with dark mahogany hair and hazel eyes, was an athletic superstar, excelling at every sport he tried. Next was Wyatt, as tall as Morgan but slender with black hair, brown eyes and a winning smile. At 18, he was a senior at Benedict High School and would be entering West Point next year, an exception to the Princeton rule. All Wyatt had ever wanted to be was a soldier. Then came Mariel, 16, cool and elegant and ash blonde. No one who knew her could imagine that she wouldn’t be the head cheerleader, the homecoming queen and the valedictorian of her class. She was so self-assured about being entitled to these honors that it was taken as a given that she would receive them. Denis at 14 was slight and dark and artistic, as well as outwardly and so unashamedly gay that everyone accepted him as he was. (Of course, being a member of Benedict’s first family didn’t hurt either). Next was Jocelyn, 12, petite and platinum and delicate as a butterfly, unless you had to deal with her slashing serves on the tennis court. Gabe, 10, sturdily built with coal black hair, was a musical virtuoso. His piano teacher gushed over his abilities and thought he had the potential to be a great pianist although for now at least, he was more interested in Eric Clapton and Eddie Van Halen and other rock and roll guitar greats. Then, Annecy, the animal lover at 8, with her green eyes and golden skin and palomino hair. And, finally after a baby every two years, when Magdelene finally thought she’d completed her duty to the church, six years later, here came Rafe, followed almost three years after that by Lane, conforming to the Vincennes pattern of intense dark boys and bright blonde girls.

After Lane, Magdelene’s doctor insisted she have her tubes tied for health reasons. Both she and Renny were ecstatic that they could finally engage in the enthusiastic sex they both so enjoyed without the depressing prospect hanging over their heads that they might be creating yet another baby.

The Vincennes lived in a 32 room chateau on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay called Heron Point, copied from, though somewhat smaller in scale, than the grand family home in the Loire Valley in their native France, Chateau Abricot, named after its sandstone-hued walls. A long lane of locust trees led to the impressive gardens and circle drive in front of the imposing golden stone house with the twin towers anchoring each front corner and the steeply pitched roof with tall decoratively capped chimneys, the multiple dormers and balustraded terrace.

To the back were piers and decks and sailboats and paddle boats and speedboats and jet skis.To the side were garages, kennels, tennis courts, basketball courts and even a regulation baseball field, as well as an Olympic-sized swimming pool and an impressive stable of the same style as the house itself. Renny spared no expense to indulge his children’s amusements.

Farther back on the 1000 plus green acres that made up the estate, were pastures and creeks and one large hill, unusual in this terrain, joking referred to as Mount Vincennes. There was a rustic small log cabin on top of the Mount, just a living room/kitchen combination and one bedroom with a bath, treasured for the view, because from one of the several rocking chairs on the porch out front you could see far across the countryside and then, to the Bay. In earlier years, Renny and Magdelene slipped away there to escape, alone, from their children. Now it was mostly used by the Vincennes kids themselves when they needed privacy. Renny knew about the use the cabin was put to but, having been quite a Lothario himself before he met Magdelene and settled down, he understood about hormones and sex drives and figured kids would be kids and the cabin was a better and safer option than parking in a lover’s lane somewhere. Those kids themselves, of course, had no clue that their old man knew what they were up to.

Inside, the mansion featured elaborately carved fireplace mantels and crystal chandeliers and fine wood paneling and oriental rugs and ornate plaster pillars and a kitchen the size of a cooking school. It was filled with antiques and museum quality art. Except for an occasional foraging expedition through the kitchen for snacks, and meals in the dining room at the extra-long cherry table, hardly any of the Vincennes young even visited this floor. The basement was their bailiwick. In one large room, the wall-length flat-screen t.v. resided, along with the DVD player and the XBoxes and the latest version of Playstation (complete with their own t.v.s for playing games) and the computers (one for each young Vincennes). A second vast room contained a state-of-the-art sound system, a small dance floor and a real soda fountain along with the pool table and the card tables and the shelves of games and books and paper dolls and microscopes and (now uninhabited) ant farms and anything else that had, at least temporarily, caught the fancy of one of the siblings. A third, smaller, soundproofed room was a small recording studio and home to all the musical instruments played by the Vincennes young – with her first seven children Magdelene had insisted on music lessons. Each had to choose an instrument so there were guitars and drums and flutes and saxophones and an organ (the concert grand piano being upstairs in the drawing room, of course). Last was the exercise room with its stairmasters and stationary bikes and rowing machines and weights. And snaking through it all, a circular train track with railroad cars, some of which dated back to the turn of the century when Great-grandfather Phillip Vincennes had first started the set. Of course, there was Renny’s extensive wine cellar in the basement as well but it might as well not even exist so far as his children were concerned since it was strictly off-limits.

So, while most of them were below ground level, Rafe and Lane were usually up on the third floor by themselves in the long nursery, a double room that would have made any day care owner green with envy. Walls were painted with colorful Bible scenes – not the more gory ones, but baby Moses in the bulrushes and Jesus in the manger and wise men and shepherds and a loving Mother Mary, comforting pictures. In the bedroom section, were wooden cradles and cribs and youth beds, all handsomely carved. There were 9 dressers lined up against the wall. An archway led to the play room which was filled with toys for younger children – story books and dolls and big metal trucks and rocking horses and doll high chairs and buggies. Like the train, some of the toys dated back to Renny’s childhood days and his father’s and grandfather’s, such as the carved wooden alphabet blocks. There were child-sized tables and chairs and rocking chairs. And, of course, the nursery had its own television set, programmed so that only the most innocuous channels could be accessed. The floors were white tile for easy clean up of spilled kool-aid or over-energetic finger painting.

It’s hard to know what would have become of Lane if not for Rafe. It was he who would take her off to find a grown up when she cried for her bottle or when her diaper was wet or dirty and needed changing. Eventually, as he got a little older, he learned to keep food in the nursery in case an adult couldn’t be found, things like peanut butter and bread and cookies and crackers and little individual containers of applesauce and pudding. There was a small refrigerator in the nursery which he kept stocked with pop stolen from the big walk-in cooler in the kitchen so that when she cried, he could fill a bottle with crème soda and it would satisfy her at least for a while. He eventually learned to change her himself, not very well perhaps, but at least he’d wash her off and make her dry, powdering her liberally so that ever after, the scent of baby powder brought to mind those days of their shared early childhood. He didn’t especially enjoy doing it but after all, he had to live in the same room with her and he didn’t like the smell of stinky wet or poopy diapers.

They were always welcome downstairs at mealtimes, of course, but no one usually bothered to tell them when those were. If they slept through breakfast or didn’t realize it was past lunch that was just too bad. Lots of times, the kitchen staff didn’t even bother with a midday meal since no one was at home with Renny being at work and Magdelene with her friends and the kids all at school. The thought of Rafe and Lane never crossed their minds until he was suddenly and silently in the kitchen to remind them and they’d quick fix him a tray to take back upstairs.

When she cried at night, Rafe pulled her out of her crib and took her into bed with him, cuddling her until she fell asleep.

By the time, he was four and she was two, you never saw one without the other. People said Rafe reminded them of a black cat. Slender and graceful, he seemed to walk on silent cat’s paws. He would simply appear without anyone having heard him coming. Because, again, these two were so seldom on anyone’s mind, his hair was long, almost shoulder length, black and straight as Indian hair. His brothers nicknamed him Injun. His eyes were almost expressionless. No one would ever know what Rafe Vincennes was thinking by looking into his eyes. He could smile, but it was usually a quick white gleam in the darkness of his skin, a smile that disappeared as quickly as it came. As he got older, women it was said, would agree to almost anything just for the rare opportunity of seeing that smile.

But for now, he was only four and she was two, a small blonde shadow who toddled after him everywhere he went. He was her hero, her protector, her teacher, her best friend. If she fell and bumped her head or scraped her knee, it was Rafe she went running to for sympathy. If she couldn’t figure out a puzzle, she looked to him to help her. “How, Rafe?” He dressed her in the morning and bathed her at night, putting her into her pajamas afterwards.

“Go to sleep now, Laney, I’ll be right here beside you if you need anything,” patting her on her little round rump.

Renny, who admired achievement, didn’t realize that Rafe was the most accomplished of his children. He could run the fastest but he never did because he wouldn’t go off and leave Lane. And he could swim the farthest but he wouldn’t go beyond where she could go. He was the most fearless rider but he kept his pony down to a trot because Lane was always on the saddle in front of him.

When Rafe was five, he had to start going to kindergarten in the mornings. He would lay out her clothes for her before he left and make sure there was food in the frig for her breakfast. He’d taught her to turn on the VCR and he’d load one of her favorite movies so all she had to do was press the “Start” button. He left her messages on a recorder on the playroom table too.

“Laney, don’t go downstairs while I’m gone and don’t ever try to go outside alone. You wait ‘til I get home. I’ll take you swimming or to ride the pony or whatever you want to do when I get back but don’t try to do any of those things by yourself. Do you hear me, Lane? I’ll be really mad if you don’t mind me.”

And, more than anything, she didn’t want Rafe to ever be mad at her so she always paid attention to exactly what he said.

She still remembered the one time she’d ignored him and went downstairs and on down to the basement and then couldn’t remember how to get back so she just had to stay down there until he got home from school. It scared him half to death to find the empty nursery. He’d gone racing through the house calling her name. What if she’d gone outside and been kicked by one of the horses or was floating drowned in the pool? When she finally heard him and called out to him, he was relieved but he was also quietly furious.

He took her right back upstairs and got a ruler and made her take down her panties and spanked her bottom hard ten times, until she was sobbing for him to stop. And then after that, it was even worse because he told her he wasn’t going to speak to her anymore that day and he didn’t, even though she told him over and over how sorry she was and promised never to disobey him again. She lay in bed and cried and cried but he acted like she wasn’t even there.

He was gone the next morning by the time she woke up and there was no message on the recorder and no clothes laid out and no movie in the VCR and nothing to eat in the frig.

The half day until he got home seemed endless and when he appeared in the doorway, she went running to him, throwing her arms around his waist. He took her hand and led her to one of the rocking chairs, sitting down and pulling her onto his lap. Then he looked into her blue eyes with his dark ones, “do you understand, Lane, that you must always do as I say?” And she said, yes, yes, she understood, just please don’t be mad anymore, Rafe.

And after that, she always followed his orders. If he told her to swim to the end of the pier and back, she did it even though she was afraid it was too far and she might drown or a shark might get her, because neither drowning nor sharks was as bad as Rafe being upset with her. And besides that he’d told her he’d save her if anything happened and she had absolute faith that he would. Because there was, after all, that time when she got attacked by the stray dog and he fought it off with only his pocketknife, stabbing it in the eyes and mouth. He had some bad bites on his hands and arms but he smiled his fleeting smile and said at least he didn’t have to be put down like the dog.

When Rafe was in second grade, his teacher asked one of her colleagues if it was possible for a 7 year old to be a sociopath because she swore that’s what Rafe Vincennes was.

“I’ve never had a student who made me so nervous. I don’t see or hear him move and yet the next thing I know he’s behind my desk. You look in his eyes and you don’t sense a trace of emotion. The person in there doesn’t seem like a child at all. I think he has a photographic memory. If he sees or reads or hears something, he never forgets it. He rarely smiles and never laughs. When he plays with the other kids, it doesn’t seem like he’s making an effort to dominate them but he just does, almost like he mesmerizes them.”

Her co-worker laughed. “Dee, I can’t believe you’d let a little kid spook you like that. You’re over-reacting big-time.”

“All I know is, I’ll be glad when this year is over and he’s out of my classroom and someone else’s problem.”

What she didn’t know was that Rafe had, in his silent way, come up behind her and overheard their conversation.

Her colleague started, “oh, Rafe, we didn’t know you were there. Did you need something?”

“See,” Miss Dee hissed when he was gone, “that’s exactly what I mean!”

Rafe had always been aware that he had this affect on some people but when he was seven, he wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. He knew he tended to move quietly but was he just supposed to start making sure to clomp around everywhere he went? And how did you put more emotion in your eyes? He hadn’t a clue. He guessed he could remind himself to smile more since that was something his teacher had mentioned. As for being smart and being picked to be the leader, he didn’t know how that came about either. He never insisted and he never bragged. It just happened. Miss Dee had wondered if he might be a sociopath. He looked the word up in the dictionary – “a person who is anti-social and who lacks a social conscience.” He shrugged it off. He didn’t know if he lacked a social conscience or not. He didn’t even know what having a social conscience meant.

He got his black German Shepherd puppy, Raven, for his 6th birthday. It was the only gift he asked for. From then on, when he was outdoors, he was trailed by two shadows instead of only one, the blonde little sister and the jet black dog. Both seemed equally as worshipful of him.

There were occasional instances when he took some time away from his responsibilities to Lane. (Although he didn’t really consider them responsibilities but things he chose to do).

Even as a toddler, the family’s attempts to keep track of him were relatively ineffectual. One sister or another would be told by Magdelene to “watch Rafe” but watching Rafe was impossible. Take your eyes off him for one minute and he simply drifted away, like smoke.

A search would be mounted and eventually the three-year-old would be discovered squatted in the back of one of the horse stalls, communing, they guessed, with its resident. Or he’d be napping in the cabin of one of the boats. At age four, he made it all the way up to the Cabin by himself where they found him rocking in one of the chairs on the porch. And at five, he took a pirogue up an inlet to fish.

Renny whipped him for that one, whipped him hard with his belt.

“Don’t you ever take a boat out by yourself again. You don’t know where you’re at and you could get lost back in those creeks and swamps. Do you understand me, Rafe?”

He simply looked at his father with tearless eyes, having not made a sound during his spanking.

“But I always know exactly where I’m at, Dad.”

“I don’t care!” roared Renny, who hardly ever lost his temper and resented this contrary child for causing him to do it now, “just do as I say, have you got that?”

“How old do I have to be?” Rafe asked.

“I’ll let you know,” said Renny through gritted teeth.

Rafe was as comfortable wandering in the night as during daylight. He’d been described as cat-like and it was as if he could see in the dark like a cat too. His brothers would come home from a date and find the little boy sitting on the back step at 3:00 a.m.

“What are you doing up at this time, Rafe? You should be in bed.”

“I’m listening to the dark.”

Eventually, they accepted it as a lost cause, trying to keep track of him. He came and went as he pleased and since he always made it home safely, they quit worrying. As he got older, he traveled farther and stayed longer.

He read far above his age and his favorite reading was about the techniques of surviving on one’s own. He and Raven would disappear into the woods with only some string and a knife. A few times, they got pretty hungry when his awkward early attempts at setting a snare or spearing a fish failed but as time went by, he learned to do those things competently, as well as building a lean-to that would keep out the rain and starting a fire without matches. He taught himself, by means of books, to smoke his extra food and to cook it in a fire pit. He became an authority on what marine life and flora and fauna and even bugs and worms were safe to eat in an emergency.

By the time he was 9, he’d added a gun to his small supply kit. (A hand gun because he liked to travel light and a long gun was too heavy.) He’d snagged the Smith and Wesson revolver from Renny’s gun safe, knowing it would mean another serious thrashing if he got caught but willing to take the chance). He’d become an expert at tracking, being familiar with prints and scat and recognizing wallows and antler rubs and urine sprays. Although, he was a dead shot, he didn’t kill much that he tracked. He just wanted to prove to himself that he could if he had to.

He asked on every birthday and when he was eight, Renny finally said, “okay, okay, take the damn boat” so then he could embark on a more far-roaming exploration of his world.

He always warned Laney when he was going to be gone for a while. “I’ll be back in a couple of days, maybe three.”

“I hate it when you’re not here, Rafe. Why do you have to go?”

“Sometimes, I just have to get away from people. Not you, Honey. Everyone else. Where I don’t have to keep my guard up all the time.”

She didn’t understand it but she had to accept it because that was just Rafe.

Because of when her birthday fell, Lane didn’t get to start kindergarten until she was six but this morning she would be getting on the big yellow bus with the other kids. She was beside herself with excitement. She’d hardly left Heron Point in her life and she almost only got to go to the basement or out on the grounds when Rafe took her. She barely felt like she knew her older brothers and sisters. Sometimes she’d meet them in a room and they’d ruffle her hair and ask how she was doing but not like they really cared. But now she was finally going to get to go off into the world like everyone else.

Last week her mother had taken her on a shopping spree and she had all new clothes. It had taken Rafe to make that happen. He’d gone to Magdelene and reminded her that Lane would be starting school soon and she had almost nothing fit to wear.

“Most of her things are raggy and too small, Mom. Unless you want to be ashamed of her being a Vincennes, you probably need to buy her a new wardrobe.”

Once it was brought to her attention, Magdelene was happy to take her youngest daughter shopping.

“Oh, Rafe, you’re absolutely right, Darling. I guess I just hadn’t realized Laney was growing up so fast and here she is five years old already.”

“Six, Mom, she’s six.”

“Six, then, and starting school. My last baby. I’ll take her this week.”

Of course, Magdelene had spared no expense so Laney had all new jeans and tops and dresses and skirts and sweaters and blouses and sox and underwear and shoes and a new winter coat, red with gold buttons!

Rafe helped her pick out her first school outfit – a denim jumper embroidered with flowers on the bib with a knit pink top and her new pink sneakers. She held his hand walking to the end of their lane and sat beside him on the bus. Once at school, he took her to her room.

“Remember, your room is 110 and your teacher is Miss Prince. You’ll like her. She’s nice. I’ll meet you when it’s time to go home and make sure you get on the right bus.”

She loved it, oh, she loved it. It was so much fun being around all the other kids and Rafe was right, Miss Prince was so nice. She loved learning things. The only stuff she knew was what Rafe had ever taught her. Thankfully, he’d made sure she was able to tie her shoes and write her name and say her alphabet and count and tell time or she would have been embarrassed since the teacher tested them to make sure they all knew how to do those things. She never thought to wonder how he had learned to do them.

When the morning was over, he met her like he said he would and watched her until she was safely on the big bus. She couldn’t wait until the next day when she’d get to come back again!

She woke him up crying. He looked over at the clock and saw it was after 1:00 a.m.

“What’s the matter, Honey?” he asked drowsily.

“E-e-everyone is going to h-h-h-hate me, Rafe,” she sobbed.

“Why are they going to hate you, Laney?”

“C-c-cause I’m s’posed to bring c-c-cupcakes for Refreshment Day but Reba left early. S-s-she was gone when I got h-h-home and you know it w-w-wouldn’t do any good to ask M-m-mom.”

For a moment, they both pondered the thought of the elegant Magdelene whipping up a batch of cupcakes but neither could begin to grasp that exotic concept.

“No,” he finally said, “Mom wouldn’t have baked them herself but she most likely would have had Bannings deliver some.”

“I never t-t-thought of that. It’s just g-g-going to be so a-a-awful tomorrow,” she wailed.

He got up and patted her on the back. “Just go back to sleep, Sweetie. I’ll make sure you have cupcakes in the morning.”

“Will you, Rafe, really?”

“Yes, Lane, go to sleep”, which she did in complete assurance that Rafe always did what he said he would do.

He padded down the stairs barefoot and in his blue-striped pajama bottoms. Flipping the switch inside the door, he looked across the enormous kitchen. “Bloody ‘ell, Mate,” he muttered to himself, “you better be getting some organ-o-za-tion goin’ or you’ll be here all night.”

Okay, where to start? First, make a list of all the stuff he knew he’d need. Number one would probably be a recipe since he didn’t have a clue how to make freakin’ cupcakes. Surely, Reba had cookbooks around here somewhere. She couldn’t simply remember every dish she prepared, could she?

He went over to the small built-in desk with the phone above it where he knew there was a pad of paper and a pen. He started his list.

Recipe

Cupcake pans

Little paper cup thingies

Spoon

Big bowl

Mixer

Flour, sugar, eggs (what else?)

That was all he was sure of. But how to find it all? He had limited experience with this room, mostly only checking the walk-in cooler for something to drink or to make a sandwich. He looked around it now. There appeared to be acres of cherry cupboards and granite countertops and slatey looking ceramic tile floors and stainless steel appliances. He guessed the best way was just to start at one end and work his way through every cupboard, drawer and countertop until he located everything he needed. He knew most of the food stuff was kept either in the large pantry or the cooler. He’d save those for last. He needed that damn recipe. It could be any recipe as long as it was for cupcakes, he didn’t care - white, yellow, chocolate or cherry - he didn’t think it took much to please first graders.

He began over by the door to the laundry room and investigated every nook and cranny of the kitchen, methodically assembling the items on his list as he found them. After half an hour, he had all of it – the spoon from a drawer by the sink, the bowl from an upper cupboard next to the stove and the cake pans from the cupboard below, the mixer on a bottom shelf in the dish pantry (three complete sets of fine china along with other small appliances). And, last, the recipe. He’d been looking for cookbooks but it turned out Reba kept her recipes in a file box on the desk, which he finally noticed, after looking everywhere else. That enabled him to go to the food pantry and the cooler for all the required ingredients.

It was typical of Rafe to simply do whatever needed to be done himself rather than taking his problem to anyone else. For one thing, no one in his life had ever offered much assistance so he’d been forced to become self-sufficient early on. And that played into his basic nature anyway. His natural instinct was to involve other people as little as possible in his affairs, so by the time he was nine, he was more than confident that he could figure out how to make cupcakes.

He stirred and mixed and filled his cupcake liners 2/3 full, just like the card for “Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream Icing” said. Then he put them in the oven (pre-heated to 350 degrees) for 22 minutes. That was the worst part because it was almost 3 o’clock by then and he had to keep telling himself to stay awake. He wouldn’t want to have gone through all this and then burn up the results of his labor.

