Avalon and Maddock

Epilogue: Maddock

"La!" the gray-haired lady sang out as she walked into the room, her long, frizzy curls piled on top of her head in a bun that looked like it was going to topple over any minute. Especially since half of the hair was already falling out. 

"La!" she repeated, right before she rang the damn bell she had clutched in her fingertips. She was wearing a long, flowy purple skirt and shocking red flowy top with sparkly silver polka dots. She was barefoot, and her tiny, blue-painted toenails were peeping out from beneath her skirt.

"I feel my energy faucet flowing...right  between my legs. La!" she said again, right before she struck what should have been a sexy pose. Should have been being the operative phrase in this case.

My head dropped and I couldn't help it; I started laughing, my shoulders shaking with it as I shook my head. "Avalon, what the fuck is going on here?"

My wife smiled at me, twisting this way and that. "Do you like it?"

"This is the Halloween costume that you've been hinting at for weeks?"

"You have to admit, it's perfect!" she insisted with an impish grin. "My way of honoring the completely out-there certified tactologist who worked a miracle and helped save our marriage."

She was so fucking adorable.

"I want to kiss you, but at the same time, it feels all sorts of wrong. I'll never be able to sit in a session with Zephyr again if I kiss you right now." We were still meeting with Zephyr once a month to make sure the energy keeps flowing in a good direction, as she said.

"Oh, don't be afraid! Touch is powerful," Avalon taunted me as she walked closer and closer to me, quoting Zephyr. "I feel a lack of touch is often at the root of many of the challenges that a couple faces. So come over here and lay one on me, Maddock. Touch your wife. Check out my flowing energy faucet."

What was I going to do with my wife? My wife. What a relief it was to say that with confidence.

She was my wife, no doubt about it. We were back on solid ground now, eight months after our confrontation with her father at the day care. We'd bought a new home together after the old one sold and, once we moved in, the boys settled into it nicely.

"Do you think they'll remember anything that happened?" I'd asked Avalon one day not long after we'd moved into our new home. I'd paused on my way up to the boys' room to put away the clean clothes in the laundry basket I was carrying, content to watch our sons smashing their trucks together on the living room rug. The two of them were happy in their little make-believe world of violent truck crashes and crazy sound effects. 

Avalon came out of the kitchen and stood next to me, watching them play. "No, not really. If you think about it, what do you remember clearly from when you were three or four?"

"Not much," I said after searching my memories. "Honestly, nothing at all. Let's hope it's the same for them. I hate that I left you all for seven months because you'll always remember that time and I'll always remember it, but I really hope they don't."

"I think they'll be fine, Maddock," she assured me. "I was a constant, steady presence for them while you were away for all those months trying to save the company. Then you were back and we lived separately for a while, but it wasn't for long, and you were actively involved with them once you came back to us. You were over every day for our homework, so that was reintroducing you into their lives again every single day -- holy shit." 

Looking at me with startled eyes, Avalon was acting as if she'd just received a revelation from angels on high. "That sneak! I bet Zephyr did that on purpose -- giving us daily homework for the reasons she said, but also to insert you into all of our lives again. Gradually showing me you were the man I'd always loved, getting you back to being the dad they'd always known."