Cabin Cousins: Part 5

The Gales of November.

Based on a post by NewMountain80, in 6 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Connections.

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"Hmm" Melissa said, her face still buried in the
pillow.

She shifted and turned her head, and I moved to her side
with one arm and a leg still draped over so we could look into each other's
eyes.

"Wow. That was..." She sighed.
"...Wonderful."

I smiled and kissed her cheek. "I'm glad you enjoyed it
as much as I did."

She squinted at me. "Are you sure I'm not dreaming, and
you're just a figment of my imagination?" She said playfully, though I
could tell there was something serious behind the question.

"I'm real, and I'm right here, in your bed, and I love
you."

She searched my eyes for a moment, rolled onto her side, and
pulled me in close, kissing me deeply.

When we stopped kissing to catch our breath, she whispered.
"It's our bed, and I love you too."

We held each other in silence for a long while. I knew that
she had something else to say, but I didn't push her. Eventually, she broke the
silence.

"Do you want pancakes? I want pancakes."

Not exactly the soul-baring statement I was expecting, but
now that she had said it, by damn I wanted pancakes.

"I'll help." I had made pancakes exactly once
before, and it wasn't a complete disaster, so I felt that my inclusion in the
process wouldn't be too much of a hindrance.

She got a distant look in her eye, then rolled onto her
back, and covered her face with her hands with a groan. "I don't have any
pancake mix."

She peeked at me through her fingers and we both started
laughing. I'm not sure why but we both found it hilarious but we roared with
laughter.

I playfully pushed her towards the side of the bed.
"Well, get dressed. I'll take you out for breakfast."

Still laughing, she got up and opened a dresser drawer.
Stepping into a pair of light blue panties, she asked. "Are you getting
dressed too, or are you going to go like that?"

"I'm thinking about it." I quipped, eyes following
her every movement.

I loved watching her move. She had a litheness and grace to
her. Cat-like? No, that's not quite right. Amazonian? Maybe, but that implies a
stature and bulk that Melissa didn't have. She was fit, not body builder
muscular, and she wasn't particularly tall, just shy of my own five foot ten.
She was perfect, and my eyes couldn't get enough of her. Let's leave it at
that.

"You'll give the old ladies at Perkins quite a
shock." She shot back, still laughing.

With an exaggerated sigh, I rolled off the bed. "For
the sake of the old ladies, fine, I'll get dressed."

Chapter Sixteen.

The plate clinked as Melissa set down her fork. "Ugh. I
ate too much, but that really hit the spot."

She had attacked her "tremendous twelve" meal with
murderous intent. All that remained was a scrap of crust from a piece of toast,
and some maple syrup residue on an otherwise clean plate. She had even swiped a
strip of bacon off of my plate, an act that left fork marks on my brother's
hands on several occasions.

I looked at my plate, with its pile of hash browns and a
third of a stack of pancakes remaining, and set down my fork. "I guess I
didn't work up as much of an appetite as you, cause I'm stuffed too."

Melissa looked at me with her special smile and mischievous
eyes. "Well, you'll have to try harder next time."

"I need to work out more."

"I can help with that." She replied, and we both
giggled, knowing the truth of it.

"Let's start with a walk."

We left the Perkins restaurant, and with Melissa navigating,
we drove north out of Duluth on Hwy 61. We pulled off and parked where a little
river crossed under the road and spilled through a steep set of rocky rapids to
Lake Superior below. We hiked down a little trail, and she led me out onto one
of the big rocks. The scenery was spectacular, and the water rushing past the
rocks had a hypnotic quality. It hadn't snowed last night, but the wind was
blowing hard off the lake, and the constant mist from the rapids gave the crisp
early November air some real bite.

We sat for a while without speaking. Just two people holding
hands, taking in the scenery and the roar of the water. There was a Gordon
Lightfoot song that had something about the gales of November, how did it go?

"When I left home," Melissa began, just loud
enough to hear.