He mixed up the icing while the cupcakes were cooling. After they were frosted, just for the fun of it, because he had found them while he was rummaging around looking for everything else, he decorated the tops with multi-colored sprinkles.

He knew Magdelene kept all her gift-wrapping materials in a large closet down the hall from the master bedroom. The shelves were filled with rolls of wrapping paper and spools of ribbon and different shades of tissue paper and decorative sacks and flattened boxes of all sizes. He poked around until he found one that looked to be the perfect size for two dozen cupcakes.

Then he washed and dried and put away everything he’d dirtied. No one would ever have known he’d even been there if it wasn’t for the white box on the mixing island with Laney’s name written across the top.

It was after 4:00 when he crawled back into bed.

Lane was patting him on the shoulder. “Rafe, aren’t you going to get up? Your alarm keeps going off. You must keep hitting the Snooze button.”

“Yeah, okay, I’m getting up right now.” Blearily, he opened his eyes.

“Did you get my cupcakes done?”

“They’re in the kitchen but the next time you need something, Sweetie, tell me about it a little sooner, okay?”

They were still in the nursery. They should have been moved out long ago to their own rooms but as usual, no one remembered to do it so they just kept on the way it was. They were used to being together now and neither was particularly interested in being in a room alone.

When he was nine and she was seven, he told her to come into bed with him. He said he wanted to try something and he thought she’d like it.

“Take your panties off first.”

She was puzzled. “Take my pants off, Rafe?”

“Yes, Honey.”

She complied as she always did when he told her what to do.

“Lay here beside me on your back,” he whispered, “and spread your legs a little farther apart.”

When he had her in the position he wanted her in, he pulled her nightgown up to her waist and then put his hand on the spot between her legs. She instantly felt a jolt of pleasure shoot through her groin and clear up into her stomach.

“Oh,“ she breathed, “what are you doing?”

He began gently rubbing her. The darts of exhilaration increased in number and intensity until finally, she was overcome by a flood of pure joy.

“Oh, Rafe, oh, Rafe.”

He put his hand lightly over her mouth. “Shhh, Sweetie, you can’t make any noise. Does it feel good, Laney?”

“Yes, yes,” she said into his ear, “do it again, Rafe!”

He grinned. “No, Laney, once a night is all you get but now you have to do something for me.”

“What?”

“Give me your hand.”

When she did, he put it on his hard penis. Of course, he’d seen her naked many times but she’d never seen him that way. She was shocked. “What is it, Rafe?”

“Girls and boys are different, Lane. This is what boys have instead of what you have. It’s called a penis. Pull the covers back and look at it.”

It was even more surprising when she saw it sticking straight up below his belly.

“I want you to put it in your mouth, Laney. That’s what will make me feel good the way I made you feel.”

Because she had such pure trust in him, she didn’t even hesitate. She wanted to make him happy.

“Now move your mouth up and down on it – suck it, but easy.”

Because he hadn’t reached puberty yet, of course, he didn’t have a real ejaculation but that didn’t mean having her mouth moving on him didn’t take him to a state of bliss.

“Can we do it again tomorrow night, Rafe?”

“Yes, Laney, and other things besides.”

He was young but he knew a lot about sex, from reading, from watching movies (he’d figured out how to over-ride the v-chip on the nursery t.v. quite some time ago) and from listening in on his older brothers’ conversations. He thought he’d been patient, waiting until she was seven.

“Laney?”

“What?”

“You can’t ever tell anyone. They wouldn’t approve and they’d make us stop. So it has to be our secret if you want to keep doing it. Do you understand that, Lane?”

“I understand. I’ll never, ever tell anyone, I promise. Can I stay here with you tonight instead of getting in my own bed, Rafe?”

“No, slip on over there now, Lane, and don’t forget to put your panties back on.”

She discovered she could get a least a little bit of that jolt of pleasure just by thinking about Rafe putting his hand on her privates. It wasn’t the whole big thing, of course, just a dart that went zipping from where she peed up into her belly. And when she thought about it, she could feel herself getting wet down there.

“Elena, what are you daydreaming about? I’d like to have your attention here if you don’t mind.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Dee.”

“Well, I have my last Vincennes in class this year. What a mixed bag they’ve been. Morgan and Wyatt were both good students and charming boys. Mariel was a prissy britches little snob. Denis and Gabriel were smart and nice enough, both artistic types. Jocelyn was a sweetheart and Annecy was a little ray of sunshine. Of course, you know how I felt about Rafe. This last one, Elena, is a bit of a dreamer but she tries to please.”

“Yes, I have Rafe this year and I see some of what you felt about him although I don’t think it’s as bad as you made it seem. Still, he does remind me a little of a panther, one you’re not quite sure is all the way tame.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s not domesticated at all, Stuart. I think he just puts on a front.”

“I’ll tell you something about Rafe Vincennes though, Dee. I think by the time he grows up a little more, you’re going to be way in the minority of women who don’t consider him compelling.”

“And I think those who do are going to discover he’s a dangerous person to give your heart to.”

“Well, he’ll be long gone from here and I expect we’ll have forgotten all about him by then, Dee.”

When he turned 10, he asked his father if he could start riding one of the Arabs.

“Don’t you think you’re a little young for an Arab, Rafe?”

“Dad, have you ever seen me ride?”

“Well, I’m not sure I ever have, Rafe.”

“No, Dad, I’m not sure you ever have either but I’m the best of all of us.”

“You are?”

“Yes, I am. One of two things, Dad – either come and watch me and let me prove it or take my word for it.”

“I guess if you say you can do it, I believe you. Which one are you thinking of, Rafe?”

“Destiny.”

“Destiny’s quite a handful, Son. I hope you aren’t biting off more than you can chew.”

“I’m not, Dad, trust me.”

It pissed his sister, Annecy, off big-time. She was 16 now and considered the horseperson in the Vincennes family. She had a roomful of trophies and blue ribbons to prove it.

The first time they were at the stable together and he’d brought out the spirited dapple-gray stallion to saddle, she was shocked.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m going for a ride,” he answered mildly.

“Not on that horse, you’re not!”

“I already asked Dad and he gave me permission.”

“I don’t believe it!”

He shrugged. “Go ask him yourself then.”

“I’ve begged Dad a million times to let me ride him and he’s always said he doesn’t allow anyone to ride Destiny but him. Why would he agree to let a flippin’ 10-year-old do it?”

The gleaming smile was there and then it was gone. “Maybe he thinks I’m better.”

He jumped (small as he was, it was a bit of a leap to get his foot in the stirrup) up into the saddle, touched the horse with his heel and trotted down the lane with Raven following along beside.

She was wearing her official rider outfit as she always did when she was going to the stables – tan pants, white shirt and high riding boots. Her long golden hair was held back with a clasp at the nape of her neck. She felt it put people on notice that she was a professional. Right now, there were tears of frustration in her blue eyes as she watched Rafe ride off on the dancing silver stallion in his holey jeans and tee shirt and old beat-up cowboy boots.

She could go for days at a time, forgetting about Rafe’s very existence. After all, she was in high school, where she got straight A’s as every Vincennes did. She was on the Cheer Squad and had been named Queen of the Harvest Ball. She had her candy apple red PT Cruiser, her 16^th birthday present, and a hunk of a boyfriend named Bill, who was two years older than her and the Quarterback on the football team. In addition to her various awards in horse showing, she’d taken her Golden Retriever, Jonquil, to the state competition in obedience and won first place. What was not to love about her life and why would she give much thought to the somewhat mysterious little brother who seemed mostly to drift silently around the periphery of the family? And yet, it seemed like every time she did have cause to think of him, she ended up angry.

It was because he never seemed to have to even frickin’ try to get whatever he wanted. No one would think of Rafe as being demanding. He never yelled or begged or threatened. She tried to think back to remember if she’d ever heard him raise his voice and realized she never had. She doubted if he was even capable of throwing a tantrum and yet if he set his mind to something, it seemed like the obstacles just disappeared magically from his path. Like, how in the hell had he convinced Dad to let him take Destiny when, as she’d told him, she’d begged and pleaded to do the same and been told no every time? It just wasn’t fair. Not that she’d raise a stink about it. Renny was a mostly easygoing father who let his kids have anything they wanted within reason but they all knew, it simply wasn’t acceptable to question his decisions or his authority. Do that, and you’d find you’d lost more than you could ever hope to gain.

Another thing about Rafe that got under her skin was how he didn’t place any importance in the things that meant so much to her. She had watched him with Raven. That dog would do anything Rafe wanted although not once had she ever seen them together on the course she’d set up when she was training Jonquil. He didn’t use any of the traditional commands, just talked to the dog like they were having a conversation. “Come on, Raven, stay beside me now,” and Raven’s nose would practically be glued to his knee. She thought if Rafe told Raven to “wait”, he’d stay where he was until he starved to death.

She’d told Rafe once that he could do with Raven as she’d done with Jonquil, enter him in competition and win ribbons and trophies.

“Why would I want to do that, Sis?” he’d asked. “I only want Raven to do what I tell him for my sake. I don’t care if anyone else see’s him doin’ it.”

She usually never said the ef word – freakin’ and flippin’, yes, but not the actual word itself – but that day, she’d said, “fuck you, Rafe.” She said it again right now, although he couldn’t hear her – “fuck you, Rafe.”

Laney wouldn’t have known how to do anything if it hadn’t been for Rafe. He was the one who first showed her how to brush her teeth and made sure she did it every morning and every night. He told her she needed to put on clean underwear every single day. He helped her to match her colors so her outfits looked nice. He brushed her long blonde hair and pulled it back out of her face and fastened it with barrettes. He was the one who taught her how to ride her bike and to do things on the computer and play tennis and swim. She thought lots of times about how awful and lonely her life would have been without him.

Because just about every bit of love or affectionate touching or concern about her that she’d ever experienced had stemmed from Rafe, Laney found it not a bit surprising that he had introduced her to this new wonderful thing as well. It was like Christmas every night. She couldn’t wait until they’d both had their showers and she could come over to his bed. Like he had promised, they’d done other things after the first time. When he had put his mouth down there, as she had done to him, she felt like it sent her shooting up to the moon and then like she was floating back down on the softest cloud in the sky. Sometimes he teased her by going so slow, she thought she couldn’t stand waiting any longer.

“Please, Rafe,” she would beg, “please.”

“Say pretty please, I love you, Rafe.”

“Pretty please! I love you, Rafe!”

And then he would make it happen and she would just explode with happiness.

He told her he was going to fuck her on her 9^th birthday.

“Why not now, Rafe? I want you to do it now.”

“No, it’s going to be a treat for both of us for your 9^th birthday. Then I’ll put myself inside you. It will give you something to look forward to because it will be so good.”

Her 9^th birthday was not for another year. By doing it the way he did it, he made it seem like the Holy Grail.

Of course, daily life went on for both of them. She still loved school and she was good at it as all the Vincennes kids were. She was on the honor roll every time. None of them were as smart as Rafe though. He was put in the Gifted and Talented class in third grade and then jumped a grade and then another, until he was in 7^th grade when he was only 10. Some of the teachers talked about how his i.q. was off the charts and maybe he was a genius. He was better at playing the guitar than Gabe and better at drawing than Denis. He was better at baseball and football than Morgan and better at shooting than Wyatt. He was better at tennis than Jocelyn and better at riding than Annecy. It still rankled a little about what Miss Dee had said about him though and he tried to work at being more personable. He’d been called arrogant more than once and he tried to figure out why people would say that about him. He’d even asked his teacher one time after someone had said it.

“What about me would make someone think I’m arrogant? I don’t try to lord it over anyone. I don’t try to rub it in when I do well at something. I’m never mean to anyone.”

Privately, the teacher herself thought she might have described Rafe as arrogant but when she tried to put her finger on why, she was at a loss. It was true what he said. He wasn’t one of those kids who tried to make himself the center of attention and he never boasted about his accomplishments and probably of all the elite group of which he was nominally a part, he was the nicest to the less popular ones. In fact, he was as friendly to the students who were called low-lifes as he was to the movers and shakers, (although she’d noticed that he wasn’t really close to anyone in either group). He wasn’t judgmental about race or sexual orientation or disability or socioeconomic background.

She finally decided it was just something about the way he held himself apart and that look he had that said he didn’t really care what anyone else thought of him, that they were welcome to take him or leave him as he was and it didn’t much matter to him one way or the other.

That’s finally what she told him.

“I guess it’s because you seem like you don’t care what people think, Rafe, and everyone wants to believe people care what they think.”

“I don’t care what they think, Mrs. Harper, if they’re right, but I don’t like being tagged with a label that’s wrong.”

“I don’t know how to tell you to make it any different, Rafe.”

He shrugged and then smiled that devastating but quickly disappearing smile. “Guess I’ll just have to live with it then, huh?”

He was only 10 but she felt a little thrill go down her spine at that smile. She almost called him back to tell him that it might go a long way toward changing people’s minds about him but she didn’t. She was afraid what he might do with it if he ever found out how potent it could be.

His coaches loved his capacity for speed and stealth. You could pass him a football and the next thing anyone knew, he’d be crossing the goal line. Or give him a basketball and he’d be sinking one while the other team was still looking for him. Or he’d hit a single and turn it into a triple before anyone tracked his location on the baseball field. From the first day he started playing junior league sports, he never knew what it was like to have to sit on the bench.

It was her 9^th birthday. As usual, the only reason she had a party was because of Rafe. Once again, he’d tracked down his mother.

“Next week is Lane’s 9^th birthday, Mom. I remember years when you even forgot to give her a cake or buy her a present. Don’t you think it’s time she had a party, maybe have some of the kids from her class over?”

“That’s a wonderful idea, Rafie, but I don’t know who is in her class. I don’t suppose you could give me some names?”

Silently, he handed her the list he’d gotten from Lane’s teacher.

Magdelene had invited all the students in Lane’s class and their parents and her teacher. She had a red and white striped tent put up in the back yard and hired clowns and a magician and had the stable hands bring up the horses for rides. There was a big banner that said “Happy 9^th Birthday, Laney” and games to play and a huge cake with her name on it in red and clumps of scarlet balloons tied everywhere. And her gift was Rafe’s idea - her very own horse, a little palomino Arab mare named Lisbon. It was one of the most joyous days of her life. Rafe, watching, smiled wryly - once you could get their Mother’s attention, you could count on her to do it up right.

No matter what else was going on though, Lane kept thinking about being in bed that night with Rafe and about what he was going to do. Each time she thought about it, she got a tingling sensation in her belly. Half of her hated for the day to end but the other half of her couldn’t wait for it to be over.

And finally, it was. She’d had her shower and he was in the shower now. She was in his bed with her nighty on. She didn’t even wear underpants to bed anymore. Finally he came into the room, in just his shorts. First, he walked over and got something out of his dresser drawer and then he sat on the side of the bed.

“I saved my allowance to get you a birthday present,” he said handing her a small gift-wrapped box.

She opened it to reveal a ring with a heart-shaped sapphire in a gold mounting. It wasn’t a huge stone but it wasn’t tiny either.

“It’s your birthstone.”

“Oh, Rafe, it’s so beautiful. I’ve never had a ring before.”

“Put it on and make sure it fits.”

She slipped it onto her right ring finger. “It’s perfect.”

“I don’t ever want you to take it off, Lane, not ever. It means you belong to me. You’ve belonged to me since the day you were born and you always will. Say it, Lane, I want to hear you say it.”

“I belong to you, Rafe.”

He grinned. “Okay, now that that’s taken care of, let’s have some fun.”

He stood up and dropped his pants on the floor, then got into bed beside her. He kissed her neck and tickled her nipples and ran his fingers along the insides of her thighs and across her mound, lightly, teasingly, until she was saying, “I can’t wait any longer, Rafe, I can’t wait any longer!” And then he got on top of her and put himself inside her and feeling him there, almost like a part of her, was the best thing yet. She just started going off like firecrackers on the Fourth of July.

“Wrap your legs around me, Lane, and come up to meet me.”

As he moved back and forth inside her, the fireworks got bigger and louder and brighter until they were melting into one another.

“Oh, Rafe, that’s so wonderful!”

“Shhhh, Honey.”

She felt him moving in and out harder and harder and then she felt him push extra hard until he gave a little groan and slumped down on top of her, breathing hard.

“Are you all right, Rafe?”

“I’m perfect, Laney.”

Finally, he got up and went into the bathroom, bringing back a warm wet cloth to wash her.

“You bled just a little. Did it hurt?”

“If it did, I didn’t notice because it felt so good at the same time.”

He smiled. “That’s what’s supposed to happen. It’s supposed to feel good.”

“It did, Rafe. I loved it. It was my best present ever.”

“Do you love me, Lane?”

“You know I love you more than anything.”

“Tell me how much.”

“Whatever the highest number is in the world, Rafe, I love you way more than that.”

The next day, Saturday, he told her they needed to talk.

“I think we’d better tell the folks we want to move into our own bedrooms.”

“But I like being in here with you right next to me, Rafe.”

“I know but we’re getting too old to be sleeping in the same room. I’m almost twelve. That’s too old to be sleeping in a nursery with my sister. I’ll tell them you still have nightmares sometimes and to put us next door to each other.”

“I’d rather just stay the way we are.”

“I know, but we can’t. Don’t worry, Sweetie. Don’t I always fix it so it’s okay?”

“Mom, I think it’s time that Lane and I had our own bedrooms. We’re getting a little too old to still be in the nursery together.”

“Why, yes, Rafe, I suppose you’re right. But where can we put you? I hate to take Morgan and Wyatt’s rooms even though they don’t come home that often. (Morgan was an attorney now, living in New York, and Wyatt was a Lieutenant in the Army).”

“No, I don’t want to take anyone else’s room. How about those two little rooms at the end of the hall with the bathroom in between that used to be the nurse’s bedroom and sitting room? They’re small but they’re big enough for us. We’ll have our privacy but they have that door between them so I can go settle Lane down if she has one of her nightmares.”

“Oh, Rafie, those aren’t very nice compared to your brothers’ and sisters’ rooms but if you think they’ll work, I guess it would be all right.”

“I think they’ll be fine, Mom.”

“Well, why don’t you stay where you are until I can get the painters and flooring people in and at least you’ll have fresh colors and new carpet and I’ll take you and let you pick out some new furniture and I’ll buy you each a television and a computer and whatever else you need. I really can’t believe we left you in the nursery this long.”

“That would be great, Mom.”

“We’ve got a reprieve,” he told her that night. “It will be at least two weeks before the rooms are painted and carpeted and the new furniture is delivered. In the meantime, why don’t you come on over here?”

She flew over to his bed and dived under the covers with him.

It really was better when they finally got moved into their new rooms. For one thing, they were so much prettier. Hers had pale yellow walls and white lacy curtains and a puffy yellow comforter. The carpet was pale green plush. She picked out white furniture painted with pastel flowers – a canopy bed and a dresser and a shelf unit that held her new television and computer. It felt comforting to be in a small, cozy place with just all her own things instead of the vast impersonality of the nursery. When they were furniture shopping, her Mom let her buy some pretty pictures for her walls. One was of a porch with white wicker furniture and pink roses climbing up a trellis on one side and another was of two white Persian kittens sleeping on a patchwork quilt.

Rafe’s room had dove gray walls and a pewter and navy patterned rug and walnut furniture. He had one of his own drawings, their sailboat on the bay, on the wall and that was all. It seemed sort of bare to her but she’d asked him if he was going to add more stuff and he said no, he’d leaving the nesting to her.

What was best of all about these rooms was that they could be locked from the inside (unlike the nursery but, of course, you wouldn’t put inside locks on a nursery) so they didn’t have to worry about anyone coming in the door without warning them, an admittedly unlikely possibility, but still. Being able to lock the doors made them both feel more secure.

He liked to tease her in public. If they were swimming, he’d sneak his warm hand down her bathing suit and massage her bottom and if they were riding, he’d move up beside her and run his finger between her legs and even at the breakfast table, sometimes he’d give her upper thigh a light squeeze. It always had the effect on her of making her go completely still, anticipating the next touch, although it usually never came. Even in church, he’d lean over and whisper in her ear, “do you want me to fuck you tonight, Lane?” and she’d have to force herself to just stare straight ahead. He’d taught her the terminology of sex by now. The thing between his legs was his cock and the place he put his cock when he fucked her was her pussy. When she sucked his cock, that was called a blow job. He told her not to use those words to anyone else though. Around grown ups, she still had to say penis and vagina. Cock and pussy and fucking and blow jobs were only for when they were doing things together.

He sighed. “It would be nice if Mom or one of the girls would have this talk with you but I guess it’s not going to happen so I suppose it’s up to me. Do you know anything about menstrual periods, Lane?”

“No.”

“Okay, here’s the way it works. When a girl reaches puberty, which you’re probably almost there, she has what are called periods. That means, every month she has a few days when she bleeds from between her legs. It’s going to happen one of these days so don’t be scared when it does. It’s just a natural thing. I snuck into Annecy’s room and got some Kotex.” He brought one out. “See, you just put them down in your panties. They’ve got these adhesive strips that make them stick on. They soak up the blood. I put a package in the bathroom under the sink. Some girls have bad stomach cramps when they have their period. I also snagged you some pills called Midols. They’re in the medicine cabinet. If you start your period and have a stomach ache, take one of them. They say it helps to put a hot water bottle on your belly too if it’s really bad. Do you have any questions about any of this, Lane?”

“It sounds yucky. I don’t think I’m going to like it.”

“Probably not, but you’ll have to get used to it because you’ll be putting up with it for a long time.”

She was glad it was Rafe who told her about periods. She probably would have been embarrassed to talk to her mother or one of her sisters about such personal stuff but there was nothing she couldn’t talk to Rafe about.

No parent had ever attended any of their parent-teacher conferences.

