The Prodigal
Part III
Twenty-nine
I WENT TO WENDY’S ROOM after I’d put the boys to bed, trying to explain to them that Kate was going away for a while, but no, it wasn’t like when Meddy’s daddy went away. She and the Trips were going on an adventure and we’d hear from them soon. I said it with conviction—as if I believed it. Every time I looked at any of my lovers, I felt their incriminating judgment. I’d driven Kate away. I’d let her drift, hidden what I was painting, held back some portion of my trust. It was my fault that Kate was gone and I felt like shit.
Wendy wasn’t in her room. Part of me hoped she’d caught up with Kate so at least the two of them could be together and part of me was afraid I’d lost her, too. But she’d chosen. She’d chosen to stay with me as a master instead of going with Kate, whom she loved. Not that Wendy didn’t love me, or that I didn’t love her. But something special was lost for her when Kate walked out the door. If it was anything like the hole I felt in my heart, I had to find Wendy and comfort her.
I ran to our bedroom upstairs in near panic to tell Melody and Lissa that I had to go find Wendy. All three girls were cuddled together in the middle of the big bed, crying quietly. They heard me come in and before I could turn to go, all three held out their arms to me.
That was it. There was no more restraint. We cried. We cried most of the night, crying ourselves to sleep and waking still in tears.
If it weren’t for the boys getting up Wednesday morning, we would have stayed in bed crying all day. When you have children, you have responsibilities. No. You have young lives you love and would do anything to protect and care for. When they came into the bedroom, I scooped them up in my arms and took them to the big chair to read. A few minutes later, Wendy brought me coffee and curled up on the arm of the chair to listen to our story. Then it was a scramble to get them fed and ready for school. It was late May and their school didn’t get out until mid-June. Lissa and Melody were up and dressed by the time the boys had been fed and headed out to the car to take them to school. Wendy still had classes, too, and quietly said she needed to get ready. I offered to drive her, but she said she wanted to walk and catch a bus so she could clear her head before class. She was just three weeks from graduation and didn’t want to blow anything at this stage.
That left me alone. I finished my coffee and sent another text message to Kate just to say “I love you.” I’d sent nearly a dozen after she left yesterday, but got no replies. I knew everyone else had sent her messages, too. I wanted her to know that we wanted her to come back, but it was beginning to feel like I was harassing her. I stuck my phone in my pocket. My Wednesday morning schedule called for Parkour with Coach Fredericks. I put on my running shoes and headed for campus.
Usually I ran the course for sheer joy of running. This time I ran out of frustration and pain and despair. They didn’t make me fast.
“Get moving or you’ll be chasing me,” Coach said.
“Sorry, Coach. I’m just not up to it today,” I said turning for home at a slow jog.
“Too tired from your match in California? We watched the live broadcast at Coach Jacobson’s house. We thought it would never end.”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“You were both so in the zone…” Coach stopped his narrative. “Tony, this isn’t about the match or being tired. You need someone to talk to?” I stopped running and looked at him. We’d been chasing each other around for over two years now. We’d talked now and then, but never on an intimate level.
“Thanks, Coach,” I said. “You’ve been a great support for my training and I haven’t been as appreciative as I should. But I can’t just talk about this right now. I need to go paint.”
“You know what you need better than I do. Just know I’m here.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to open the door of the studio when got there. I hadn’t been in since we carried Kate out. I unlocked the door and pushed my way through the clothes. In the middle of the studio, our accountant, Penny, was sitting on the floor neatly stacking Kate’s torn sketches. Tears were running down her cheeks as she worked methodically, examining each piece and matching up torn portions before she put them in the stack. She looked up at me.
“I tried to reach Kate to tell her, but there was no answer,” Penny said. “I called Lissa and she said to save what I could.”
“Yes,” I said. I sat with her to explain what had happened. She nodded her head.
“We should put all this in the vault for when she comes back. She’ll want it.” I nodded. It was the sensible thing to do and I helped Penny gather up the pieces and prepared them for crating. We had all the supplies we needed to pack them and I went through the canvases in the rack to pull Kate’s paintings. She’d focused her anger on her drawings and sketches and hadn’t reached the rack of paintings and pastels yet. I shuddered to think of her destroying that artwork as well.
When we had everything crated, I wrote a large note and hung it from the shelf. “Darling Kate, all your beautiful works are in the vault under your name. We wanted them safe for you. Love, Tony.”
“Do you want me to crate your new painting, too, like I did the other one?”
“What?” I asked.
“This new painting. It’s so like the one you did before Christmas. When you left for so long, I wanted to make sure it was properly cared for, so I called your professor… Doctor Henredon?… and he came over to show me how to crate it and send it to the vault.”
“Doc saw it?”
“Yes. He told me I should never mention it to anyone, so I just kept my mouth shut. He showed me the process so I could crate paintings and send them to the vault.”
“No.” I whimpered. “No. I’m so sorry, Kate. Please forgive me.” All this time, I’d been sure that Kate had taken the painting—that she was the only one who had seen it. All this time I’d let it fester and hadn’t said anything. I’d let it influence how I felt about her—how I acted toward her. “Crate it,” I said. Then I fled the building.
Thursday, Melody, Lissa, and I finally went to the lower level to clear the Trips’ room and return it to a guest room or possible rental. I couldn’t imagine putting someone else in that room. We’d fixed it up for Kate to rent, then when the Trips came, Kate moved into our room. I hadn’t been in the room more than once or twice in the whole year the Trips had lived with us. What we found stopped us short.