I turned and watched her, careful to hear what she was
saying over the noise of the rapids. I had been hoping for, and dreading this
moment, when she decided to get the details of her past out in the open. I
resolved to not interrupt and to let her tell it at her own pace.

"This was the first place I went." She continued.
"I didn't know where to go. I didn't have anywhere to go."

She sniffed. We were alone but had someone been watching,
her running nose and the tears on her cheek might have been assumed to have
been caused by the cold, but I knew differently. I could see the deep down hurt
that was welling up, and my heart ached. I squeezed her hand, and let her talk.

"Every night for two weeks, I'd leave school, then go
up the hill to the mall and sit in the food court to do my homework. When the
mall closed, I came here, and parked for the night right over there." She
pointed up to the little parking lot where my truck was. "I'd wake up,
scrape the snow and frost off the windows, and go to school. I didn't tell
anyone because then I'd have to explain why I was sleeping in
a car in February. I had friends, but not close friends, you know? Like, not
the kind of friends that I could talk to about..." She trailed off and
wiped her nose on her jacket sleeve.

"I had been lucky, it hadn't been as cold as it should
have been, but then one night it got very cold. When I left the mall, I knew if
I spent the night here again, I could be in serious danger. So I went to the
laundromat. There was never anyone in there in the middle of the night, so I
sat at one of the tables and fell asleep. The owner woke me up a couple of
hours later, yelling at me that I couldn't sleep there, so I got in my car and
came back here."

She had been looking at the water as she spoke, but now
turned and looked at me. I saw the fear and shame these memories invoked. I
wanted to say something, anything to comfort her, but I knew that I should let
her say what she needed to say, so I let her continue.

"When I went to sleep on the back seat, I didn't think
I was going to ever wake up, and I was okay with that. I didn't care that I was
going to die. Nobody cared, nobody would miss me. The world would be better off
without one more stupid girl. Why bother going on?" She looked away from
me, east towards the vast lake, and her face twisted up in anger. "You
know, the worst thing, the worst part of all of it, is they made me feel like
it was all my fault. They had me so twisted up, that I believed that I was the
cause of everything that happened."

She turned back to me, the anger fading, leaving just a
profound sadness. I wiped the tears from her cheek, and she leaned her shoulder
against me.

"Did your parents tell you what happened?"

My throat was dry, and I swallowed hard before replying.
"They were vague."

She gave a little smile that was like a sunbeam on a stormy
day. "I asked your mom and dad not to tell anyone. You're so lucky to have
them."

She looked back to the lake and spoke quietly enough that if
her face had not been right next to mine, I wouldn't have been able to hear
her. "When I was fifteen, when I started looking more like a woman, and
less like a little girl, my dad started abusing me. Mom, she was drunk more
than she was sober. She knew, she had to know, and she didn't do
anything."

As the River roared in its ceaseless path to Lake Superior,
and the cold wind whistled and rattled through the leafless trees, Melissa
spoke of abuse and divorce, lost jobs and social status, the failing of the
system to help a girl who was too scared to ask for help and the blame that was
assigned for all of it.

"So that night, I remember when the state trooper
knocked on my window." She gave a brief mirthless huff. "I thought he
was an angel, with the way his flashlight lit up the frost on the inside of the
window. I thought I was dead, that it was all over. I felt relieved." She
shook her head. "The next thing I remember was being in a hospital bed,
wrapped in electric blankets, and seeing the sunrise through the window. That
trooper was there. He had stayed with me, way past the end of his shift, just
to make sure I was alright. Turns out, when they went to my parent's house to
see what was going on, my dad was out of town, and my mom ended up getting
arrested for assaulting an officer and having a bunch of heroin. That's why she
went back to him. Not for me, but for the money to buy her drugs. The trooper
persuaded me to reach out to my friends. He said that people can be capable of
unexpected acts of kindness, and I decided to believe him. So I called Ashley.
We had always gotten along pretty well, and her parents were always super nice
to me. They let me stay with them, which was really awkward at firs