“God,” said Mr Leslie, “if I had a son like Rafe Vincennes, I’d want to go to his conferences just to collect all the kudos. He’s never gotten anything other than an A in his whole school career. He’s going to graduate next year with an A plus average and take all advanced courses in what would normally be his senior year and the kid’s only 14. He got the highest SAT scores any Benedict student ever received. He’s got the most yards per carry of anyone on the football team; the most home runs on the baseball team and the highest point per game average on the basketball team. They’ve got what seems to be a dream child and it’s like they don’t even notice!”

“Well, you know, he’s got eight brothers and sisters. Maybe they just got tired of being parents.”

“It’s turned him into a self-sufficient little shit, I’ll say that for him. It doesn’t seem to bother him any. He appears to be totally self-reliant.”

“I was teaching elementary when Linda Dee had him in her class. She told me she thought he was a sociopath.”

“What the hell was she talking about? I’ve never seen anyone more well-adjusted than Rafe Vincennes.”

Rafe had learned a lot about smiling by then. He still didn’t do it frequently but he knew when it would do him the most good. He spent a great deal of time studying people when they weren’t aware of it. He sensed that he wasn’t quite normal (although he’d read up on sociopathy by then and he was far from convinced that he fit the classic definition). Because he mistrusted people, he ignored what they said but watched to see what they actually did instead, which usually wasn’t the same thing at all. Humility, for instance. It was supposed to be an admirable quality, but that was just lip service. Humility was more often viewed as arrogance in disguise.

The reality was that it was easy to mold the opinion most people had of you because, unlike him, they would usually buy right into whatever you presented to them. You couldn’t take credit for things you couldn’t achieve, of course, or you’d be looked down on as a braggart but someone had told him once that it wasn’t bragging if you could back it up and Rafe could always back it up. He hadn’t found anything yet he couldn’t excel at if he set his mind to it. Like chess. One of his teachers asked him if he’d be interested in learning how to play chess and within a month, Rafe was winning every game. Mr. Dean hadn’t seemed upset about it though. He told Rafe he only wanted to see if that’s what would happen like he expected it would and it did, so Rafe guessed it was sort of a test to check a theory Mr Dean had about him.

He felt like what he was doing was building a library of emotional reactions so that he could call on the most effective one depending on the occasion. He knew when he should be a little cocky (making the winning touchdown in football, for example) because that’s what people wanted and expected and when he needed to lend a sympathetic ear. He knew how much it pleased people when he flattered them (“we would never have won if the defensive line hadn’t been so awesome). He grinned a little to himself. He’d become a whiz at faking sincerity and the smile was part of that. He had checked its effect many times since Miss Dee’s class and found it could change enemies into friends and suspicion into trust and that when he turned it on full-bore, the happy recipient could almost always be convinced to see things his way. He’d also learned that it worked equally as well with males as females.

The truth was that his old school counselor had been right. He didn’t much care what people thought of him, not really. It was more like an intellectual challenge. He approached it like he would about learning any subject. Pleasing People or Physics. You could get an A+ in either one if you put the time and effort into learning the relevant formulas.

If there was one thing he couldn’t do anything about, it was his eyes. If he stared at some people too long, he could sense them getting nervous so he’d taught himself to only look at them directly for a few seconds before turning his gaze. He used the smile to deflect attention from the eyes. When he looked away, they only saw curly black lashes, as long as any girl’s.

Book One - Chapter 2

2011-07-03T05:53:00.003-07:00

Chapter Two

By the time Rafe was 13, he was sexually active. What he did with Lane didn’t count. That was a special thing that was self-contained in a whole different compartment in his life. That would always exist no matter what else happened. He owned Lane and always would.

He was still as lean and lithe as he had been as a child but his body was harder now and stronger. He still made people think of a feral cat. His movements appeared so sinuous and languid that it was always surprising how quickly he was suddenly somewhere else. The eyes of school girls, and sometimes teachers, followed him down the hall, drawn to those narrow hips clad in tight jeans. His face had become more refined too with nothing left of the little boy. Now he was all high cheekbones and chiseled features. He still wore his black hair a little too long so that he was always having to brush it out of his eyes. He had no idea, or maybe he did, how many females had the urge to reach out and brush it back for him. Sometimes, they were so much older, they flushed thinking about having such thoughts about a 13-year-old. The black eyes that made some anxious drew others, although they didn’t make even those people feel comfortable, more like they were turned on by the possibility of living dangerously. He was tan as a gypsy, all over, because when he sunbathed on the boat, he preferred being naked.

So, if anything, when it came to females, his biggest challenge was narrowing down his choices. He gravitated toward the older girls because they had cars and a car meant being able to get to the cabin on Mount Vincennes where they could have sex in private. There was never any competition for the cabin now because all the others were grown and gone. Even Annecy was 19 and in college. So it was his own little sexual kingdom and he took full advantage of it.

Sometimes, when he heard a girl moaning beneath him as she reached her climax, he silently tipped his hat to Lane. She’d been his little sexual guinea pig. Because she trusted him so much, she was completely open and unself-conscious about telling him what felt the best and he transferred those revelations to the other females in his life.

It worked out very well because so many girls, he’d learned, weren’t like Lane. They were shy and backward about letting you know what pleased them. They just left it up to him to guess, but he didn’t have to guess. He knew exactly what to do. It was one of his claims to fame, although only expressed inwardly, that no female ever left the cabin without having been brought to orgasm. He didn’t see them as notches on his belt exactly but he placed a mental checkmark beside each name as she sighed in satisfaction.

“My God, how did you get so good at this at 13?” they would ask, “I’ve slept with college men who haven’t a clue how to satisfy a girl like you do.”

And that was a good time, he’d discovered, to flash his smile and then lean down to kiss them so they didn’t want to talk anymore.

His worst problem with girls turned out to be how to gently get rid of them when he was ready to move on. He never fell in love with any of them. Actually, he thought of them as being more or less interchangeable. He’d learned to call them all Sweetheart. That way he’d never hurt their feelings by saying the wrong name if he forgot just which one was giving him a blow job at the time. He liked a lot of them just fine but he always looked forward to seeing what the next one would be like.

After some trial and error, he found that it was best just to be blunt.

“I’ve really enjoyed being with you,” he would say to cushion the blow, “but I’m not a one-girl kind of guy. Let’s just remember the fun we had and let it go at that. Now, c’mon, Sweetheart, and give me a kiss good-bye”.

Sometimes they were pretty unhappy. He’d had criers and he’d had screamers, but usually all he had to do was stare them down with those unsettling black eyes and they subsided quickly enough. They probably knew anyway what to expect because he had definitely developed a reputation for lovin’em and leavin’em and even though some of them might have hoped to change his nature, most likely they guessed shortly into it that it wasn’t going to happen.

At fourteen, he got involved with the bored housewife on the next estate over from Heron Point. They met when they were out on their respective boats. Sun-worshipper that he was, he’d been lying on the deck, baking, enjoying the rocking of the waves, listening to the seagulls cry, breathing in the fishy fragrance of the bay. He heard her call over, “hey, neighbor!” She’d recognized the name of the cigarette boat, Hard Charger, from having seen it tied up to the Heron Point dock.

He stood, naked. “Hey, neighbor, yourself.”

He enjoyed hearing her catch her breath a little seeing him but he made no move to put on his trunks. She herself wore a turquoise bikini. He thought she was probably in her middle 30’s, a very beautiful middle 30’s. She was sleekly golden from head to toe – a lovely gold body, long gold hair, gold-flecked hazel eyes.

“I’m Alexis. I live next door to you.”

“Are you the people who bought Bay Front?”

“Yes, we just moved in about a month ago.”

“You’ll like it here – we’re a friendly bunch.”

Flirtatiously, “how friendly?”

“Most of us are very friendly and a few of us are extremely friendly.”

“And which one are you?”

“Depends on how friendly you want me to be.” His cock was getting hard. He looked down at it and grinned that quick grin. “In fact, I think I’m feeling friendlier by the minute.”

“My husband’s in Hong Kong. It’s been pretty lonesome being where you don’t know anyone. Would you like to come over for lunch?”

“No,” he said, “I’m not hungry but I’m open to a better offer. I’m not much of a game player, Alexis, (chuckling inwardly as he said it, thinking if he had been Pinocchio, his nose would have just grown about a foot), just tell me what you want.” It was a setup on his part, of course.

“I want you to fuck me, does that answer meet with your approval, Sir?”

Bingo! With that response, he knew exactly what role he’d need to play. He thought most females gave you clues about their innermost sexual desires right away if you could read them and he had an innate ability to interpret those signals. He knew with this one, he’d have to be the master, whether she realized it about herself yet or not.

“That’s the answer I was looking for.” (And, in a way that was true). “I’ll meet you there.”

“Oh, by the way, what’s your name?”

“Rafe.”

It was his first time with a mature woman and he had to admit it was one hell of a learning experience. The first time, he fucked her in the hot tub and she went down on him on the deck. Then they did it all again on her big brass bed. In the morning, she woke him sucking his nipples and fondling his balls and when he was stiff, she got on top and rode him hard until they lay beside one another, panting and replete.

“Where were you, Rafe,” Lane asked him when he came whistling down the hall. “You’ve stayed out late before but never all night.”

“I slept over with a friend, Laney.”

“I never knew you had a friend, Rafe.”

And that was true. He was friendly to everyone but friends with no one. He’d never invited another guy home with him to go riding or boating, didn’t hang out after school. He felt no need to confide in anyone about anything.

“Well,” he said, “I expect this will be a short-term relationship.”

When he walked into her waterfront mansion the next time, she was spread-eagled on her kitchen table with dollops of whipped cream covering her nipples and her box.

“Dessert first, Baby,” she told him. “Come and eat me.”

He slipped out of his shorts which was all he was wearing.

Under the whipped cream was raspberry sauce and under that was hot fudge. He licked it off until he came to her bare skin and he kept licking until she was murmuring in anticipation. Then he moved away and simply waited. She opened her eyes.

“Why are you stopping, Rafe? Keep going. I’m so close!”

“I think I’ll stop unless you can convince me how bad you need it.”

“What do you want me to do?” Her golden eyes were sloe-eyed with lust.

“Lift your legs as high as you can and spread them as far apart as you can. Hold yourself open. Show me how eager you are. Beg me, Lexie.”

She did as he said, lifting her long, honey gold legs as high as she could get them and moving them apart until she was almost doing the splits lying down, holding herself apart. “Please, Rafe, please, finish me. Please, Baby!”

“Are you begging?”

“Yes!”

“Say it then.”

“I’m begging, Rafe. I’m begging you to make me come!” Her voice was hoarse.

He leaned down into her, licking and sucking and tracing magic figure eights on her clit with his tongue until she called out to him – “Oh, God, oh, God, oh God, oh Rafe!”

Rafe didn’t get off on power trips, necessarily, he just like doing whatever it took to light her fire.

“Now get up. It’s my turn.”

She rose and he took her place on the table.

“Give me the whole treatment – the fudge, the raspberry sauce, the whipped cream.”

Carefully, she bedecked his nipples and his cock with all the ingredients, then began licking and sucking.

When he was hard and ready, she said, “now you beg me, Rafe.”

“Come here for a minute,” he told her.

When she came close, he took a handful of her long, blonde hair and pulled her face close to his.

“No, Sweetheart, that’s not the way it will ever be. You will always be the beggar. Now, let me hear you plead to be allowed to make me come.”

For a moment, it seemed as if she was going to resist until that gleaming smile flashed across his face.

“Please, Rafe, please let me suck you. I want to feel your cock in my mouth. I’m pleading with you, Rafe.”

“Good girl, do it, Lexie.”

That time set the tone for their future relationship. She discovered that his dominance and her submission turned her inside out with desire, and he was happy to oblige. He knew it made her hot when he pinched her nipples just enough to hurt or slapped her face hard enough to sting. She liked him to plunge his cock into her ass and pump her so hard that she cried from the pain even as she was having an orgasm. She liked being given orders to wait on him, washing him in the bathtub, then drying him off, before giving him a massage - or bringing him breakfast in bed, having to wait until he was done before she was allowed to eat herself. Sometimes, he made her crawl to him on her hands and knees and then stay on all fours in front of him while he finished watching the ballgame, ignoring her, until finally he gave her permission to take his cock in her mouth.

He stopped at the pet store and bought a gold lame dog collar. The next time, he went to her house, he fastened it around her lovely neck.

“I don’t want you to take it off. As long as you have it on, it means you’re my property.”

“Oh, Rafe,” she told him, “I’d do anything for you, anything at all.”

“I know, Lexie. What I want you to do right now is lick me all over. Make sure you’re careful because if you miss a spot, I’ll have to make you begin again. You can start in the back. When you’re done, Sweetheart, I’ll screw you for your reward.”

She began with his toes and worked her way up, being very, very careful to cover every single inch of him.

Three weeks it lasted. Lane was getting really upset with him because she was feeling so neglected. He’d barely had anything to do with her since this all started with Alexis. He came home late and when he did, he was fucking tired. He thought it was getting about time to rehearse the old “sorry” speech when she told him her husband was going to be back that night from Hong Kong and they’d have to stop until he left again. But she assured him that he travelled a lot and it wouldn’t be long until he went on another trip. She told him that she loved him more than she’d ever loved anyone in her life and she could hardly bear the thought of being apart from him.

And he was thinking, “oh, oh, I don’t even want to be hearing this.”

He fingered the gold collar. “You might want to take this off, Sweetheart, before your husband gets home.”

She didn’t know he had absolutely no intention of ever seeing her again. He’d been there and done that and he was ready to travel on. As he moved along the path back over to Heron Point, he was wondering about who would be next. A sexual shape-shifter, he could be whatever they needed him to be. If they wanted a swashbuckling pirate who would take them by force, he could be that. If they wanted a romantic poet who would seduce them with sensitivity, he could be that too. It all came out the same in the end. In the meantime, there was always Lane.

By the time, he reached the Heron Point property line, Alexis was a sweet, but receding, memory.

“Hey, Laney, where are you, Lane?”

“Here, Rafe, I’m in the kitchen.”

“Have you already eaten?”

“No, I was just getting ready to put a pizza in the oven. Does that sound all right to you?”

“Pizza sounds great. I’m starved.”

“Are you staying home tonight, Rafe?”

“Yep.”

“I’m really glad. Mom and Dad went to some banquet in Washington. They’re spending the weekend. They gave the staff the time off. I was dreading being here all alone.”

“So that means it’s just the two of us?”

“Yes.”

“Good. C’mere, Sweetie.”

He had jumped up to sit on the counter top. She walked to where she was standing between his legs. He circled them around her and pulled her tight against the counter. Then he leaned down and kissed her, putting her hand on his crotch. Her knees felt weak.

“Do you think you’ll be ready to go to bed early tonight, Lane?” he murmured in her ear.

He watched her as she brought him his pizza, then sat beside him at the table in the kitchen. She was twelve now. She’d always been a pretty little girl but you could begin to tell that she was going to be beautiful in a few more years. She was about 5’3 and he guessed she weighed about a hundred pounds. She had a cute little butt in her jeans and her breasts were starting to swell under her tee-shirt. Her hair, palest blonde, was below her shoulders. She was the opposite of him. Her blue eyes were so guileless, you could read her thoughts in them as easily as if they were written in a book. Her smile was so happy and innocent, seeing it made him happy too.

It was good, he thought, that the folks were gone this weekend. That way he could devote himself to her, petting her and lavishing her with attention until the wounded feelings about how much he’d stayed away lately were all soothed over. He knew he could do it because she never held a grudge. All he had to do was pay her some attention and she bounded back eager to please. She reminded him of a puppy in that way. In fact, having her was a lot like having a pet. He would never have said that to anyone because they would think it sounded callous, but it was true. If you brought a pet into your life, you had to be willing to be responsible for feeding it and bathing it and training it and seeing that its needs were taken care of and loving it too. He’d taken her on and had done all those things. He smiled a little at the thought. People said he reminded them of a cat but if he was a cat, she was lovable Cocker Spaniel puppy.

“We’ll take our shower together tonight,” he told her.

That was something he usually didn’t allow because he was ultra-cautious. One of them had to be available to answer the door at all times should anyone ever come knocking. He couldn’t remember that ever happening but what if it did and the knocker got no response from either of them? What would they think? But, alone in the house tonight, he figured he could make an exception.

He lathered her hair with shampoo, running his fingers through it the way he’d done so many times when she was little. He washed her all over with a soapy sponge, across her shoulders and down her back and around her buttocks, then he turned her around and tickled it lightly across her breasts, traced a path down her belly. He ran a pink fluffy pouf back and forth between her legs.

She was standing with her legs wide apart, her eyes closed, breathing hard.

“No, not yet, Lane, not ‘til we’re in bed. You wash me now.”

So he stood while she did the same to him as he’d done to her. He let himself relax and enjoy the soothing, sensuous sensation of the sponge on his back and hips and legs and chest and groin.

They dried one another off and jumped into bed.

He could feel her pressing so hard against him, he could hardly breathe. He knew it was a reaction to him being away so much. He kissed her and felt her lips part under his. Practically all he had to do this first time was touch her to bring her to climax but that was okay. They had all night. He’d make it happen again and again. He’d let her stay with him tonight, something else he never did.

He sucked her nipples. “I think you’re actually trying to grow some boobs, Lane,” he told her teasingly.

“Do you hate it that I don’t have breasts yet, Rafe.”

“No, Honey, just be patient, you’ll have them soon enough.”

He kissed and licked and sucked her between her legs until she gasped, “I don’t think I can stand it anymore.”

He put her hand on his erection. “Are you sure, Lane, that you can’t stand it anymore? I hate to waste this perfectly good hard-on. Do you think maybe you could stand it just one more time?”

“Yes, Rafe, yes, put it in me!”

She lay against her pillow, exhausted and satiated.

“Rafe?”

“What, Sweetie?”

Her voice was soft and tentative. “All those times you were gone, were you with a girl?”

He hesitated, wondering if he should lie to save her feelings, then decided, the truth was probably the best policy. They were brother and sister and they were never going to be able to have anything like a normal relationship. She might as well face that reality sooner rather than later.

“Yes, Lane.”

“Oh.” She was silent for a moment, then, “can I ask you one more question, Rafe?”

“You can ask me as many questions as you want.”

“Do you still love me best?”

“Not just best, Laney, but only. You’re the only person I love.”

He pulled her to him and put his arms around her.

“Can I stay here with you tonight, Rafe?”

“Yes, Honey.”

She told herself to wake up during the night just to feel him there. Once, he was snuggled up beside her with his face in her neck. She could feel the warms puffs of his breath against her shoulder. His chest was against her back, his groin against her bottom, and his arm across her waist. The next time she woke, he was on his back with one hand on her thigh. She thought it was probably the happiest night of her life, being able to spend the whole time with him right beside her.

When she awoke in the morning, he’d kicked off the covers and was lying naked on his side, facing away from her. His body was so beautiful, so brown and lean. She could see one muscular shoulder and the sweep of his torso and one hip and his long legs. She wanted to reach out and run her hand along his length but she didn’t want to disturb him.

“I can feel you staring at me, Lane,” he said in a low voice, rolling in her direction.

“I was thinking I wish I could wake up in bed with you every morning.”

“You know that can never be, Honey.”

“I know, Rafe, I was just wishing.”

“But, we’re here now, Laney, so I expect we’d better take advantage of it while we can, don’t you?”

They rode the horses to the cabin on Mount Vincennes. He packed food and cooked them hamburgers on the grill, then made love to her in the bedroom there – and then again in the pool when they got back to the house.

That night in bed, he asked her, “aren’t you taking a sex ed class this year, Lane?”

“Yes.”

“Have you learned about masturbation yet?”

“No, what’s masturbation?”

“It’s when you make yourself come, Laney. I think it’s something you need to learn to do so when I’m not here you can still make yourself feel good.”

“But I don’t want to do it to myself, Rafe, I want you to do it and if you’re not here, I’ll just wait. I don’t even think I could do it myself because it doesn’t sound, it doesn’t even sound fun!”

“It would be fun for me, Honey, it would be fun for me to watch. Will you do it for me?”

“Do I have to, Rafe?”

He tickled her in her ribs. “Let’s put it this way, Lane. If you do it so I can watch, it will turn me on and make my cock hard and if my cock gets hard, then I can fuck you, so you have to do something for me if you want me to do something for you.”

She sighed. “Okay, Rafe, tell me what to do.”

“Spread your legs apart and put your hand down there and just do what I do when I make you come by touching you.” He began to whisper in her ear. “Think about me watching, Lane, and how it’s making me hot.”

And that’s what finally did it. She really didn’t have any desire to do it for herself so in her mind she thought about pleasing him. She pictured him watching and getting hard. And she thought about how when it was over, he’d get on top of her and she’d feel him sliding into her. She started to get that feeling and she rubbed herself faster and harder until she arched her back and gave a little cry. And instantly, he was on her and fulfilled his part of the bargain.

He let her stay with him again. Much as she loved everything he did, that was the very best part, being able to reach out and touch him any time she wanted to.

The next day, it was off to school again. She got on the bus feeling tired and let-down. She’d barely slept. She hated it that this wonderful weekend was over. Meanwhile, he was feeling a sense of anticipation. The time with Alexis was over; he’d thoroughly done his duty by Lane. Now he was ready to check out his options. He’d had his eye on a tall red-headed senior in his English class. He knew from looks she’d given him that all he had to do was beckon but before he did that, he’d look around a little. The redhead would always be there when he was ready.

“Rafe, will you do something for me?”

“What’s that, Laney?”

“Will you teach me how to dance? The seventh grade is having a sock hop in the gym. I’m really looking forward to going but I’m afraid I’ll feel stupid because I don’t know how to dance.”