Kate’s cell phone lay in the middle of the bed. Everything else in the room was spotless and clean. All the text messages we’d sent, the attempted calls, were lying there on the barren desert of that bed. We closed the door and silently retreated.
Wendy never got back to her room except to dress. Or…
Well, Sunday afternoon, after she got off work, she came home and found me sitting alone in the living room. I was writing little stories that I’d like to paint and sketching in the margins. Dr. Bychkova got me started on this art and storytelling thing and I found that it worked two ways. I could paint something and then tell its story, or I could create a story and find the painting in it. It was different than illustration. With this, the painting was the story, it didn’t illustrate it. I still struggled with the concept since every time I made up a story, I saw a dozen illustrations that went with it, but never the painting that was the story.
Wendy quietly waited until I looked up. She tapped the stone at her throat once and went to her room.
I sighed. I didn’t feel like I was a good master. I was supposed to protect her. I let her suffer the loss of Kate as much as I had. I’d let her down, like I had all the rest of the family. Melody and Lissa had gone to take a nap, so I set aside my notebook and went to Wendy’s room.
I didn’t knock. As expected, Wendy was naked and kneeling next to the bed looking straight ahead. I still didn’t feel romantic and I don’t think I’d had an erection since the moment Kate walked out of the room. I couldn’t give Wendy anything sexual. There was just no way.
“Tiger, get me a cup of coffee, please.” She looked at me and then at herself. “You needn’t bother dressing.” She smiled slightly and left. I watched her bare butt and the trace work of scars permanently engraved on her back as she headed out the door. She was marked for life, but had found peace in our family. I stripped to my shorts and sat on the bed, leaning against the headboard. It took a long time. When Wendy returned, she was flushed. She brought the coffee and a couple of Girl Scout cookies to me and knelt by the bed holding them out.
“Did you have difficulty?” I asked as I took the offered cup.
“In a manner of speaking, Master. Yes.”
“Tell me.” I had a feeling I knew what had happened.
“Um… Melody came out to get a glass of wine for Lissa.”
“Wine at four in the afternoon?”
“Yes sir. She… was naked.”
“As were you.”
“Yes sir. I served her first, sir.”
“You fucked Melody?” I spluttered.
“Oh no, sir. I made her coffee. And one for Lissa.”
“And what was Melody doing while you made coffee for them?”
“She examined my hair to see if my stripes need touching up.”
“Didn’t she just do your stripes yesterday?” Melody had officially appointed herself in charge of making sure Wendy’s hair had stripes bleached into it ever since the fire. Now that Wendy’s hair was beneath her ears again, Melody was especially attentive to the roots. But I knew yesterday had been their weekly appointment to touch things up.
“Not that hair, sir.” So there had been a little playtime in the kitchen.
“I’ve been thinking about that, Tiger. Maybe I should stripe my pubic hair to match yours. What do you think?”
“Um… uh… what should I think?”
“You should think about whether it would look good on me. Perhaps you should examine it and give me your opinion.”
Wendy crawled onto the bed, looking every bit the tiger she pretended to be. She pulled my briefs off and set about examining my pubic hair, pawing at it almost like a cat kneading. There was a low growl in her throat as she looked at me and I’d have sworn she was purring. I was responding to the attention and the peanut was turning into a pickle.
“What do you think?” I whispered.
“Your fur is nice and thick. It would probably bleach out in stripes pretty well. But there’s this pole that keeps getting in the way.”
“Oh, it’s probably just stiff like my other muscles. I’m still recovering from Nationals.”
“What should I do?”
“You are so good at massage, Tiger. You should treat it like any other muscle and just rub it until it softens.” She lightly gripped my shaft and began the stroking that it craved. Of course, Wendy’s massage methods have always involved her whole body and after a liberal application of oil, she rubbed me with her breasts and stomach as well. I responded to her ministrations, but it was a long way from softening.
“I have been studying massage techniques with Bree,” Wendy said. Really? “May I show you some of my new techniques, Master?”
“Certainly, Tiger. What can you do?” She began edging her way up my body, pausing to suckle my nipples as her stomach muscles undulated over my sensitive cock. She moved up farther and began massaging me with her wet and slippery slit. Soon, she moved just far enough that the tip of my cock popped up into her opening and she moved down on it. “Did Bree teach you all of this?” I asked.
“Not all of it,” she answered. “Some of it I invented myself.” She seated herself fully on my cock and pushed herself upright before beginning to massage my cock with her vaginal muscles.
“Oh, Tiger! If you keep this up, I’m going to come soon.”
“I’m going to keep it up until you go soft, like a good masseuse.”
She did keep it up. I did come. It didn’t get soft, so she kept massaging. I felt her quiver as her own orgasm took her and a few minutes later, my second overwhelmed me. It was beautiful, loving, sensual. This time I softened and Wendy lay beside me as we drifted off to sleep.
“Why didn’t you go with her, Tiger?” I whispered. I wasn’t completely sure she was awake, but I thought so. “Why did you stay behind with this poor excuse for a master? You could have been happy with her.” She pushed herself up to look me in the eye and held there.
“If I had gone with her, she would never come back.”
“Wendy, I love you.”
“I love you, Tony.”
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