“Well, sure, Honey. After lunch we’ll go down to the basement and turn on the stereo and I’ll show you.”

They started with slow dancing.

“There’s two ways to put your arms, Lane. Probably with most kids, you’ll put them around the boy’s neck, like this.” He illustrated. “But if it’s a boy who has been to dance class, like all our brothers, though thankfully, that’s another thing Mom and Dad forgot with us, then you’ll put one hand on his shoulder and he’ll hold your other hand, like this. Just wait and see what he prefers.”

He turned on a slow, romantic song.

“Now, Lane, here’s the part that’s important since you’re the girl. You just need to let yourself be loose and get into the music and follow the boy. I’m going to start and you just sort of feel what I’m doing and let your steps match mine.” He danced her around the floor. At first she was a little awkward.

“Relax, Sweetie, you’re trying too hard. Just let me guide you.”

And then she got it. Pressed against him, she felt herself anticipating his next move until their steps together were smooth and graceful. She felt her chest lightly pressed against his and her groin barely touching his and her head against his cheek.

“It’s almost like having sex standing up,” she told him.

He chuckled. “It can be if you like the person you’re dancing with well enough.”

“I like you well enough.”

“I know, Honey.”

After that, he taught her how to do all the latest fast dances – both the ones you did apart and the ones together, where he swung her around and under his arm and caught her again around her waist.

“You’ll do,” he told her, “you’re plenty good enough for a 7^th grade sock hop.”

“Who taught you how to dance, Rafe?”

He thought about it for a minute. “Well, I don’t know, Lane. I guess I don’t remember that anyone did.”

“How do you get so good at everything, Rafe, without anybody even having to show you?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I watched them dancing on t.v. or something.”

“Well, Laney,” he said first thing in the morning, “today you’re a teenager.”

“I know, isn’t it cool? A teenager!”

“I’ve got a present for you tonight when we go to bed.”

“What, Rafe?”

“It’s a secret. You’ll find out tonight.”

“Rafe, you always make me wait for things!”

“That’s because looking forward to something is almost as much fun as actually doing it.”

“I’ll be in a tizz all day thinking about it!”

“Your grades are good enough, you can afford to be in a tizz for one day.”

She was in a tizz all day. She would read her history chapter and then realize she didn’t remember a thing she’d just read. Or quit right in the middle of doing a math problem. She kept thinking what new thing there could possibly be that he hadn’t already shown her. It seemed like they’d done everything that could be done. They’d done it with him on top and with her on top. They’d done it with him sitting in a chair and her sitting down on him. They’d done it with mouths and hands, in the shower and in the pool.

“Elena, are you feeling all right?”

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Peterson. I just lost my train of thought.”

“Well, would you try to find it again and finish your problem?”

“Yes, Mrs Peterson, I’m sorry.”

Her parents had forgotten her birthday again so there was no cake and no presents but she didn’t care. She kept watching the clock, waiting for it to get to be bedtime.

“I want you to roll onto your belly, Lane. I’m going to fuck you in your butt.”

She was shocked. “Do people do that, Rafe?”

“Yes, they do, Sweetie. You have to trust me though. Do you trust me, Lane?”

“You know I do.”

“Okay, I’m going to tell you the truth. It’s going to hurt at first but you just have to get through it and pretty soon, the pleasure will overtake the pain. I promise. That’s why I waited until you were 13 to do it.”

He put a fat pillow under her so her rear stuck up in the air.

“It’s one more place to put myself inside you, Lane, and I want to be inside you every way I can.”

First he kissed her on the back of her neck and then on her shoulders and then down her back and finally, he gave her tiny soft bites on her butt cheeks until she was shivering with anticipation. Then she felt him hold her apart with his hand and put his cock right up against her. She could feel the stickiness where he’d smeared himself with something to make it slick.

“I’m going in now, Lane.”

Oh, wow, he was right. It hurt a lot. She heard herself whimpering a little. Tears were oozing out of her eyes.

“Does it hurt too bad, Laney? Do you want me to stop?”

“No, keep going. I want you in me as far as you can go, Rafe.”

“It helps if you can make yourself relax.”

“I’ll try.”

“I’m all the way in. I’m going to start moving in and out, just like I do when I fuck you. It will start to feel good before long.”

And he was right. Pretty soon as he moved back and forth, she thought of herself like being a water balloon, only filled with joy instead of water, he just kept filling her fuller and fuller until she knew she couldn’t hold much more and when she finally popped, the joy just spilled all over. She felt like it was flooding her blood and her muscles and her bones and most of all, her brain.

“Oh, Rafe, oh God, oh God, oh God,” but whispered. She was surprised she remembered she had to be quiet.

“I want you to tell you something about this, Lane.”

“What?”

“You’re going to be grown up someday and what we do isn’t going to be enough. That means you’ll have sex with other men.”

“No!”

“Yes, when the time comes, Honey, that’s what you’ll need to do. I don’t care if you let them fuck you the regular way but I want one part of you that only belongs to me and that means this.” He patted her on her seat. “Nobody’s cock but mine, have you got that, Lane?”

“I don’t even want to think about ever being with anyone but you, Rafe.”

“Do you swear, Laney?”

“I swear.”

“Good.”

“I love you, Rafe. Can I stay here with you tonight, please? It’s my thirteenth birthday, please, Rafe, let me stay.”

“No, only when we’re the only ones home. Give me a kiss and go on over to your room, Sweetie.”

The next time he fucked her, he wore a condom. He showed her what it was and told her how it worked.

“Even though you haven’t started your period yet, it’s going to happen soon and that will mean you can get pregnant. That would be a very, very bad thing to happen.”

She definitely agreed with that! She didn’t like the condom very well though and wished he didn’t have to wear it. She wished nothing ever had to change from the way it had always been.

Rafe was walking down the hall at school, just minding his own business, when Bobby Kelly charged over and punched him in the side of the head. Bobby was a big kid. He was a senior, 18, a tackle on the football team. He outweighed Rafe by at least 60 pounds. The force of his strike knocked Rafe to the floor. He felt blood running down the side of his mouth. He rolled over onto his back.

“That’s for stealing my girlfriend,” Bobby snarled.

Rafe made no effort to get up. A small crowd had formed around them.

“Well, I didn’t have to do much to steal her, Bobby,” he drawled in a slow, lazy voice. He held up his hand with his little finger crooked, “just that much. Besides, Bobby, why are you so pissed? I gave her back new and improved after I was done teaching how to give a really good blow job.” His smile went flashing across his face.

Bobby’s own face went bright red and drew back his foot. “I’ll kill you, you fucking bastard!”

That’s what Rafe was hoping would happen. He hadn’t a doubt that he could take Bobby as long as he was aware the attack was coming. But Bobby’s friends grabbed him and pulled him away.

Rafe leaped up. Well, he’d have to bide his time but the paybacks, when they came for Bobby Kelly, would definitely be hell.

He waited and he watched. It took a couple of weeks but finally, he found Bobby and half a dozen of his cohorts down at the back of the school grounds under a group of trees where the smokers congregated to burn one. It was a place the teachers never went. By common consent all the grown ups averted their eyes and pretended it didn’t exist.

Rafe walked up to Bobby. “It’s time to finish this, Bob.”

“I think it is finished.”

“Nope, not yet, it’s not.”

His fist came out so quickly, no one even realized what was happening. Then again and again, until Bobby went down, puking, with a broken nose, a missing front tooth, two swelling eyes and a cut chin, all before he’d had even had a chance to get his hands up.

“Stop, Rafe, I quit.” The bigger boy gasped, spitting blood.

“How can you quit when you never even got started, Bob?”

Bobby figured it was over until he heard the snick of a switchblade and saw the blade leap out of its handle. The group around them gave out a collective, “oh, my God.”

“Jesus, Rafe, please don’t kill me!”

“I’m not going to kill you, you dumb fuck. I’m just going to give you something to remember me by.”

He lightly drew two quick lines on Bobby’s cheek with the razor-sharp knife, one slightly longer than the other. Blood instantly bubbled out of the wound. Which resembled a check mark….or perhaps a slightly off-kilter Vee.

“Do you think I would I kill you in front of this many witnesses?” he asked casually, as if he was truly curious about the answer. “But, Bobby, let’s say for the sake of argument that you told about today…” he looked around the rest of the on-lookers, “or that anyone did, and I did want to kill you, do you think, Bobby, that I’d be smart enough to come up with a way to do it so that no one would know what happened?” The smile came and went so fast, they weren’t quite sure they’d even seen it.

But everyone there believed totally, absolutely and positively that if Rafe Vincennes decided to kill Bobby, or anyone else, he would be smart enough to do it and never get caught.

“One more thing before I go, Bob – I hit you ten times, do you want to know why?”

“Why?” It was a reluctant grunt more than a word.

This time, the smile stayed long enough to be plenty sure it was there – “why, its Rafe’s Rules of Vengeance, Bobby - whatever anybody does to me, I do back to them times ten.”

So when Bobby Kelly went home with his broken face and a double line of crusted blood across his cheek, he told his folks he’d been jumped by a gang of, he thought, six kids. They must have been from out of town. He didn’t ever remember seeing any of them before. He didn’t remember what any of them looked like. He didn’t remember what they’d been wearing.

Even when his outraged parents took him to the police station to file a report, he stuck stubbornly to his story. The police were pretty sure it was bullshit but no matter how they asked the questions, they got the same answers. Finally, they just let it go and sent Bobby Kelly home.

No one really ever told what happened but still, the truth got around through the school grapevine. It became one more part of the Rafe Vincennes legend.

All the Benedict Incorporated School District teachers were at the annual conference. These three days were something they all hated. An endless series of boring panels and seminars about the proper way to make out lesson plans and how to comply with No Child Left Behind, blah, blah, blah. Meal times were the only bearable parts of the day. The food at the historic Marylebone Inn was excellent and at least they could kick back and talk about subjects they were interested in, at the present moment, that subject being Rafe Vincennes.

At the table was Linda Dee, tall and skinny, with wiry, short black hair and faintly bulging brown eyes, arched over with heavy, thick brows. (Some of her colleagues had discussed buying her a brow-shaping session at the salon but they never had quite enough nerve to actually do it). Even though, most female teachers were wearing slacks now, Miss Dee still stuck to straight skirts and cotton blouses and flat-heeled shoes. In the chair next to her sat Rhonda Fisher, the high school guidance counselor. She was plump and rosy-cheeked with a gray pageboy and twinkling blue eyes. She was one of the most popular adults in school and genuinely cared about the problems of the kids who came to her for assistance. Jeb Kroner was next. He taught Earth Science at the high school. He was a dedicated teacher but he’d been teaching long enough that his subject was getting a little boring and he was becoming somewhat cynical about stuffing Earth Science into mostly not-very-interested young minds. He looked a little like he might have been a hippie back in the Swingin’ Sixties, with his shapeless gray beard and an easygoing attitude that made you think he could still remember how to roll a joint if he wanted to. And finally, Judith Lentz, who taught Honors English. Judith revered authors and literature. She could quote poetry for hours on end. She affected the look she thought portrayed her soul, with mostly long, filmy Renaissance-type dresses and flowing blonde hair. Rafe Vincennes was one of her best students. She’d given him an A+ last semester in spite of the fact that she suspected his ability in her class stemmed only from his head and not at all from his heart.

Rhonda Fisher was telling them about her latest experiences in counseling.

“I have so many girls coming into my office to cry on my shoulder about Rafe Vincennes, it’s an epidemic. I think I could respond to them in my sleep. ‘Yes, dear, I know how much you love him’. ‘Yes, dear, I know you think you can’t live without him”. ‘Yes, dear, I know how he makes you feel when he makes love to you.’ ‘Yes, dear, I know he broke your heart.’ I’m beginning to think he’s going to run out of pretty girls before he runs out of time at Benedict High.“

“Rafe Vincennes,” Linda Dee said with loathing in her voice, “I’d like to kill that worthless little prick!”

“Whoa, Dee, we’ve always known you didn’t like Rafe but that sounds personal.”

“It is personal, because my Chelsea is one of those girls Rhonda is talking about. As much as I’ve always distrusted him - and yet I had to sit on the side of her bed and listen to her cry her eyes out and tell me how much she loves that little bastard. The whole time I was thinking that if I had my hands around his neck, he wouldn’t be taking advantage of any more young girls. She admitted she was a virgin until he got a’hold of her. He should be charged with statutory rape!”

“But, Dee, how could he be charged with statutory rape when Chelsea’s 18 and Rafe Vincennes is what? Fourteen now?”

“Fourteen in actual years, yes, but he’s always been an adult in that sociopathic brain of his!”

“Careful, Dee, it wouldn’t be smart to let many people hear you call one of our students a sociopath with no evidence whatsoever, especially when he’s a Vincennes. That’s a pretty heavy charge.”

“It’s true though. I suppose you’ve all heard the gossip that it was Rafe that beat the hell out of Bobby Kelly and then cut him. He’ll probably always have that scar on his face.”

“We’ve heard it but no one has ever been willing to say it, especially Bobby himself. Jacobs called him into his office and talked to him for about an hour trying to get him to tell and he flat out denied it was Rafe.”

“But we know it was, don’t we, because who else would have the power to intimidate them all that much except Rafe Vincennes?”

They nodded in agreement.

Jeb Kroner laughed. “Well, I think what any of us who have pretty daughters have to do is go home and make them ugly until Rafe is gone from Benedict. Maybe we could buy some of the make up that actors use to make them big gross noses and put moles with black hair sprouting out of them on their chins.”

Had Rafe been there, he would have chuckled back and maybe told him, “too late to lock the barn door now, Mr Kroner, that horse has already left.”

“You know what, Rafe?”

“What, Lane?”

“Today, Mrs Jett, the gym teacher, was out sick and they told us we could just spend the class dancing or doing floor exercises on the mats or whatever we wanted to do. But, some of us just sat around in a circle and talked about sex.”

He cocked one dark eyebrow and grinned in amusement. “And just what did the girls in your 7^th grade class have to say about sex, Laney? Did they tell you anything you didn’t already know?”

She giggled. “No. They told lots of wrong things. Misty Madison is the only one who has ever done it with a boy and she said he was in and done in less than a minute and he didn’t have a clue that she was supposed to get something out of it too. She said most girls don’t have orgasms from sex with boys anyways, they just fake it and wait ‘til it’s over and then masturbate. She said her Mom said it’s even that way with grown women and she had never had a climax from a man! Stormy said her older sister told her if she gave a boy a blow job to be sure and stop and finish him with her hand, to never let him come in her mouth. And Heather said she thought the whole idea of putting a boy’s privates in her mouth was gross and she would never do it. Lacy said you could only come if you were in love and probably Misty didn’t love the boy she was with and that’s why nothing happened. She said that’s how you could know if love was true, if the boy could make you have an orgasm. Is that true, Rafe, do you have to love somebody to have an orgasm? I love you and I have orgasms all the time.” She giggled again.

“No, Lane, that isn’t true although it’s nice when it happens that way. I think probably lots of girls have to fool themselves into believing they’re in love to be able to come though.”

“But not boys?”

“Nah, Lane, it doesn’t matter to guys, they can get it off whether they like a girl very much or not. So, anyway, Lane, what were you saying when this intellectual conversation about sex was taking place?”

“I was just looking at them with my eyes real wide like I didn’t have the faintest idea what they were talking about. Everyone thinks I’m Miss Innocent, you know?”

He stroked her hair. “You are Miss Innocent, Laney. I might have taught you a lot about sex, but you’re still Miss Innocent.”

Every Vincennes got a new car for his or her 16^th birthday. It was the event Rafe had been looking forward to more than any other in his life. If ever there was anybody who needed a car, who deserved a car, who belonged behind the wheel of a car, it was Rafe, or so at least he thought. He’d always been older in his head than his age, as noted by Linda Dee, and he’d always been treated as if he was older, like being advanced so far ahead of his peers in school. He’d done everything else early. It had chafed him bloody raw to have to wait until the fucking bureaucracy decided when he could have a license to drive a car.

He’d read reviews by the hundreds and had decided that he wanted a Corvette. It was the fastest street legal car he might, might, be able to talk Renny into and he was going to have to do some serious talking to get it done. His father had always sprung for decent rides for his kids. He couldn’t remember as far back as Morgan and Wyatt but Gabe had gotten a Mustang and he thought Denis’ birthday car had been a Monte Carlo. Forget the girls. Madeline and Jocelyn had both chosen SUVs and Annecy picked a PT Cruiser of all things. Still, he thought Renny might give him a little trouble over a Corvette, not only because it was more expensive than what he’d spent on the others (the ice-blue one Rafe coveted was $50,000 plus), but there was the cautiousness factor as well. Would he trust Rafe not to drive it too fast and maybe wreck the car or kill himself? Maybe not. Could Rafe be trusted not to drive it too fast? He grinned to himself. Ummm, absolutely not.

There was not much middle ground with Rafe. He was a person of extremes. Stop or Go. He was capable of being almost Zen-like in the way he could maintain a level of total stillness. Teachers had noticed, even when he was little, when most small boys are full of pent energy, that Rafe Vincennes could lounge without moving a muscle for longer periods of time than most grown ups could. He never squirmed or fidgeted. He never interrupted a conversation and he never rushed out to recess but strolled gracefully down the hall like time didn’t concern him. His kindergarten teacher said whatever the opposite of Attention Deficit Disorder was, that’s what Rafe Vincennes had.

By contrast, when he swung into action, it was quickly and surely, without hesitation or wasted motion. It was why he was so good at hunting. He could sit, silent and unmoving, in a deer stand or a duck blind for as many hours as necessary, maintaining his focus, until his target was in range and then within seconds, boom, he aimed and fired and the deer or duck was dead, his shot invariably hitting exactly the spot he’d targetted.

He’d heard the phrase, “need for speed” but couldn’t recall what it was associated with. He knew he had it though. He thought he must have a lower tolerance for boredom than most people or maybe it was more of an addiction to stimulation. He’d never been tempted by substances. He neither drank nor did any drugs whatsoever. He didn’t even take the pain pills the doctor had given him the time he got a groin pull on the football field and that had hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. His avoidance of chemicals was because he always wanted, not really wanted but needed, to be in complete control of both himself and others. He had learned that most people were more controllable than they thought they were. It was just a matter of discovering their strengths and weaknesses and what triggers could be used to manipulate either one. Most of the time, they weren’t even aware of what was being done. Bobby, for instance. He could have got Bobby to go after him on the spot if his friends hadn’t saved his ass. Of course, in the end, waiting turned out to be more fun. Or Laney, you could wrap her right around your little finger with just a little attention and affection. But, the thing was, how could you expect to control others if you couldn’t control yourself?

Rafe walked warily through life. He usually had his guard up because he had to learn things that seemed to come naturally to others. Like taboos. He didn’t think he had the moral boundaries that held most people back in their behavior. (He still didn’t consider himself a sociopath though). Thank God, he was as smart as he was and able to catch on as quickly as he did to be able to adapt to society’s restrictions or at least to be clever about violating them.

Of course, he’d violated one of the most serious taboos with Lane but he truly didn’t see why it was wrong. He’d cared for her since she was a baby when no one else seemed very interested in doing it. He’d watched out for her and protected her as best he could and they loved each other so why shouldn’t they show it with sex when it was so enjoyable to both of them? In fact, he thought she was probably the only person he did love or had ever loved or probably ever would love. It was his own kind of love, he admitted that. And that way maybe wasn’t as committed and dedicated as the love he saw in the movies, the kind of love that made you want to forsake all others. He knew he kept her tucked on a mental shelf for the most part, only bringing her down when he wanted her. He also knew it wasn’t like that for her. If things were different and they were boyfriend and girlfriend, she’d be as faithful to him as anyone could ever be to another. But as much as he was able to give of himself, he gave to her.

But anyway, back to speed. He loved it and always had. That’s why he asked to be able to ride Destiny when he was 10. The gray stallion liked to run as far and as fast as he could and no one else let him do that but Rafe. They all held him back but Rafe let him fly flat out. He always felt a kind of bond between them when he mounted Des, feeling the horse’s eagerness, like he knew there would be no governor on him as long as Rafe was on his back.

He felt the same way about skiing. He was a fearless skier who’d always taken on slopes considered too extreme for someone his age. Once an instructor had seen him and had approached him about training for the Olympics. He was sure, he said, that Rafe could easily make the Olympic team. But Rafe was honest with him. He didn’t want to work that hard. He loved skiing because it offered him freedom but it wouldn’t seem like freedom anymore if he had to follow a ruthless regimen of training. “I’m too lazy for that,” he told the disappointed coach.

He found the same freedom when he was first old enough to take the cigarette boat, which wasn’t very old, because the keys to all the boats and cars were kept right there in the key safe in the entry way into the kitchen and it was never locked. And who was there to tell him he couldn’t do it or for that matter, who would even know? He’d watched when he was a passenger to see how to work the controls. He knew he could do it. He practiced when he took it the first time until he had it down pat and then he went far out, beyond any traffic, and let it rip. He could still remember the exhilaration of charging the choppy waves, bouncing across them, feeling the cool spray hitting his body and the wind whipping his hair, just him and the boat, far away from anyone else. Speed was his drug of choice. It was the thing that let him forget people and all their idiotic and arbitrary rules and how carefully you had to plan to deal with them because it was their world and not his, not like soaring through the air on skis or jetting across the water, where he was in his element.

He wasn’t like sweet little Lane, who just accepted what people gave her. If something was important enough to him, he’d make it clear to his parents until he got what he wanted and since he asked for so little, they were always happy to oblige. Like ski camp. He’d never been skiing (Vincennes family vacations were a thing of the past by the time he and Lane came along) but he could tell by watching it on t.v. or looking at pictures of skiers bulleting down snowy hills that it was something he’d enjoy so he researched ski camps on the computer and when he found the one he wanted, he presented it to them and they’d readily agreed. He hated leaving Laney for the whole week. She was only about six then. He made them promise they would at least check on her now and then and make sure she was okay. He guessed they did but the night he got home and brought her to bed with him, she clung to him at first, crying, “please, please, Rafe, don’t ever go away and leave me so long again, it was just awful here without you.” And he never had. He always listed a skiing trip when he was asked what he wanted for Christmas but from then on, he confined himself to only going for long weekends.

About the Corvette, he was ready to pull out all the stops, fire all the triggers, to get what he wanted. Probably the most deadly ammunition he had was guilt. He’d remind Renny of how little they’d ever done for him and Lane compared to the other brothers and sisters and how they’d considered him a built in babysitter for her even though he was just a little kid himself and how he’d accepted that responsibility. He’d bring up his grades and his athletic accomplishments to show that he had lived up to Renny’s expectations despite getting almost no encouragement. God, he could almost feel his foot on the gas pedal. He just had to talk Renny into saying yes.

“Well, Son,” Renny told him, “tomorrow, you’ll be sixteen so I suppose it’s time to have the car discussion. Why don’t you come on into my study and we’ll talk about it.”

Renny took his place behind the huge mahogany desk, pointing Rafe to the burgundy club chair in front.

The study, with its elaborately carved walnut fireplace and walls of bookcases and curio cabinets filled with Vincennes memorabilia, had always been an intimidating room to the Vincennes young, who weren’t allowed to enter it without Renny’s permission. Usually, their father didn’t call them in here for a less than serious reason and if the talk regarded something about which Renny was displeased, whatever child was in the hotseat would leave here bleeding. Not physically, of course, but the old man could administer a tongue-lashing, without ever raising his voice, that wounded worse than any actual whip.

The elder and younger Vincennes regarded each other silently for a moment, a technique Renny employed deliberately to give himself an advantage. His father was the only person on earth who could make Rafe anxious.

“Dad…” Rafe started but his father held up his hand.

“Why don’t you let me say my piece first and then you can add your two cents worth. The way I’ve got you figured, Rafe, you’re going to ask for either a Shelby or a Corvette, probably the Corvette.”

Rafe, who was a master of disguised expression, couldn’t help but let his astonishment show a little.

“I’ve given some thought to what methods you’re going to use to talk me into it. I expect you’re going to bring up how your mother and I have never come to any of your parent-teacher conferences or any of your games and how we let you practically raise your little sister.”

Renny grinned at his son. It was the first time Rafe realized where his own smile had come from.

“How am I doing so far, Rafe?” he asked, before going on, “but we don’t have to go through all that. I freely admit to being a lousy parent to you and Laney. We did all the right things with the first seven. Do you know how many boring parent-teacher conferences I sat through in those years, Rafe, even though all they ever told me was that my kids were getting A’s? And do you know how many hours of my life have been spent on bleachers? Enough that I think my ass is permanently deformed. I’ve froze and roasted watching kids play football and baseball and tennis. I’ve watched them wrestle and run track and dribble basketballs. I’ve watched them show horses and dogs. I’ve watched them act and dance and play and sing in recitals. I’ve gone to their art exhibits. We thought we were done before you came along, Rafe. Your mother and I thought it was finally going to be our time. I just didn’t want to do it anymore. I didn’t think I could sit there and nod to another teacher. I didn’t think I could subject my butt to another bleacher.

That’s not to say I haven’t been paying any attention at all, Rafe. I figured you and Lane were doing fine. She’s always on the honor roll and I assume you wouldn’t have been advanced through your classes as you have been if you weren’t excelling in school. If there had been a problem, I hope I would have moved to resolve it but it didn’t seem like there were any problems. At least, no principal has ever called me about either one of you. And I know what your record is in sports, Rafe. I know you’re considered a star in football and baseball and basketball.

I know other things about you too, Rafe. Like how often you have a girl up at the Cabin. I thought your brothers and sisters were a lusty bunch, but it appears that you get the trophy in that area.

I know that you had an affair with Mrs. Keating next door. I almost wondered if I shouldn’t step in at that point but if anyone ever seemed as if he could take care of himself, it was you, so I held off and soon I knew it was over.

The rumors about Bobby Kelly caused me some concern but then nothing more seemed to come of it.

I know you ride that stallion like a maniac and that you’ve been taking the boat out for years and that you go way too fast and way too far. I didn’t do anything about that either because I judged you to be a risk taker, not a reckless one, but one who calculates the odds and decides what chances are worth taking. I figured that was your innate nature and I probably couldn’t do anything to change it and I probably wouldn’t want to even if I could.

I know how much you’ve sacrificed to take care of your sister, Rafe, and that we let you do it because we no longer wanted to make our own sacrifices as parents. I know how close you two are, probably too close. I hope you’ve calculated those risks too, Rafe. I hope you never hurt her because the way she idolizes you, it would be so very easy for you to do.

So, anyway, the upshot of all this is that I’m going to buy you the car you want, Rafe. Was I right about it being the Corvette?”

His father had rendered him speechless so he just nodded his head yes.

“Do you have anything you want to add to this conversation, Son?”

“No, Dad.”

“Then you’d better get your jacket so we can go visit some dealerships. Oh, and by the way, Rafe…”

“What, Dad?”

“I’ll pay the requisite number of tickets but I do have a limit.”

He came home, exultant, behind the wheel of the ice blue Corvette. Of course, he drove slowly and carefully because Renny was right behind him in his black Mercedes. He didn’t go anywhere else that day. He had always been one who enjoyed anticipation, letting excitement build until when you finally reached your goal, it was almost like having a climax. He had the capacity to postpone gratification, patient as a spider in its web. So he let the car sit in its spot in the garage, not even looking at it again. And the next morning was Sunday and that meant church. Personally, he didn’t believe in a single thing the church tried to teach him. In fact, he thought all religion was a bunch of superstitious bullshit but going to church was the rent his parents charged any of their children who still lived at home. If you wanted to stay at Heron Point, you went to church every Sunday. End of discussion. He didn’t mind that much. He usually just sat there in the Vincennes pew at St James’ and thought his own thoughts, letting the priest’s words go in one ear and out the other, moving up and down in his seat, something he’d done so often, he could do it by rote. One good thing about their parents having lost interest in them was that they’d never insisted that he or Lane go to confession. Thank God (or whoever!) Wouldn’t that have been a fucking nightmare? He could have lied to Father O’Reilly without a qualm, of course, but he wasn’t so sure about Lane. He smiled to himself. As much as she loved him, he wasn’t quite sure he could win when God was on the other side.

After mass was over, the folks said they were going into Baltimore to shop and eat so the kids were on their own. Rafe told them he’d take Laney out to lunch in his new car, which he did. He stuck to the speed limit when she was with him although he felt an ache in his gut, he wanted so badly to put the gas pedal clear to the floor. After they’d eaten, he took her back to Heron Point and dropped her off.

And then he drove to an isolated highway, where he knew there was generally very little traffic and he’d never seen a cop, and he stomped on it. He felt the car respond instantly. It seemed to him it was like the stallion, reveling in a rider that would allow it to go all the way. And just as he thought, it was like riding or skiing or boating, only more of an adrenalin-rush than any of them. It was like sex, maybe even a little better, because he didn’t have to think about pleasing anyone but himself. He didn’t have to call the car Sweetheart for fear of hurting its feelings. Although, it was, of course.

He patted it on the dash, “Come on, Sweetheart, let’s take it on home.”

They raced down the road together. He wished they could just keep going to the end of the earth.

On his birthday night in his bed, Lane told him wistfully, “I wish I knew of a new thing to give you for your birthday, Rafe.”

He smiled, the genuine full out smile hardly anyone ever saw but her, “Honey, you don’t have to give me any new thing, I’m happy with just the all the old things.”

The other kids at school figured he enjoyed rubbing their noses in it when he drove into the school parking lot in the Corvette on Monday morning. They would never have understood that, although he could definitely be calculating at times to achieve a desired end, he usually never even gave much thought to how things, like him having a particular car, would affect others. The Corvette was all about him and no one else. He was naturally so self-focused that the idea of wanting to possess something simply because it was prestigious wouldn’t even have occurred to him.

On the other hand, it didn’t take him long to realize that the car attracted girls like a 75 percent off sale at the Riverlook Mall. And he also realized that it opened vast new horizons in that he could now consider the younger girls who didn’t drive because he could take them to the cabin himself.

Rhonda Fisher felt her heart drop when she saw Rafe unwinding his lean brown body out of the Corvette in his tight jeans and leather jacket. She saw the lock of black hair hanging over his forehead. She saw the quick white smile gleam when someone whistled at the car. She knew exactly what it portended.

“Shit,” she said to herself, “as if it wasn’t bad enough already.”

“Guess what?” she told Linda Dee when they were having dinner at Big Wong’s that night. “Rafe Vincennes came to school today in a brand new blue Corvette.”

“If we’re lucky, maybe the little fucker will kill himself in it.”

He didn’t though. When graduation night came, there he was. He was valedictorian of his class, of course. Technically, he’d had enough credits to graduate last year at 15. His senior year he’d only taken college prep courses. He also graduated with the highest ever grade point average, which would have been even higher if they hadn’t had an arbitrary ceiling beyond which no one could go. In addition, he’d racked up more athletic letters than any Benedict student ever had. He gave a short, funny speech, saying all the things adults like to hear from kids, almost none of which he believed. Rhonda Fisher knew he’d been inundated with offers from colleges wanting him to attend – on academic scholarships, baseball scholarships, football scholarships, basketball scholarships. He could have applied for other kinds of scholarships and grants as well, in math and science and English, although so far as she knew, he hadn’t tried for any of them. She assumed he’d be attending Princeton in the fall as all the other Vincennes boys, except for Wyatt, had.

A few of the Benedict staff noticed that Rafe’s parents weren’t in attendance. It was said they were on a Mediterranean cruise. Even the ones who weren’t big Rafe Vincennes fans thought it was rather sad that you could accumulate the honors he had and have parents who didn’t even bother to acknowledge it.

Rafael Alain Vincennes probably had no idea when he walked across the stage to receive his diploma how many sighs of relief followed his passage.

Book One - Chapter 3

2011-07-03T05:50:00.001-07:00

Chapter Three

He called his parents together. They were at the long rosewood table in the dining room with cups of coffee in front of them. Rafe, looking at Renny and Magdelene, hoped he’d inherited his parents’ genes. They were in their late 50’s now but it seemed to Rafe, they’d barely changed from his first memories of them. Renny, dressed in an immaculately tailored chalk gray suit, was still lean and flat-bellied, much like Rafe himself. His black, perfectly razor cut hair was the same except for some silvering around the temples. His dark eyes could still twinkle or spark depending on his mood. His smile was easygoing but it could sometimes lull you into a false sense of security. All Renny’s kids knew that trying to take on their dad was a lost cause. He’d let you go ahead and make your argument, let you think you just might be winning, then demolish you with a few well-chosen words. Rafe didn’t respect too many people, in fact, he couldn’t really think of anyone else besides his father but he definitely looked up to Renny, in the same way a young lion cub acknowledges the superiority of the leader of the pride.

As for Magdelene, she was still as beautiful as ever. If she’d been taller, she might have been a model with her slender, stylish figure and the pale blonde hair that curled softly around a face like a cameo – ivory skin and lapis lazuli eyes. Of course, she never would have been a model because being a model is hard work and Magdelene had never had to work. Her own family was wealthy and then she’d married Renny who was even richer so she’d never known anything but abundance. Rafe figured the hardest thing she’d ever done was give birth to nine children, of course, that was probably no picnic….

“I’ve got a proposition for you,” he told them. “Let me talk first, okay, and then if there are flaws in my argument, you can point them out.”

Renny wondered what this most interesting of his kids was going to come up with now. Magdelene was noting how strong and brown and handsome he looked. She reached over and brushed a stray swatch of dark hair off his forehead.

“First, I want to put off going to Princeton for a year. I’d still only be 17 when I start. I’m tired of going to school and reading books and taking tests and pleasing teachers. I just want to take life easy and be a bum for a year. I want to spend my time doing physical stuff, stuff you do outside in the sun like boating and riding and skiing. I think I earned the time by graduating at 16.

There’s a second reason. If I went to college this fall, Laney would only be 14. I know, Dad, that you’ve gone into sort of semi-retirement and you and Mom have things planned like more cruises. You deserve it after raising all nine of us but it leaves Lane alone a lot in a 32-room house except for the staff. It’s hard to think about her wandering around in this place by herself like a lonesome little ghost. If it was me, I could do it but, you know, she doesn’t have my, my…”

“Self-sufficiency, Rafe?” His father supplied the words.

“Yes. So, I’d be living here for at least another year to watch out for her. Beyond that, I wish you’d think of just turning over some extra money to me for what she needs.” A smile flickered across his face. “I usually always have to remind you anyway when her lunch fees are due or her class is going on a field trip and she has to have a check. You know, she made the Cheer Squad for next year and there will be outfits to buy for that. I’m not bitching about any of this, I’m just trying to be practical. This way she can come to me and instead of being the middle man, I can just take her shopping or write a check or take her out to eat or whatever. It’s not that I’m trying to cadge more money out of you, Dad. Out of the $500 a month allowance you started giving me in high school plus other money I’ve gotten, I have almost $10,000 in the bank but I may have to spend that this next year if I want to play without having to get a job. And I don’t want a job because I don’t want to be on a schedule. I’m scheduled out for a while. So, that’s it. That’s what I have to say.”

Renny looked at Magdelene. “What do you think, Maggie?”

“It okay with me if that’s what he wants to do. I’d feel better about us going off if I knew Rafe was here with Lane. And he’s right, he’s the one she goes to when she needs anything so it would probably be more convenient for all of us if he handled it directly. One thing though, Rafie, next year, you absolutely, positively enter Princeton. No more trying to talk us into putting it off.”

Rafe nodded. “No, I won’t do that, Mom.”

Renny shook his head slowly. “I’m going to agree to give you your year, Rafe. It’s against my better judgment but it would seem rather hypocritical of me to go all concerned father on you at this late date. I’ll up your allowance to $750 a month. That will give you a little more spending money while you’re out there “finding yourself”. Lane will start getting her own allowance next year since she’ll be in high school. And I’ll give you another $1,000 a month for her. You buy her whatever she wants and needs and if there’s any left over, you can keep it for your trouble.”

“You know I’d never slack on Laney to keep extra money for myself, don’t you, Dad?”

“No, I’d never think of your doing that, Rafe. But, let me be crystal clear, Son. As your mother said, this won’t happen again. Next year at this time, you’ll be getting ready to go to Princeton, sick of school or not. And your sister is just going to have to learn to be less dependent on you. Just to focus your mind, I want you to remember one thing. That Corvette sitting out in the garage is titled in my name. I bought it and I can sell it and that will be the deal – no college, no car. Have you got that straight, Rafe?”

“Yes, sir, loud and clear.”

“Okay, Lane, I bought you another year but that’s all it will be. Dad wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about it.”

“Oh, thank God, Rafe!” She kissed him all over his face. “I’m so happy!”

“I know you are, Honey. And you know what else? They put me in charge of the money to buy you what you need so, Lane,” he gave her a mock evil look, “that means I control the purse strings and you’ll have to give me a blow job whenever you want me to write a check.”

She giggled. “Oh, Rafe, you know, I’d give you a blow job any time you wanted me to anyway!”

He was running his finger tip around her nipple. She had definitely sprouted this last year. He splayed out his fingers across her breast. Not quite a handful but getting close.

He turned serious. “Lane, you’re going to have to start psyching yourself up for life without me. Next year I’ll be leaving for sure, Dad made that plain. You’ll be almost 15 by then, almost grown up. You’ll need to start thinking about dating and boyfriends. You know, Sweetie, what we have might always be a part of our lives but it can’t be our whole life.” He ran his hand down her long blonde hair. “Do you know you’re getting beautiful, Lane? By next year, you’re going to have the boys swarming you.”

“No, Rafe,” she was almost breathless. “No, I don’t want to go with any other boys. I love you!”

“Think about this, Lane. What are you going to do when it comes time for the Harvest Ball or the Prom? You’ll want to do those things and you can’t take your brother as your date.”

She buried her face in his chest. “Let’s not talk about it, Rafe, please!”

“Okay, we’ll forget it for now.” He kissed her. “Mom and Dad said they have several trips planned. They’ll probably be gone about half the time and it will just be you and me here so we’ll have us a high old time in our final year together.”

Inwardly, he sighed. He knew he was going to have to start weaning her away from him. That would sometimes hurt her and he’d really hate it, but it was going to be up to him to make sure she was ready to make it on her own when the time came.

Rafe lay on the raft soaking up the sun’s benevolent rays. In the beginning, he’d asked for this limbo year off mostly for Laney’s sake. It hadn’t really mattered to him one way or the other. He actually could have just as easily gone to Princeton from the get-go and got a year under his belt but since he’d done it this way, he’d decided to just enjoy it and he was. Besides spending lots of time on the boats (he’d entered and won the Regatta this summer), he had a couple of other things going that he was finding pretty entertaining.

First, since he had his own car now and could go where he pleased, he’d gravitated to the auto races. The dirt track at Pequin, about 30 miles west of Benedict, wasn’t anything special in the scheme of big-time auto racing – just a quarter of a mile of clay but watching the small winged cars barely missing walls and each other, sliding through the curves at high speed excited him. He knew he could drive as well or better than anyone out there so he asked around about how you got to get behind the wheel and was told to go talk to Chester Hughes. A former racer himself, Chester owned three Sprint cars. He mostly competed at the smaller tracks in the area. He could introduce Rafe to driving, if he would.

Chester Hughes was in his middle 50’s. His once-red hair was mostly gray now. His once- trim body now sported an older man’s belly, his belt almost unseen below it. He walked with a noticeable hitch in his stride. Still, the blue eyes were as shrewd as they’d ever been.

“What makes you think it would be smart for me to risk an expensive vehicle on a total beginner? I’ve never even seen you here before and you think I ought to hand over a car to you? You must think I’m fucking nuts, Kid.”

“I can win for you, Mr Hughes. Just give me a shot. You won’t regret it, I promise.”

“I don’t think that’s a promise you’re in a position to make.”

“Try me.” It wasn’t a dare, just a statement of complete self-assurance.

Chester looked at him with narrowed eyes. There was something about the boy, maybe it was his supreme self-confidence, but something, that inclined Chester to go along with him. Maybe the kid was full of shit and maybe he himself was buying into a con job but what the hell, nothing ventured nothing gained.

“I’ll give you one shot. I don’t necessarily expect you to win your first time out but you’ve got to show me something or that’s it.”

Rafe’s smile went flashing across his face. “Deal,” he said, like it was all over but the shouting.

He loved the car from the moment he maneuvered his way into the cockpit and the car seemed to feel the same way about him. Getting into a sprint car is no easy task since the driver has to work his way past the wings, the chassis bars, the steering box, the torque tube….and when that’s done, he (or possibly, she), is braced into an upright position, hard against the seat, by a five-point harness, from which he can barely see thanks to the high bonnet, the front wing, a rock screen (to keep debris from entering the cockpit) and on top of all that, he has almost no peripheral vision due to wrap-around seats and neck restraint devices. Add to the rest, the “tearaways” on helmet visors so they can be torn off to be replaced by a fresh one when the visor becomes muddy and driving a sprint car turns out to require a kind of extra sensory communication between man, track and machine.

Starting one doesn’t even require a key. First the driver must ensure that a) the car is in gear since sprint cars don’t have gearboxes and b) that the fuel is turned on. When those two things are done, a “push car” pushes against the rear crash bar until the car fires.

Being direct drive, once the wheels begin turning, the engine is also turning over. Now the driver waits until he has the proper oil pressure (around 80 psi), then a few more seconds until he knows that all eight cylinders have enough fuel. Only then, does he hit the ignition switch, bringing his engine roaring to life.

All this Chester showed Rafe prior to the race. “You can see it’s not even close to just getting in that Corvette of yours, turning a key and driving off.”

“Don’t worry, Mr Hughes, I’m a quick study. I’ve got it.”

And he did. Chester had started him out in one of the novice runs where he so out-classed his competition, it wasn’t even close.

“Well, that was a waste of both our time, Son, except to show me your potential. How did you get so good at driving?”

Rafe shrugged. “I don’t know, I just have a kind of a sixth sense about it.”

“We’ll try you with something a little more challenging, next week. Don’t get cocky, Son, just because you did so well this time. You were only up against the babies.”

“I never get cocky in advance, Mr Hughes, only after it’s over and I’ve earned it.”

The result was the same the following week and then the next when he was pitted against even more experienced drivers. He really did seem to have an uncanny feel for how to position his car for maximum advantage, how to maneuver it around the turns, how to avoid trouble.

Chester Hughes began to follow him with interested eyes. He thought this boy might have real possibilities. And, Jesus H Christ, he made the race groupies cream their panties! They looked at him like he was candy and they wanted to eat him all up. Chester was not only an expert in cars but in marketing as well. He knew that a winning driver was great for business but a winning driver with sex appeal was a hundred times better.

“You might could start to be a little cocky now, Son.”

Rafe nodded and his smile went gleaming across his face. He probably knew as much about marketing as Chester Hughes.

His second year-off diversion was completely different although some of the results were the same. A friend of his brother, Gabe, had contacted him at Gabe’s suggestion. The two had jammed a lot together when Gabe was going through his guitar phase. Now, the friend, Duke, had a rock and roll band, Balmer Strut, that played mostly in Baltimore and DC, and sometimes, Philly. It was highly acclaimed and in great demand for country club dances and the private parties of representatives and senators and other government bigwigs. Their rhythm guitarist had just quit and Duke had asked Gabe if he’d be interested in filling in until they could find a permanent replacement. Gabe wasn’t, being fully engaged with the concert piano now and besides, he had a girlfriend living with him in his apartment in Arlington and she’d throw ten kinds of fit if he told her he was going out on the rock and roll circuit. When Gabe mentioned his brother, Rafe, Duke was doubtful.

“A 16-year-old kid, Gabe?”

“Just try him out, Duke. Trust me, he’s not your average 16-year-old.”

“Does he play as well as you?”

Gabe answered with a rueful smile, “probably even better although if he knows it, I don’t think he cares.”

So Duke called him and the idea piqued Rafe’s interest. He met them at Duke’s studio in Baltimore. He brought along one of the guitars Gabe had left at Heron Point, not owning one of his own.

“Tell us some songs you can play, Rafe. We’ll find some we all know and see how we sound together.”

Rafe reeled off a list of titles. Duke nodded. There were several the band was familiar with.

“I’ve never played with a group before,” Rafe warned, “only for myself, so I’m not sure how I’ll do with that part of it.”

“Well, let’s just make a run at it and see how it turns out.” He named an old ZZ Top tune, When the House is Rockin’. It was like most of what the band played, down and dirty bluesy rock.

He did fumble around for a while, trying to get the hang of coordinating his playing with band mates but then, he hit his stride and he was off and running, fingers flashing over the strings, in perfect rhythm with the rest.

“I think you’ll do, Rafe, if you’re interested. We usually play most weekends.”

“Sounds like fun, at least for a while until you can find someone permanent. I’ve only got this year and then I’ll be heading off to college.”

“We’ll have to help you with the songs you don’t know but we can add them back into the mix as you learn them.”

“Have you got them all on cds so I can listen to them?”

“Yeah.”

“Give’em to me. I’ll teach them to myself. I’ll be ready by next week.”

Duke found the cds although he thought the kid was blowing’ smoke to say he could learn that many songs in a week.

But, he wasn’t, blowing smoke, that is. Duke ran him through every tune on the list. He was letter perfect.

They had their first gig that weekend, a senator’s daughter’s Sweet Sixteen party out in Falls Church. The band was a hit and their new guitar player fit in like he’d been playing with them all along. Duke, who paid attention to every detail about his band (he was a lot like Chester Hughes in that way), watched the interaction between Rafe and the audience. He wore tight black jeans, a long-sleeved black turtleneck and black cowboy boots with silver kicks on the toes. His too-long black hair kept falling down so that he had to shake his head while he played to throw it back out of his eyes. Slender hips and long legs rolled in sexy time to the music. He was one of those natural showmen who could look across an audience and make every girl there think the midnight eyes and the flashing smile were focused right on her.

At the break, he told Todd to move back farther so as to be sure Rafe was front and center.

“Why’s that, Duke?”

“Aren’t you watching, Todd? The teenies haven fallen in collective love with The Kid. When word about him gets around, we’ll be so hot, we’ll be able to double our prices.”

After it was over and the instruments had been loaded into the van, Duke called Rafe over to the side.

“I forgot to tell you about the rules of the band, Rafe. There are only a very few.”

“What are those, Duke?”

“One, never miss a performance unless you’re on your deathbed. Two, no drugs and in your case, no alcohol either. Three, and this might be the one you’ll want to keep in mind, Rafe, no messing with the babies. I don’t care if you fuck their old ladies or their big sisters. They’re adults and that’s on them but there’s nothing that makes a Senator more upset than somebody taking advantage of his little girl. Are you straight with all that?”

Rafe nodded. “I can live with those things, Duke.”

“Well,” Gabe asked Duke, “how’s it going with my baby brother?”

“He’s a rather awesome kid, Gabe.”

“So, I’ve always been told.”

“Were you two not close when you were at home?”

“No, nobody’s close to Rafe. Besides, there’s eight years difference in our ages so I mostly remember him as a little boy. All of us used to call him Injun because Mom and Dad were always forgetting to get his hair cut so it was long and black, and he was so quiet, we never heard him come or go. He’d just be there one minute and gone the next.”

“Are you the one who taught him to play?”

Gabe laughed. “I guess you could say that. In fact, it’s the most vivid recollection I have of us together. He came down to the basement one day when I was practicing. He never made a sound, just sat in the chair in front of me and watched my hands. To tell you the truth, he was so intense, it made me kind of nervous. When I was done, he asked me if he could try it once. I went through my spiel about how you couldn’t just sit down and play a guitar. You had to learn a lot of things first and practice until you got good, etc., etc. He just said, “please, Gabe.” I handed the guitar over to him just to placate him and prove a point. I was astonished when he played the damn thing, almost perfectly. I know he didn’t know about reading music or chording or anything then. I don’t know if he does now or not. I tried to talk him into taking an interest in some music classes but he never would. I told him when someone was as naturally gifted in an area like music as he was, he should concentrate on it. You know what the little shit told me, Duke, just as matter-of-fact as could be?”

“What?”

“He said he didn’t have enough time to concentrate on everything he was good at. He’s some kind of fucking savant, Duke.”

“If you saw him work the women in a crowd, Gabe, you say he’s some kind of fucking cocksman too.”

So on this bright sunny day as Rafe lay out on that raft in back of the house, he was thinking that although he was having lots of fun, his restful year was turning out not to be so restful, in fact, he might be burning his candle at both ends. He sometimes had to hustle to get from race meets to band gigs. And then there was the sex. Between the race car groupies and the rock and roll groupies (not to mention, Laney wanting attention at home) he thought he might be pushing himself beyond his endurance, which he had always thought before was pretty well limitless. It wasn’t the first time he’d had the thought that he needed to start pacing himself but he wasn’t sure how to do it. The girls at school had known how to let him know they were interested but they’d been bound by certain restrictions. Those same limitations didn’t apply to either the race fans or the music fans who felt free to express themselves in more direct ways. He’d never had so many breasts thrust into his face, so many eager hands on his ass, so many pussies pressed against his groin as he had this summer. School girls tended to be note writers and he’d gotten plenty of written offers detailing what he could expect if he took out this one or that one and he still did get some of those passed up onto the stage or thrown into the window of his car. But most of them just came out and told him in graphic terms what they wanted and what they would do for him in return. He accepted as many of those offers as he could handle, maybe a few more than he could comfortably handle.

Duke had ordered him off the young ones at the dances and for the most part, he’d abided by that. There was just that one time when the two beautiful twin daughters of the head of the Congressional Black Caucus said they wanted to play Oreo with him, him being the white icing in the middle. “Sorry, Duke,” he’d said to himself, “this is where me and the rules part ways.” Those girls had turned him every way but loose and when finally, at dawn, he half fell down the hanging stairs from their treehouse (yes, treehouse, which they seemed to use much as he used the cabin on Mount Vincennes only there were mats instead of a bed), he wasn’t sure he’d even have the strength to push the accelerator down on the Corvette. When he got home and Laney approached him, he’d told her, “not now, Lane, I just need a shower and some sleep”.

One nice thing about the band chasers was that, because of their following with Washington government types, there was lots of diversity and diversity was something that Rafe got off on. It was like having access to an ever-changing international sexual smorgasbord.

By contrast, the race track devotees tended to be more all-American, mostly white, some of them a little on the redneck-y side, although not all by any means. Not that it mattered - tight jeans, high cut tee-shirts and bleached blonde hair was fine with him too. And he liked southern drawls almost as well as British accents.

“Speed and sex and rock and roll,” he thought to himself right before he fell asleep in the sun, “my fucking cup runneth over.”

Laney was not so happy with the way things were going. The high hopes she’d had for this year were not panning out exactly as she planned. It seemed to her Rafe was gone almost as much as he would be if he had gone to Princeton what with the racing and the band. For sure, he wasn’t there on Friday and Saturday nights. He was home most week days but she was at school and half the time, he went off somewhere on week nights too. He offered to take her to the races whenever she wanted to go and she had gone with him a few times. She liked it okay, she guessed, but it wasn’t her favorite thing and he didn’t get to spend all that much time with her even when she was there. She’d also gone to dances with him twice but she discovered she hated that. He’d asked a group of girls if they cared if she sat with them and of course, they were thrilled to have her. Not because of her though but because they thought it would bring Rafe to their table more often, which it did, but that was almost the worst part. She hated seeing them fall all over him, touching him and cooing in his ear. She even saw one girl put her hand on his crotch under the table and he didn’t act like he minded either.

Just about the only good period was when her folks spent a week in Las Vegas. He had stayed home that whole time except just to do the races and one dance he had to do. He took her to the mall and bought her some new clothes and the next evening he told her to dress up nice and they went out to eat at Bridenthal’s, which wasn’t a fast food place, but an elegant restaurant near the harbor. They went to a movie and he lounged beside her the whole time, his hand on her upper thigh, with her thinking she just wished the damn film would get over with so they could go home and go to bed. He let her spend every night that week with him. She thought it was the closest she’d ever get to heaven – going to bed with him every night and waking up with him every morning, knowing as soon as he roused up, he’d start kissing her and touching her. All that week she went to school so happy, people asked her if she’d snagged some Valiums or something.

She thought he was probably doing part of it on purpose, staying away as much as he did. He kept bringing up how she needed to be prepared for when he wasn’t around at all. People probably thought she was lucky, living in the mansion she lived in, with the pool and the tennis courts and the horses and the boats. They didn’t have the faintest idea how lonesome, and sometimes, scary it was to live in a house so big, where bedrooms stretched down the hall for about a mile. It was probably different when all the big kids were still home and there were brothers and sisters behind every door but now all those bedrooms were empty. And the master bedroom where her folks slept was downstairs, at the other end of the house, so far away they probably wouldn’t even hear her if she screamed her head off. She still had nightmares some times and if Rafe wasn’t there to come and calm her down, the nightmare usually escalated into a panic attack. When that happened, she had to jump out of bed, turn on the light and watch something boring on t.v. until her heart stopped racing and her breathing returned to normal. The kids whose families weren’t as rich as hers might envy her but she’d give anything to live in a snug little ranch house where everyone was practically on top of everyone else.

She really tried to take what Rafe said to heart. Sometimes she’d look around at the boys in school and think, “would I like to go on a date with this one?” or “how would it feel to be in bed with that one?” and just the very thought just made a shiver of revulsion go down her spine. She could not even conceive of having sex with anyone but Rafe.

He was having lunch at the marina. He’d noticed in an off-hand kind of way that his waitress was attractive (he’d have to be on his deathbed not to at least notice). Probably in her mid to late thirties with a trim figure in her uniform and short black hair, beautiful brown eyes and a generous smile. He certainly wouldn’t have given her a second thought though. Another woman was the last thing he needed right now. But then she asked him if he wasn’t Rafe Vincennes and when he told her yes, she said her daughter, Misty, went to school with his sister, Lane, and her name was Pam Madison.

And then he instantly flashed back to the conversation he and Laney had had about the girls talking sex in gym class and he especially remembered that Misty’s mother had said most women faked it and that she had never been brought to a climax by a man. And suddenly, it was a whole new ballgame. Now he saw her, not just as any other appealing woman, but as a challenge. He thought he would have to play this one very, very carefully. Misty’s Mom seemed like the type who would be horrified at the very thought of taking up with her daughter’s friend’s 16-year-old brother.

So that first day, they just chit-chatted a little whenever she came to ask him if he wanted more coffee or a piece a pie (which he ordered although he didn’t want it) or was he ready for his check - about the girls and how he’d be going off to school next year. He didn’t attempt even the subtlest pick up line. Just left a tip, neither too big nor too small, and went on his way.

Rafe was nothing, if not patient about something he wanted badly. He didn’t eat at the Marina every day, just now and then, and each time they became a little friendlier and talked a little longer. He felt like he was making progress the day she agreed to sit and have a cup of coffee with him when her shift was over. He confided in her then about the way it had been with him and Laney.

“Mom and Dad just basically called it quits on being parents after the first seven so I feel like I practically raised her although,” he smiled his fleeting smile, “I’m pretty young to be a Dad.”

That was another little opening to discuss barely teenage girls and the problems they presented. Fortunately, he wasn’t lying so he really did know about things like the logistics of getting them back and forth to cheer practice and how much it cost to outfit them for the Squad and how all the middle school girls thought, Mr. Schmidt, their Biology teacher, was creepy and called him Frog Freak.

After a month, he got her to open up a little about her personal life. She was dating a guy named Joe. It wasn’t a great love match but Joe was solid and reliable and she could count on him for things like taking the car to have the tires rotated and getting under the sink to fix a leak. And he was good to Misty and to her and her first two husbands hadn’t been. Misty’s dad was an alcoholic and she’d caught the second one cheating with her next door neighbor.

“I can’t see why any man would want to cheat when he had a wife as pretty as you, Pam.”

And then he changed the subject.

By the end of the next two weeks, he was flirting, just a little, and she was flirting back, just a little. To be fair, most women would have found it pretty hard to resist Rafe when he was putting on the full court press.

He calculated the timing, figured it would take him two more weeks to get the job done.

“Pam, would you consider going for a drive with me?”

“Are you crazy, Rafe? You’re a 16-year-old kid!”

“It wouldn’t be a date or anything. I just enjoy being with you. I like talking to you. I like looking at you.” The smile gleamed in his dark face. “Just a ride in the car, Pam, that’s all. It’s a beautiful night. I’ll put the sunroof back. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go and bring you back whenever you say.”

“Just a ride, Rafe, that’s all, and you’ll bring me back when I’m ready? Do you swear?”

“I swear, Pam.”

It was a beautiful night, balmy and star-filled. The trees rustled in the light breeze. The bay glistened in the moonlight. He parked the Corvette in a spot he knew by the water where it was always private. They just talked. He didn’t try to touch her, not until the very end, when he put his hand behind her neck and leaned down to kiss her. Not a long kiss but a definite one, enough that he felt her lips opening under his.

“We’d better go back, Rafe.”

One more week, he thought.

“Let me spend one night with you, Pam, just that. I don’t want to muck up your life. I just want to spend a night with you. Then you can go off and marry Joe and live your stable, solid life. Just one little fling, Pam, before you get back on the straight and narrow for good.”

“Rafe, my God, if anyone ever found out, I’d die of embarrassment.”

“Yes!” he thought triumphantly, “done!”

“No one will find out, Pam. We’ll go into D.C. I’ll take you to one of the best hotels in the city. We’ll have a great meal. We’ll have a wonderful time. And then I’ll kiss you good bye and leave you alone, I promise.”

She looked at him across the table. Her mind said, “you have lost your marbles to even be thinking about this.” Her voice said, “I’m off Thursday. I could go Wednesday night. I’ll let Misty stay at her Grandma’s house.”

He nodded. “Wednesday night, it is. Park your car on the second floor of the hospital parking garage. I’ll pick you up there.” The smile came and went. “You won’t get cold feet and stand me up, will you, Pam?”

“No, I’ll be there.”

And she was. He found the car where she was waiting and pulled up beside her. She slipped quickly into the ‘Vette. She did have cold feet. In fact, she’d tossed and turned all night thinking about the stupidity of what she was doing and who she was doing it with but it didn’t matter. When the time came to leave to meet him, she was pulling out of her driveway. She thought she looked pretty good for 37. She’d paid extra attention to her make up and her hair. He’d said they’d go to an up-scale restaurant so she was wearing her black silk dress with the vee-neck and the skirt that swirled around her legs and strappy fuck-me heels.

When she got into his car, he’d just looked at her for a minute and said, “you’re beautiful, Pam,” and kissed her lightly.

And she almost didn’t recognize him. She’d never seen him in anything but blue jeans or shorts but tonight he was wearing black dressy jeans and a blazingly white shirt, open at the throat, that showed off his tan, and a casual black sport coat. He’d obviously been to a hair stylist. His usually too-long hair with the lock that tumbled across his eyes was sleekly razor trimmed.

“What do you think?” he asked her, running his hand across his head, “I usually don’t pay too much attention to hair until I can’t see but I didn’t think the old hair went with the outfit.”

“From Rafe the Beach Bum to Rafe the Dashing Man About Town – it’s sort of a startling switch but I like it.”

“I figured this way I’ll look older and you won’t have to be so stressed about what people are thinking.”

He took her to the Regnier Hotel in downtown Washington, a suite no less. She knew it must have cost at least a month of her tips at the Marina. She guessed this was how the other half lived. He’d had a dozen red roses sent to their room in advance with a card that said, “Thanks, Rafe.”

They ate at the hotel dining room where he ordered the shrimp scampi and she had filet mignon, baked potato, a salad and two glasses of Merlot (which she needed for her nerves), asking him self-consciously, “is Merlot okay to have with a filet?” To which he replied with amusement, “anything you like is fine.”

She noticed that if you were wanting to keep a low profile, Rafe Vincennes was not the person to be with. Every woman in the room seemed drawn to look in his direction. She could tell he was aware of it but he didn’t so much as glance back.

The closer it came time to go to the room, the more anxious she got.

He took her hand. “Pam, just relax. I’ll make it all right. I promise.”

She thought it was ironic that the 16-year-old had to reassure the 37-year-old that it was okay to have sex.

He didn’t rush her. They just sat and talked until finally she was the one who said, “well, I think I’m ready to leave if you are.”

He grinned. “I’ve been ready all evening.”

Just inside the room, he put his arms around her and kissed her, softly and sweetly.

“Just let me lead the way. I’ll make it easy for you,” he told her.

She felt the zipper go down at the back of her dress. He lifted it over her head and laid it across the chair so it wouldn’t get wrinkled, then turned back to her and unfastened her bra. He slipped it over her arms before carrying her to the king-sized bed where he carefully stripped off her panty hose until she lie naked. He ran one hand lightly across her breasts and down her belly, his fingertips trailed across her mound and along her thighs. Just that, but she felt like little tongues of heat flared up where his hand had been.

She watched him undress himself. Shoes and socks, then coat and shirt, pants and underwear. She saw his lean brown torso moving toward her and she closed her eyes. She felt the bed give as he lay down beside her.

“Open your eyes, Pam. It’s more fun when you watch. I like seeing you. I want you enjoy seeing me too.”

She looked up to glimpse the black hair, the dark eyes, the gleaming smile, coming down over her. He kissed her softly on the lips, his tongue probing the inside of her mouth. And then he kissed her forehead, her eyebrows, her cheeks, her chin.

“You don’t know how much I’ve wanted to do this,” he whispered in her ear.

He kissed her throat and shoulders and above her breasts and then he moved to each breast, kissing and licking and lightly sucking, his tongue tickling across her nipples.

She started to lift her hands to put them on his shoulders.

“No, just lie there. I want to do this for you. You can get involved the next time.”

So she just lay, with her head spinning, as she felt his mouth move down her belly and to her inner thighs, leaving hot wet tongue lines in its wake. She felt him hold her open with his fingers, then felt his tongue investigating her, lingeringly, and then on her sweet spot, tickling and massaging, but slowly, gently, tenderly, as he had known he would have to be with this woman.

Until, in time, she felt orgasm beginning to stir, like it had been put to sleep by an evil witch’s spell until the Prince’s kiss aroused it from its slumber. It lifted its head, then began to move, finally leaping into full joyous wakefulness.

“Oh, Rafe, oh, Rafe,” she panted, “that feels so good, oh, please don’t stop!”

Mentally, he made a small tick beside her name in his sexual memory book. If that sounds cold, it really wasn’t. He had his own reasons for seducing her but he also thought that he was giving full value for what he got.

He moved back up beside her. “Now,” he told her, “you can join in.”

She put her arms around his neck and kissed him, pressed herself against him, sucked his nipples, ran her hand down his hard, flat belly, down the thin line of dark hair that went from his navel to his groin, to where his cock was standing at full attention. Meanwhile his hands and mouth were all over her too. His finger circled her nipple, his mouth nuzzled her neck and gave her tiny little love bites on her shoulder. He ran his finger into her vagina. It was wet and creamy.

“I want to fuck you now,” he said, “are you ready?”

“Yes,” she said, spreading her legs, “do it, do it!”

He mounted her and she felt him slide inside, then begin to move in and out, slow smooth strokes.

“There’s no hurry,” he told her, “just let it happen, Sweetheart. I won’t go ahead of you. I can give you all the time you need.”

He felt her breathing quicken and her hands clutching at his back. Her legs went up and around him. Her hips reached up to meet his.

He practically sang in her ear. “Ah, Pam, it feels so sweet to be here. God, I’ve wanted to do this since the first day I met you. Let’s do it together, Baby.”

And they did. Her back arched, she let out a huge sigh of satisfaction and he felt himself exploding inside her.

“Mmmm,” she said, “that was great, Rafe.”

She fell asleep with his arms around her. When she woke up, she was snuggled up against his back with her crotch pressed against his butt and her face against his shoulder. She lay for a moment without moving, luxuriating in the hard body stretched out beside her.

“I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”

“How did you know I was awake?”

“I felt it.” He turned to face her. “One more time before we have to leave?”

“Let me go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”

White teeth flashed. “I won’t go anywhere.”

She peed, brushed her teeth and ran a quick comb through her hair. When she returned, he pulled her hand over onto his cock, saying, “this time you get on top.”

“No,” she said, “I’m not an on top kind of person. I’d be too nervous thinking you’re looking at me.”

“But I want to look at you. I want to see the look on your face when you make yourself happy. Come on, Pam, just climb on over here and sit down on it. You don’t have to do anything else at first. If you do that and you still feel more comfortable the other way, we’ll change positions.” He lifted her until she was straddling him. “Just come down on it until it’s clear inside you.” She felt the head of it at the entryway to her pussy, felt herself slipping down onto it until it filled her up, “Just be still for a while. Can you feel how anxious it is for you to make it come?” he whispered.

And it seemed like she could feel it throbbing inside her or maybe it was her vagina, throbbing around it, excited by the foreign object trapped within it.

“Now move around a little, play with it, use it for what you need.”

Desire overcame her reticence. It was as if her whole being was focused on the place between her legs. She did as he said, rotating her hips to feel it pushing inside her, looking for release. She began to feel small, slow waves of pleasure breaking against the shore of her consciousness.

“Ride me, Pam. Here, let me get you started.”

His hands came around her hips as he guided her to help her find the right rhythm. She was panting now, moaning a little in her throat. As she rode him harder and faster, the small slow waves grew until they were great rolling breakers, carrying her onto a blissful beach, leaving her sensuously content and completely emptied of stress. She collapsed onto his chest. She realized she’d forgotten all about him.

“Rafe, I’m sorry, did you…?”

He grinned. “It’s okay, Baby, I hitched a ride with you.”

“What shall I do about the flowers? How would I explain them if I took them with me?”

He shrugged. “Leave them for the maid. I don’t care. I only wanted them to be here when you first arrived.”

She left the roses but pocketed the small card that came with them.

(He had deliberately planned that card. He knew the female penchant for saving souvenirs so he made the message as innocuous as possible, enabling her to explain it away later if she needed to).

“So, Pam, are you glad you let me talk you into this?”

She hesitated. “Rafe, you’re like a sumptuous hot fudge sundae, sinfully rich and decadent, but not very nutritious for every day fare. Joe is meat and potatoes, bland but filling. The question is, should you eat the hot fudge sundae if you know you’re just setting yourself up to yearn for something you’re not going to have again or would you be better off never to know what you’re missing?

“Tasting everything is always better,” he answered. “In the end, all we are as people is the sum total of our experiences.”

“If I was your age, Rafe, I could imagine letting myself fall seriously in love with you and getting my heart broken for my efforts but I have to remember I’m a single 37-year-old mother with a shitty little job as a waitress that barely let’s me make ends meet and a boyfriend who’ll crawl under the sink to fix the leak.”

“I don’t know how long I’ll end up living,” he mused, “but I expect I could go however long that is without ever getting under a sink.”

She laughed. “Exactly.”

“But, Pam, couldn’t you show him what makes you happy?”

“First, Rafe, I don’t think he’s an old dog who is going to be up for learning any new tricks and second, he already thinks he makes me happy. I’m in a Catch 22. Kind of hard at this late date to say, ‘oh, by the way…’”

“If it was me, I’d want a woman to tell me,” he said, “so I could fix it.”

She laid her hand on his cheek. “I don’t think it’s a problem you’re ever going to have to worry about, Rafe.”

He dropped her off at her car, giving her a last kiss.

“The answer to your question, Rafe, is yes. I’m glad you talked me into going with you. You’ll always have a special place in my memory, one I’ll probably drag out from time to time when I need an uplift. But, Rafe, don’t come to the marina to eat anymore, okay, and if you see me at one of the girls’ games, just say hi and keep on going?”

He shook his head in agreement. “I know.”

As she was walking to her car, he called out, “hey, Pam…”

“What?”

“If you ever get a craving for hot fudge, just call me.”

She blew him a kiss. “That won’t happen, Rafe, I’m running back to the straight and narrow as fast as my legs will take me - but thanks.”

He drove away thinking, “mission accomplished.”

She put the thank you card in her Bible where she thought Misty would never find it but she did.

“Mom, what did you ever do for Rafe Vincennes that he would thank you for?”

“What do you mean?”

“I found a card in your Bible that said – ‘thanks, Rafe’ – I assumed it was Rafe Vincennes, he’s the only Rafe we know.”

“Oh, he used to come into the marina for lunch sometimes and we talked. One time he sat and confided in me about the situation with his parents and Laney. The card was in my purse and I used it for a bookmark. ”

“What about Laney and her parents?”

“That’s none of your business, Misty. It was a confidential conversation.”

“I never remember Laney’s folks one time at school or at our games. She hates being alone so much in that huge house. She said if it wasn’t for Rafe, it would be terrible. We’re poor but I’d rather live here with you than be rich like the Vincennes.”

“Yes, sometimes, we envy people without knowing the whole story, Miss.”

“Mom?”

“What?”

“Do you think Rafe Vincennes is hot?”

“I probably would if I was your age, why?” (God, she hoped she wasn’t blushing!)

Misty giggled. “We passed around a poll at school and he was voted the hottest boy by the middle school girls. Do you think Rafe would ever go out with someone like me, Mom?”

“No! You’re too young for him.”

“He’s 16 and I’m 14, that’s only two years. Wasn’t Dad five years older than you?”

“He’s going to be leaving for Princeton next year and be hanging around with college girls. I don’t think he’ll be interested in kids your age and now do you think we could change the subject to something else besides Rafe Vincennes?”

“Gawd, Mom, why are you so grouchy?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you, Miss. I think I’m getting ready to start my period. I must have PMS.”

“Do you think if Joe comes this weekend, he’ll fix my closet door where it keeps getting off the track?”

“I’m sure he will, Honey.”

“I like Joe, Mom. He’s nice.”

Gratefully, “yes, Misty, he is nice, isn’t he?”

“Have you ever cried, Rafe?”

“I don’t know, Lane, I suppose I must have at some time, when I was a baby.”

“I’ve never seen you cry. Even when the dog attacked me and you got bitten, you didn’t cry.”

He smiled faintly. “Well, if I did, Honey, I probably learned quickly enough that it wasn’t going to do me any good. You know, there was no Rafe around when I was little, like you had me. Maybe I just stopped doin’ it when I found out it was a waste of time.”

“Well, this is the last meet, Rafe. Are you still determined to go off to college next year?”

“No question about it. My dad made it clear – no college, no Corvette. I love three things in this world, Chet – my sister, my dog and my car. Besides, it’s the way it is, Vincennes sons go to Princeton. It’s like the law.” He grinned.

“I never expected when you first came to me as a snot-nosed kid you’d have the talent for driving you turned out to have, Rafe. I could see you going all the way with it, if that’s what you decided to do.”

“I still might, but I have to get this out of the way first.”

Chester held out his hand. “You’re welcome back any time, Rafe. You come to me, you’ll always have a car to drive.”

“Thanks. It’s been awesome.”

Chester sighed. He really hated to lose this boy. It was true what he said about Rafe’s driving but you could always find drivers. Finding great drivers with the kid’s charisma was something else again.

Magdelene always went all out for Christmas, decorating the house to within an inch of its life. Huge swags of evergreens with giant red and green plaid bows draped the golden oak staircase. Enormous wreaths hung on every door. Lights shone from every window. Banks of poinsettias filled the fireplace hearths and extravagant red and white flower arrangements bedecked every mantel and table. Out in the front courtyard was a flood-lit, life-sized manger scene, imported from Italy, that put to shame anything found in any church yard.

There were trees throughout the downstairs – blue ones and white ones and green ones, decorated in various themes but the piece de resistance was the 15-foot tree in the left tower that opened into the living room. It was covered with white lights and red bulbs and golden bows, along with ornaments made by nine artistic young Vincennes’ throughout the years. Presents spilled out into the floor in all directions. Christmas was the one time Renny and Magdelene expected their entire family to return home. Their children could spend Easter or Thanksgiving with in-laws or friends or off on backpack journeys through Tibet or what the hell ever but by God, they would drop whatever they were doing and come home for Christmas day. When they were young, the tradition was opening presents, followed by waffles for breakfast. When they got older, they flipped that schedule and ate first, then repaired to the living room for gifts. After that, they were all free to nap or visit or watch television. The late afternoon was turkey and ham with all the trimmings, followed by evening mass.

Rafe had warned Duke early on. “If you schedule a Christmas night dance, you’ll have to find a substitute for me. My parents don’t excuse an absence at Christmas for any reason except intensive care.”

So all the siblings were arriving. The garage was full and the bedrooms were full, just like back in the old days when they all lived at home. Morgan was 35 now. He came with his wife, Jessica, and their two children (a dark boy, 10, and blonde girl, 7), Logan and Jennifer. They lived on an estate in Connecticut, Amber Hill. He was a partner in his law firm in New York City. He still stayed in shape playing a cutthroat game of racquet ball.

Wyatt was the only one who might have been allowed off the hook for not showing up but fortunately, he was able to get leave from the military. Wyatt was married too, to an Air Force lieutenant, a lovely Mexican girl named Belen. They joked and said one reason they got along so well was that they hardly ever saw one another.

Mariel was the third to bring an in-law into the Vincennes family. Her husband was British, Sir Reginald Dunstan, Seventh Earl of Stancroft. (No one was surprised when Mariel married a title). Actually, Reg was a heck of a nice guy who didn’t put on airs like you might expect from an Earl, in fact, if anyone put on airs, it was Mariel herself. They had two sons, both black-haired, Reggie Jr and Hugh, 5 and 3 years old. They had teasingly called her Lady Mariel even before she married into royalty.

Denis was also there from New York, along with his partner, Jeff. Denis was a full-time artist and Jeff was an actor. They seemed to make a pretty good living in their two unpredictable professions (not that any Vincennes ever had to worry about making a living). Denis had never had a problem acknowledging his sexual orientation because he knew none of his family cared, all of them being totally non-homophobic.

Ditto, Jocelyn with her African-American boyfriend, Edgar. They were engaged and would be married next June. Together, they owned a psychiatric clinic in Boston and both had about a hundred initials behind their names, which no one else in the family could ever decipher. She was slender and platinum; he was ebony and had the physique of a linebacker. Their colleagues in psychiatry referred to them as Day and Night.

Gabe, of course, was playing piano on the concert circuit. He and his girlfriend had broken up. She hadn’t been as understanding about spending time apart as Wyatt’s wife.

Annecy had completed her degree in veterinary science and had just been hired at an animal clinic on Cape Cod.

By the time everyone arrived with their packages, the presents filled up half the living room floor. Their socks all hung on the intricately carved mantel. You had to be a sibling or a spouse to get a sock because Magdelene said the girlfriends and boyfriends came and went too fast. She made an exception for Jeff, of course. She figured he and Denis would be married if the country ever became enlightened enough to allow gays to wed in every state. There were usually no big surprises about socks. They were filled with various kinds of expensive candy and contained, in addition, a check for $1,000. (Morgan could remember back to when it was only $500). There were other small things tucked into the velvet stockings (a different color for each individual Vincennes) – a gift card to a book or art store, a pair of earrings, a miniature pewter Civil war soldier for Denis’ collection, a Waterford crystal animal for Annecy’s. The $1,000 checks were one reason they all almost always made it home. Renny’s rule was that it was only good for Christmas Day. If you weren’t there then, the check disappeared.

Laney thought it was exciting when everyone was at Heron Point. She imagined what it must have been like when they all lived here – all the noise and activity and people running up and down the stairs and doors opening and closing and laughing and music playing. Rafe said he could remember when Annecy and Gabe and Jocey lived at home and when the others still spent their college vacations here but by the time Lane was 5, even Annecy was a teenager and the older ones were gone for good.

“So, Rafe,” Gabe asked him, “you’re racing cars and playing guitar for a year before you go to Princeton, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t believe Dad let you get away with that. None of the rest of us would have been allowed to postpone college to play around for a year. Or to have a Corvette for our first car. He must have mellowed in his old age.”

Rafe’s dark eyes captured Gabe’s, a slight smile drifted across his face. “Think back, Gabe. Do you seriously think I’ve had it better than you older ones?”

Gabe remembered Injun, the serious little boy who always seemed to be charged with caring for his baby sister, the silent little boy who was mostly ignored, even by their parents. His eyes dropped, “no, Rafe, I don’t guess you did.”

Another Vincennes tradition was the Christmas List. The kids had always looked forward to making out their wish lists. Sometimes they worked on them for weeks, adding and revising. It wasn’t unusual for them to carry over to the second page. With great fanfare, they handed them in to Magdelene on Thanksgiving. She wanted plenty of time to do all her shopping. Unless they got completely crazy, they always got everything they asked for – over the years that had meant bikes and games and puppies and ponies and musical instruments and leather coats and tennis bracelets and IPods.

Rafe was the hardest one of all to buy for because there were very few things he seemed to want. Usually, his list contained two items at most. The only gifts Magdelene could ever remember that he seemed to feel passionate about were his German Shepherd puppy, Raven, and the year he made a point of asking to go to ski camp when he was nine and then to ask for a ski weekend every year after that. He never even had a pony of his own but simply took whichever one was standing in the barn when he wanted to ride, before switching to Destiny. Rafe seemed to lack a sense of possession, never craving stuff of his own like the other kids but satisfied to make do with whatever was around. He liked to fish but there were fishing poles galore at Heron Point and he’d just take one that was there. He was still using Gabe’s old guitar in the band and seemed content to continue doing so. If he wanted to shoot, he got one of the guns out of the gun safe in Renny’s study. Magdelene sometimes bought him clothes but he never asked for anything special so she mostly got him jeans and shirts and underwear and used her own judgment about the rest, like his leather jacket. He wore whatever she bought him (she had excellent taste in clothes if she did say so herself) but she thought if she took something out of his closet and replaced it with something else, he’d simply wear the new thing without comment. He didn’t wear jewelry and he didn’t collect anything. His room was spartan, without the bulletin board of souvenirs and memorabilia and team pictures her other kids had highlighted. There were no banners or posters on the walls. He never displayed the plaques or trophies or blue ribbons he’d won. He’d never wanted a letter jacket or a class ring and she didn’t think he’d bought any of his school yearbooks, although his picture probably appeared in them more than anyone else’s. She thought she should probably make an effort to buy them herself. Everyone else’s were on a special shelf in the library. (The idea would disappear from her head by the time the holiday was over). He’d won the Regatta this year, and that was a big deal in this part of the country, but she didn’t even know what happened to the big silver bowl he was awarded for that triumph.

She asked him – “By the way, Rafe, what did you do with the Regatta award?”

“It’s up in the attic with all the other stuff like that.”

So every year was a challenge to know what to buy him. Whoever got his name in the annual Christmas drawing always groaned in despair.

Surprisingly, he was an excellent gift-giver himself, invariably coming up with something unique that delighted its recipient. Last year, for instance, he’d given her an Irish Claddaugh ring, handcrafted in and imported from Ireland, with her birthstone emerald held by the two hands with a crown above. Everyone in the family mostly thought of themselves as Vincennes’, hardly remembering that her side, the Morgans, could proudly trace their Irish heritage back for many generations. Getting the ring from Rafe almost made her cry, thinking that the child she understood the least was the most perceptive about her.

This year he’d gotten Denis an intricately carved collection of miniature Civil War weapons, every gun and saber, perfectly replicated in wood and metal.

Denis was blown away. “My God, Rafe, I’ve never had anything so wonderful. Jesus – oops, sorry, Mom - they’re exquisite.” He ran his fingers over the details on the tiny pieces.

“I found out about a guy who does them. I’ve had them for two years,” he smiled his quick smile, “I’d decided if I didn’t draw your name this Christmas, I was just going to give them to you for the hell of it.”

When everyone else gathered up their kids and their clothes and their gifts and moved out, Renny and Magdelene went with them. They were going to Monte Carlo for two weeks to celebrate their 36th anniversary (Magdelene had been pregnant with Morgan when they wed, despite Renny pulling out at the crucial moment – it seemed like all it ever took was for his sperm and her egg to breathe the same air to make a baby).

It seemed strange, after all the people and activity, for the house to be so quiet.

Lane was on the computer, doing research for the paper she had to have done by the time she went back to school after Christmas break. Rafe was lying on the sofa in front of the wide-screen t.v. watching a football game.

“Come here, Honey. Sit down and let me put my head on your lap.”

He lifted his head long enough for her to slip beneath him, then laid it back down.

She began running her fingers through his black hair, something she knew he loved. It made him feel like purring, he said.

“Mmmm, that feels good. Guess what, Lane?”

“What?”

“The band is trying out a new guitar player. They want to make sure they have someone ready by the time I leave. He’s going to sit in with them for the next week. Duke said I could either tag along or take the time off.”

She held her breath. “What did you tell them, Rafe?”

“Why, I told him my baby sister was going to be home all alone and she’d probably want me to stay here with her and make love to her twenty times a day so I guessed I’d better take the time off.”

“Truly, Rafe, are you really going to just be home the whole time?”

“Truly, Sweetie.

He rolled over on his stomach. “Do the back now,” he told her, burying his face between her legs. She could feel his warm breath making a damp spot on the crotch of her jeans, sending shivers up into her belly.

“Take your pants off, Lane.”

When she was naked on the bottom, he told her to straddle him, putting her knees on either side of his face. He held her butt in his hands, bringing her down over him where he could reach her. She braced herself on the arm of the sofa as his tongue slowly traveled everywhere but the spot she wanted it most. It went inside and up and down and around. He teased her until she felt her body quivering.

“Rafe,” it was all she could say, just his name,”Rafe.”

Until finally he went where she needed him to go and for a few minutes, it seemed to her that the world just stopped turning on its axis.

He pulled her down until she was lying on top of him. She could feel him hard beneath her.

“Just stay here until I see who wins this ballgame, then you can do me.”

She thought it was impossible to be in bed with Rafe and him not know you were awake. He could seem to be sound asleep but the minute you came to consciousness, even if you didn’t make a move or even open your eyes, he sensed it and said, “Mornin’, Honey.” Most often, he woke up first and then she aroused to his lips on hers or his mouth on her breast or his hands between her legs. She would think, “another wonderful day” and try not to let herself count how many were left before it was over.

If she was washing their supper dishes (she never used the dishwasher when it was just their few dishes), he would press up close behind her with his crotch against her rear, then he’d slide his hands up under her shirt and bra and fondle her breasts.

“Keep goin’, Girl,” he’d tease. “Get your dishes washed and when you’re done, we’ll do something else,” with his hard cock pushing into her butt and his finger circling her nipple.

“They can wait, Rafe, I’ll finish them later.”

“Oh, no, Lane, duty before pleasure, you know.”

And she’d keep washing as he kissed her neck and breathed warm breath into her ear until finally she was done and she could turn around and put her arms around him. Then he’d pull her pants down and tell her to lean over the chair and she’d feel him enter her from behind. She’d be so anxious by then, that’s all it took the first time and then she’d have another orgasm a little later when she could feel him getting ready.

As much as she loved it, when he did it to her, she loved just as much doing it to him, feeling him need her. When she had him in her mouth and his hands were wrapped in her hair, moving her, when she felt his urgency, until he spilled himself into her mouth, her heart did flip-flops.

When he crooned in her ear, begging her to make him come, or when it was over and he murmured, “oh, God, Laney, that was so good, you make me feel so good, Honey,” she almost didn’t think anyone could hold so much happiness.

“We could run away, Rafe.”

“Why would we want to do that, Lane?”

“So we could be together all the time. We could move to another country and become other people. No one would know. We don’t look anything alike.”

He laughed. “That’s a total fantasy, Sweetie, and you know it. You wouldn’t want to give up everything you have and everyone you know just to be with me.”

She knew he didn’t love her in the same way she loved him, had always known it. She didn’t think if he was here and she didn’t come home, he’d be almost sick thinking about her empty bed like she was when it was him. She thought she would give up everything she had and everyone she knew to be able to be with him. She thought she’d do it without a second thought.

Oh, Lord Jesus, how could she have done such a thing? Rafe would be so furious, he’d kill her, he’d probably just kill her.

Ever since Laney could remember she’d had a secret yearning to ride Destiny. She thought they all did at one time or another, probably because he was like the forbidden fruit. She knew it had been a sore spot with the others that Rafe was the only one ever allowed to ride him besides Renny. She’d heard Annecy muttering resentfully more than once about why Renny trusted Rafe and only Rafe to take his precious stallion when she rode just as well. Lane felt the same way. Rafe made it seem so easy and so exhilarating to go tearing across the field on Des. Rafe himself had taught her to ride starting when she was only about three and she knew she was good, he told her she was good.

If she was honest with herself, she guessed she’d have to admit that there was a little bit of revenge involved too. She was upset when he told her he’d be gone most of the day, their last day together before he had an engagement with the band and he’d probably start to be away a lot again, probably with girls he met at the dances.

So she supposed her hair-brained scheme to take Des out for a ride was partially to get back at him and prove a point although she never meant for him to know. She usually wasn’t that brave about acting out her rebellions so what on God’s green earth had possessed her this time?

The stallion bucked her off almost the minute she settled into the saddle. Now he was still out in the pasture, saddled, with his reins hanging down and she thought she had a broken wrist. She was stationed in the kitchen watching out the back window when she heard the Corvette come roaring down the drive and the garage door open.

Her head and heart were both pounding as she saw him swinging down the flagstone walk toward the back door in that graceful way he had. His hair had grown out from that one time he had it razor cut shorter than normal and that stray lock was, as usual, hanging down over his forehead. He looked pretty happy but that wasn’t going to last long. About ten seconds after he came through the door, she figured.

She was crying by the time he walked into the kitchen.

“What’s the matter, Honey?”

“Rafe, please, I’m so sorry, I know you’re going to be so mad….”

His eyes darkened. “What am I going to be mad about, Lane?”

“I took Destiny out and….”

He grabbed her by the upper arm so tightly she knew she’d have a bruise. “You did fucking what?” His quiet voice was even scarier than if he’d yelled.

“I took him out and he threw me. He’s out in the field. He wouldn’t let me catch him and put him away,” she sobbed. “I think I broke my wrist.”

She’d never seen his eyes look so black. “I’m going to go take care of Des. In the meantime, I want you to sit down on that fucking chair and don’t even move a goddam muscle until I get back, do you understand me, Lane?”

“My wrist….”

“The horse comes first. You’ll just have to suffer, then we’ll deal with your wrist.”

He turned and left. She could see him from the window, opening the pasture gate. Saw him whistling and Destiny coming right to him. Then she saw him leading the stallion into the barn. She figured she had about ten minutes until he got back. She thought one of the best weeks of her life was about to be followed by one of the worst.

When he got back from the stable, he got the Corvette and pulled it as close to the back door as he could get it.

“Get your coat and come on. I’m taking you to the emergency room.”

“Rafe, I…”

“Shut up, Lane, just shut up. I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

He hustled her into E.R. and lounged silently in a chair in her room while they sent her for x-rays that confirmed the break and then wrapped her wrist and put it in a cast. He put the release instructions and the prescription for pain pills the doctor had given her in his coat pocket. Then he drove to the drugstore and had her prescription filled.

When they got home, he told her to go take a pill and come back, now he wanted to talk to her.

She sat in the chair he pointed her to. He stood in front of her. “Don’t even think about getting up, Lane, until I’ve said all I have to say.” She shivered a little just looking at the harsh twist to his mouth and the eyes that were like storm clouds.

“Do you remember, Lane, the time you went to the basement and got lost and I had to come and find you even though I’d left instructions telling you not to leave the nursery while I was gone?”

“Yes, Rafe, I remember.”

“And do you remember me telling you that you always had to obey me?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I guess, technically, you didn’t disobey me this time because I never actually told you not to ever take Destiny out and do you know why I never told you that, Lane?” he asked in a voice that was deceptively casual.

She was gulping and wiping the tears from her eyes and snot from her nose with her sleeve because he’d told her not to move and she didn’t have a tissue within reach.

“W-w-why?”

“It never occurred to me that I had to, because I never thought you’d be stupid enough to pull such a fucking idiotic trick. But, I expect you knew, didn’t you, Laney, even without me telling you, it was an order just the same? ”

“Yes, I knew, Rafe.”

“Quit crying, Lane. I don’t want to see it or hear it. You did this yourself and now, you can sit here and take your goddam punishment without whining.”

She struggled to choke down her sobs.

“So, what were you planning? If it had all worked out for you, you were just going to put him back and I’d never be the wiser?”

“Y-y-yes.”

“But it didn’t work out for you, did it, Lane?”

“N-n-no.”

“Why do you think I got so angry with you when you went to the basement when you were three?”

“I d-d-on’t know, Rafe.”

“Because I didn’t want you to get hurt. And why do you think I wouldn’t have wanted you riding Destiny?”

“For the s-s-same reason?”

“Yes. Christ, can you imagine how I’d have felt if I’d had to call the folks to come home because you had a fucking broken neck or something when they made me responsible for you, Lane? Do you think that would have been a very pleasant phone call to make?”

“I’m s-s-sorry, Rafe, please….”

“Too late for ‘I’m sorry’. Now, here’s the deal. If you’d been hurt some other way, a way you couldn’t help, I’d probably have been all helpful brother. I expect you’re going to have a little bit of a tough time fastening your pants and your bra and washing your hair and brushing it and probably several other things, one-handed. But, you know what, I don’t care much. You wanted to do your little dance and now you’re going to have to pay the fiddler on your own. So don’t come to me for assistance, just figure it out the best way you can.”

He walked closer to her and tipped her chin up with his finger. In a low tone, he told her, “And by the way, Lane, my bedroom door will be closed until further notice. Don’t open it, don’t even knock on it. Do you understand everything I’ve told you?”

“Rafe…”

“Do you understand?”

“Y-y-yes,” no matter what he said, she was bawling in earnest now.

“Good, then why don’t you go on up to your room now? Why don’t you just stay there until tomorrow?”

She stumbled up the stairs and fell on her bed, crying. Eventually, she cried herself to sleep. She woke up when she heard him taking a shower. When she got up to get undressed, she discovered he was right. She had a hard time unbuttoning her buttons and her jeans with one hand. Her bra was even worse. She had to pull the straps down, then work it around so the fasteners were in the front, struggling to undo them left-handed. Finally, she had to lie on her bed and pull her jeans down, little by little, one leg at a time. She was panting by the time she was completely undressed.

She heard him leave the bathroom and heard his door shut. She crept in and went to the bathroom herself and then went back to bed without even washing her face or putting on her gown. Her wrist throbbed but her pain pills were down in the kitchen and she was afraid to leave her room and afraid to knock and ask him if it would be all right if she went and got them.

He came through her door wearing his pajamas bottoms. “Your pills,” he said, setting them on top of her dresser.

“Rafe?”

“What?”

“I’m so thirsty. Can I go down to the kitchen long enough to get a Coke?”

“No, there’s water in the bathroom.”

And then he was gone.

She started crying again.

Listening to her from his own room, Rafe grinned to himself. “Just cry, Little Girl,” he thought. He was pretty mad. She could hardly have done anything worse in his eyes than taking the gray stallion. On the other hand, he wasn’t quite as angry as he’d let her think. It was like Rafe’s Times Ten Rule. If you expected someone to obey you and they didn’t, then if you punished them times ten, they’d think long and fucking hard before they bucked up against you again. It was sort of like his version of Shock and Awe.

He reached for his hard penis. If he’d known this was going to happen, he would have made alternate arrangements for something to do with it. As it was, he guessed he was going to have to handle it himself.

He was gone when she got up the next morning and he hardly came home the whole next week. When he was there, he just went about his business, never speaking to her. She wanted to beg him to forgive her but his eyes were so cold when he looked at her that she was afraid to even try to talk to him. He did come home some nights but it was so late, all she heard was the stool flushing, the shower running and his bedroom door closing.

She laid in bed thinking, “please, please, please, please,” over and over again, hoping her door would open and she’d hear him tell her she could come over with him but he never did. She’d think in great detail about what they might be doing if only she hadn’t done what she’d done. If he’d let her tell him how sorry she was, she’d swear by the Virgin Mary (the ultimate guarantee in the Vincennes family) that she’d never do anything she knew he wouldn’t want her to do ever again.

It was lucky she was still on Christmas break because all she could manage to get on were sweats and sweatshirts and no bra. On the other hand, she wished it was time for school again because at least she’d be around people and have things to do instead of wandering around this enormous, lonely house feeling so dejected and depressed she couldn’t stand it. And being by herself and one-handed so she had nothing much to do but think.

He waited until Renny and Magdelene were due to get home the next evening before he opened her door.

“Come on over, Lane, and get in bed with me.”

She didn’t come running but practically tip-toed over to his bed, sliding in like she was trying to be as unnoticeable as possible. She didn’t even touch him until he gave her permission.

“You can come up close, Honey.”

At that, she moved over and pressed herself tightly against him.

“Please don’t be mad at me any more, Rafe. I hate it more than anything when you’re mad. I’ll be so good, I promise.”

“It’s not that hard, is it, Sweetie? I’m not a dictator. There aren’t too many things that would really upset me but you had to know you picked one that would.”

“I know. I was jealous because you were going back with the band and I knew you’d start staying out with girls again. I wanted to hurt you even though you’d never know about it.”

He smiled. “You fucked that up, didn’t you, Lane?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Well, live and learn. You did learn, didn’t you, Laney, that although I don’t have too many rules, I won’t tolerate the ones I do have being broken?”

“I swear, Rafe, I swear, I’ll never do anything like that again.”

“We’re square then, Honey. So what do you want to do now? From the amount of bawling you’ve been doing, I don’t think you’ve been getting much sleep. Do you just want me to hold you while you go to sleep or do you want me to do some other stuff first?”

“I want you to do other stuff first, Rafe.”

“Then tell me, Lane. Tell me exactly what you want me to do.”

So she did, and he did every one of those things before she finally fell sleep with his arms around her.

“Rafe, remember the Farewell to Middle School dance?”

“Yes, I took Mindy Hardesty when I went. What about it?”

“Well, Cal Burke asked me if I would go with him.”

“And you said?”

“I said I would, Rafe, because all the other popular girls are going to have dates and you told me I needed to start thinking about boys.”

He nodded. “That’s right, Lane. You’re going to have four years of high school to look forward to with lots of fun stuff going on and you’ll want to be a part of all of it.”

She sighed. “Well, I guess I’ll do it then since that’s what you want.”

“It’s what I want, Lane. I don’t want to go to Princeton thinking about you back here making yourself a wallflower because of me.”

“There’s one more thing, Rafe.”

“What’s that, Honey?”

They gave us a paper at school, asking if we had anyone who would volunteer to be a chaperone. Of course, I suppose they’re thinking of parents but you know Mom and Dad would never do it. So can I put your name down, Rafe?”

He laughed right out loud, a full-throated laugh, completely unlike his usual ironic chuckle.

“Laney, do you have any idea of the consternation it would cause if I walked into that dance as a chaperone? Half of the teachers think I’m evil incarnate the way it is. They’d see me as the fox in a whole fucking henhouse of little chickens.”

“I don’t care what they think. The kids would love it, especially the girls. Will you do it, Rafe?”

“Sure, Honey. Sign me up. It will be worth it in entertainment value alone.”

“You’ll have to dress up a little. Even the chaperones dress up.”

“I remember, Lane. Don’t worry, I’ll fit in.”

Rafe was accepted as a chaperone, probably because the new middle school counselor didn’t know his reputation, only that he was a Vincennes and she had been around long enough to know that was a name to be reckoned with in Benedict. Certainly, there were people who would have tried to blackball him if they’d known in advance.

But, they didn’t know in advance. They didn’t know until that night when Linda Dee clutched Jeb Kroner’s arm and said, “oh, my, God, look at the door and tell me that’s not who I think it is!”

“Holy shit, what’s he doing here?”

He’d borrowed Renny’s Mercedes to bring Laney and Cal to the dance, the Corvette’s single seat being too small for all of them. He thought Laney looked gorgeous. He’d taken her shopping and helped her pick out the long pink Empire dress, then to the stylist to have her pale blonde hair done up on top of her head with a beaded ribbon entwined in the curls. Cal was a good-looking kid too and seemed nice. He’d brought Lane a corsage of pink rosebuds. Being here with them made Rafe feel all warm and fatherly. He grinned inwardly at the thought.

To the teachers watching in horror, he seemed anything but fatherly. He was wearing bespoke charcoal gray suit with a faint pinstripe along with a dove gray silk shirt and a pewter tie with red stripes. (Renny insisted that all his sons have suits custom tailored, even if, like Rafe, they seldom wore them. He didn’t intend to be embarrassed by poorly dressed children if the need for a suit arose.)

Rafe had spent so much of the summer in the sun, he still maintained his deep gypsy tan. His black hair was combed back right now but Rhonda Fisher knew it was only a matter of time until that sexy lock would be dangling over his forehead. The kids crowded around him. Rafe Vincennes was like, well, like a Benedict hero. The boys looked up to him because of his athletic prowess. The girls admired him because he was so freakin’ handsome. Everyone had heard the Bobby Kelly story so there was that element of daring danger that drew them as well.

“Well, the little son-of-a-bitch certainly knows how to make a grand entrance,” Linda Dee fumed in disgust. “You’d think we’d been honored by the presence of Prince Fucking William or something.”

After he finished saying his hellos to the students, he walked directly to the teachers’ table, giving them the benefit of that devastating smile.

“Hi, Miss Dee, Mr Kroner, Mrs Fisher, Miss Britt. I bet you probably didn’t think you’d be seeing me so soon again, did you?” a hint of mockery in his voice.

“No, Rafe, we didn’t, but have a seat,” Jeb Kroner told him. Well, what the hell else could they do? He was here and that was that. They’d just have to live with it. He hoped Dee could live with it.

“How have you been, Miss Dee? You probably don’t even remember me, do you? I was in your second grade class.” He knew damned good and well that she remembered him. Her daughter, Chelsea, had told him her Mom hated Rafe with a passion. He wondered if Chelsea had ever confided in her mother about what a good time they’d had together. He recalled a 69 episode that was especially fun. He grinned down at Miss Dee. His smile was innocent but his chilling black eyes told her another story.

“Don’t even speak to me, Rafe. Not after what you did to my daughter.” (Well, that answered that question.)

“It was mutual with me and Chels, Miss Dee. I didn’t do anything she didn’t want me to do.”

Mr Kroner tried to change the subject. He hoped Dee wasn’t getting ready to stroke out. She seemed to be gasping for breath at the moment.

“So, Rafe, we thought you’d be off to Princeton by now. Why are you still in Benedict?”

“I took a year off first. Since I graduated so early, I thought it would be nice to take it easy for a while. I’ll be going next year for sure. I’ve been racing sprint cars, playing in a band, just fun stuff, you know?”

“I read in the Sentinal about you winning the Regatta, Rafe,” Miss Britt told him. She had no personal experience with him. She taught Marriage and Parenting Skills. Every Benedict student was supposed to take her course but Rafe had managed somehow to avoid it. He wasn’t up for being in charge of a pretend baby that cried at 2:00 a.m. and crapped its diapers. He’d already been through that movie for real.

He shrugged off the Regatta win. “I’ve been handling boats since I was a little boy and I had some good luck.”

He didn’t shrug her off though. He’d certainly taken note of Miss Britt’s auburn curls and green eyes and bee-stung smile and of the voluptuous shape beneath the jade chiffon she wore.

Linda Dee was watching them with narrowed eyes. It was obvious to her that Melanie Britt, who was only 24 years old, was far from immune to the Rafe Vincennes charm.

The dee-jay had started now with a slow song. He could see Laney dancing with Cal. She looked comfortable on the dance floor. He’d taught her well.

“Would you like to dance, Miss Britt?” he asked her.

She got up. “Call me Melanie,” she said. “You’re not a student anymore, Rafe.”

By the time, he brought her back to the table, they could see the stars in her eyes. “Another one bites the dust,” thought Jeb Kroner.

“I’ll warn her, but I know it won’t do any good,” thought Rhonda Fisher.

“I wonder how long it will be before he has her pants down?” thought Linda Dee.

They danced the next song too, a fast one.

When the next romantic tune came along, he asked Rhonda Fisher if she cared to take a turn on the floor. The answer was no, she positively did not want to dance with Rafe Vincennes but she didn’t know how to get out of it without being rude so she got up and took his hand.

And, Lord, she had to admit the boy was a wonderful dancer, holding her just close enough but not too close, to lead her smoothly through the steps.

He smiled his gleaming white smile at her, “don’t worry, Mrs Fisher, I’m not going to cause any trouble here tonight.”

“Not here tonight maybe, Rafe, but you’re going to break Melanie Britt’s heart before it’s over, you know you are.”

His dark eyes caught hers for a moment and he nodded, “well, maybe that,” he agreed.

From then on, the kids took over. There wasn’t one eighth grade girl who didn’t want to be able to say she danced with Rafe Vincennes at the Farewell to Middle School Dance. He was unfailingly gracious, dancing with them all, paying them the same attention – tall ones, short ones, fat ones and thin ones. There wasn’t one who didn’t take her seat afterwards thinking he’d smiled on her a little more brightly than the others.

“You’re so lucky he’s your brother, Laney,” Kim Leedy told her.

“No, she’s not,” Heather Dunsmore replied. “She can’t dream of going to bed with him like the rest of us can.”

He danced the last slow dance with Miss Britt. “Will you go out with me, Melanie?” he whispered in her ear.

“I’m in the book. I’m free all week.”

“I have to check the band’s schedule but as soon as I know, I’ll give you a call.”

Rhonda Fisher did try to talk her out of it.

“For God’s sake, Mel, you’re a teacher. Don’t forget that even though he’s out of school, he graduated at 16. How would it look? What would the administration think? Besides, you don’t know what Rafe Vincennes is really like.”

Melanie Britt’s full lips turned pouty. “I don’t care. We’ll be discreet. Even if he is young, he’s the most exciting male around. You can’t change my mind so don’t even try.”

Rhonda shrugged. She’d given it her best shot.

They were on their way home after dropping Cal off.

“So did you have a good time, Laney?”

“Oh, yes, it was fun!”

“Are you starting to trust me when I tell you that there will be life after Rafe?”

She turned serious. “I don’t have any choice, do I?”

“No, Honey, you don’t.” He grinned at her. “Did he kiss you, Lane? I tried not to look in the rearview mirror to give you your privacy.”

“Yes, he did.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“It was okay. I didn’t feel like when you do it though.”

“No, you probably never will, but it can still be good, Sweetie.”

“If you say so, Rafe.”

He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I do say so, Lane.”

“Rafe?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you going to go out with Miss Britt?”

“Probably.”

She was silent for the rest of the way and he let her be.

Duke was realistic. He finally hired another guitar player because he didn’t want to be stuck without one when the summer was over and Rafe went off to college. This guy was an okay musician too but he sure didn’t have the same magnetism that Rafe had. He guessed they’d been lucky to have him for a year, a year in which both their bookings and prices had increased. Rafe himself was glad. He was looking forward to a lazy summer, spent mostly on the water, before he went off to school in the fall. He wasn’t even going to drive for Chester.

He’d had a few dates with Melanie Britt. In the kick-back mood he was in, at first, he’d thought he might just settle in with her for the next few months. In a way, it would be sort of pleasant to have a regular woman and always know where your sex was coming from without having to be on the prowl all the time. It was pretty convenient that she had her own house and she’d given him a key so he could just hang out whether she was home or not. She fixed dinner every night he was there (after all, her class was Marriage and Parenting Skills), not that Rafe really cared much about regular meals. He ate when he was hungry but food had never been a big priority for him. And Mel was always up for energetic and adventuresome sex. She had one drawback though. It had seemed like a small drawback at first but it was looming larger as time went on.

She was one of those girls he’d told Laney about who had to be in love, and what was worse, think her partner was in love with her too, before she could justify having sex to herself. Rafe wasn’t above telling a girl he loved her if that’s what she needed to hear to take her clothes off, but Jesus, he didn’t want to hear it or say it every fucking 15 minutes and that was beginning to be what Mel wanted. He was starting to recognize those nesting qualities some girls got too. She’d taken a picture of him with her digital camera and had it enlarged and framed and now it had the featured spot on her fireplace mantel.

When he saw that, warning bells started going off in his head. When she bought him a toothbrush to put in her bathroom, the bells got louder and when she told him to bring his dirty laundry over and she’d wash it for him, they got louder yet. Next thing you knew, she’d want him to move in with her and that was flatly never going to happen. So, all in all, he’d just about reached the conclusion that it was time for one more for the road and Sweetheart, it’s been fun.

Mel hadn’t been discreet as she’d told Rhonda Fisher she’d been going to be. It was pretty hard to be discreet with an ice-blue Corvette parked in your driveway over night.

At Jeb Kroner’s annual summer barbeque, some of the Benedict teachers had made up a pool. Ten bucks a piece bought you a number, starting with two and going up to 12 (the number of weeks left before Rafe went to college). They put the numbers in one of Jeb’s Baltimore Orioles hats and drew. The one who came closest to the number of weeks Rafe Vincennes stayed with Melanie Britt collected the money.

“Shit,” said Jeb, “I got 12 but I don’t think there’s any way in hell she’s going to hang on to him that long.”

“I got 2,” Rhonda Fisher told them, “ and I hope that’s right, not because I want to win so badly but because the longer it goes, the worse it’s going to be for her when it’s over. I think the girl actually thinks he’s going to give her an engagement ring before he goes off to Princeton.”

They all rolled their eyes at their colleague’s foolishness.

It was exactly two weeks and two days when Rafe finally bailed. They’d just had a rollicking time on her waterbed. Not too many people had waterbeds anymore but she said she loved hers and wouldn’t part with it until she had to. He thought the bouncing wave action added an extra element of fun to fucking.

When it was over and she was completely and thoroughly satisfied, she said, “Rafe, why don’t you stay here tonight and every night? Why don’t you just move in? I love you so much, Rafe, and I know you love me too.”

And what little bit was left of his hard on just shriveled into nothingness.

He rolled off of her and off the water bed and slipped into his jeans. He always liked to have his groin protected before he pissed them off, especially the redheads. He was putting on his shirt, when she asked, “what are you doing, Rafe?”

“Listen, Sweetheart, this just isn’t working for me. You’re a great girl but I guess I’m just too restless to settle down. I’ve enjoyed it but I’m leaving now and I’m not coming back.”

She was stunned. “But, Rafe, what about how much we love each other?”

“Mel,” he asked her, “didn’t anyone try to warn you about me? I bet Mrs Fisher did, didn’t she, or Miss Dee? They’ve always had their little posse out after me.”

“Well, yes, but….”

He flashed his gleaming smile. “You probably should have listened, Sweetheart.” He slipped on his shoes. “Oh, and Mel, tell Mrs Fisher, they’ll never get me. I’m too quick for’em.”

He snagged his picture off the mantel before he left.

Tears were running down her cheeks. “He said I should have listened to you and to tell you you’d never get him.”

“What?” a startled Rhonda Fisher asked her. “What did he mean, Melanie?”

“He said he bet you’d tried to warn me and I should have listened to you, then he said you and Miss Dee had formed an anti-Rafe posse but he said to tell you, you’d never get him because he’s too quick for you.”

Rhonda Fisher thumped down in her chair and started to laugh.

“I’m sorry, Mel. I know you’re hurting but I just can’t help it. He’s right, you know, you have to give him credit, he’s out-witted us every step of the way.”

A few days later, she got a card addressed in an angular, back-handed writing she recognized. There was a cartoon of race cars on the front. The one in the lead had fire coming from its tailpipe. In a balloon above, it said – “see ya’ around”. Inside were the handwritten words:

Mrs. Fisher:

Thanks for the memories.

Best wishes,

RAFE

She smiled and tucked it under her desk blotter. She would never have dared to let Linda Dee see how much affection was in that smile.