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It was Saturday, January seventeenth and there was snow, snow, snow everywhere. The predicted flurries had developed into full blown white out. Not yet having lit a fire in the stove, my house was its usual bone chilling cold as I sat listening to the rattling off of road closures on the radio. For the life of me, to this day I do not know why retreat from life took me north instead of south. It had been a three night and I had yet to acquire even one.

The phone rang, a rare occurrence. So rare that I often did not even look to see who it was. However, today was a day that I had long been looking forward to. I had put all my eggs in one basket and someone had come along and stolen it away. Not that I had many eggs to begin with. Nor did I know very many chickens in the area. Other than Nancy at the local greasy spoon, there was John, Dawn’s business partner and his wife, Ann. I even had met Tracy, Dawn’s accountant, when I turned back over the contents of my ten dollar safety box. Then there was Rita, an interesting young lady from a rich, big city family who was Tracy’s friend, working on consignment from some secretive computer tech company. Other than that tribe of people, I had not developed any sort of friendships after hiding myself away in this frozen part of the world.

“Chance! It’s me. I know we had planned to go out tonight,” (my heart sank) “but with this last batch of snow, I was thinking I’d rather stay in and not go out. So I was wondering, would you be game to grab a bottle of something somewhere and maybe some carry out along with your sleeping bag and come spend the night?”

The highs and lows of life. She had literally fallen out of the sky and into my lap. I had pulled her from the brink, carried her up the steep trail and sat her down before my campfire. I had soared in the aether world between light and gravity when she trusted me enough to stuff away nearly two million in my lockbox. I had been placed in favored status when awarded the privilege of being her protective shield for those two weeks while waiting for the return of that murdering criminal husband. Then, having slayed the dragon, heading back to the castle, a door in the floor opened in the dark of night and I fell headlong into the pit of despair.

“Sure. Sounds doable. I need to throw on a pair of studded tires on the back of my limo and probably a couple of bags of sand and a shovel, but sure, there’s a good chance that I can make it back up your way. What time were you thinking?”

Dawn was nearly an hour north of town, on a good day. I imagined with studded tires, stopping to pick up wine, food and a couple of bundles of firewood, I was looking at a good three hours. If I lived on the water or had a boat at the harbor, I could have made it there in half that time.
With a six-pack of IPA, two bottles of champagne and wine, a big bucket of extra crispy chicken, roons, and slaw, I pulled my rolling bucket of rust up into her drive twenty minutes late.

“I was beginning worry,” the little woman bundled in white called from the open door as I wrestled with food and beverage.

“Here, take these,” I said as I sat one bag inside the door while handing her the other with orders to place the chicken the broiler for a couple of minute before turning back to my rambling wreck to retrieve a half dozen gas station bundles of firewood.

After unwrapping and setting everything up in the fireplace, I made my way back down the hall to the kitchen that was larger than my meager cabin in the woods.

“Be a dear, would you? I tried making a fire there by table but I think it needs a more accomplished hand.” It seemed that I had stocked the wrong fireplace. Rearranging the smoldering logs, doing my best to weasel some kindling underneath, I closed the brass and glass doors before opening the dampening slide doors at the bottom. The draft was strong and soon the embers brought those smoldering logs to flaming life.

“Sorry about not wanting to leave the house tonight. We’re alone, by the way. Audrey moved back to town a couple of weeks ago. I think it was time. We were beginning to get on each other’s nerves. I can’t help being her mother. And now that she’s twenty-one, it seems I know less and less and she more and more.”

“I know of what you speak. But you have a good relationship with her. But keep the faith. In a few years she realize how smart you actually are when she has to start raising a family of her own.”

“Oh shut your mouth! I don’t even want to start thinking of that. She’s not even dating anyone at the moment. She’s still on my insurance so I made sure she’s still well stocked with birth control, though I don’t think she’s been very sexually active since moving back in with me.” Dawn stopped with all her fussing with dishes, utensils and food prep to look up at me. “But I’m sure now that she’s got her own place again, that little merry band she runs around with will soon enough get her into mischief. Do you want beer with this or something else. I’ve got some single malt if you want that.”
“Beers fine for now,” I replied, standing there drinking in the sight of her.

I could sense the loss of what we had shared way back when. I was now a guest in her house. She no longer needed rescuing. Her smile lines seemed deeper to me. I think, now that I look at it, she may even have dyed her and put on a few pounds since the time when I pulled her out that cold black pool of ink. There was an unwanted tension that was probably there because of my hopes and unrelenting expectations. I wasn’t so much for chicken wings as I was for this woman to wrap her arms around me, commanding me never to leave of forsake her.

“I’ve got a frosted mug in the freezer. Here take the tray and go sit down. I’ll be right back with it.” She slid the tray over to my side of the counter and vanished without looking back up at me. Maybe she was feeling the awkwardness as well. I placed the tray on the table before setting it all out. Then I returned to the kitchen stove to grab the tray of sizzling chicken.

“Go sit down! Here, take this,” she said, handing me large porcelain mug. “Go now! I’ve got this.”

I guess the moment had come where, like George Bailey grabbing Mary Hatch, I had played cool long enough. With the oven door laying open and mittens in hand, I squeezed Dawn’s upper arm and spun her around to face me. There was both a look of surprise and questioning in her eyes yet we both knew what was a foot.

Perhaps it was the glimpse of a slight up turning of the corners of her mouth. Perhaps the watery glistening of her eyes that told me she was mine if I wanted her. So there we stood searching deeply into one another’s eyes before the embattlement of entangled of arms ensued and the forcing of lips upon lips in heated resolve. So there I picked her up off the floor and swung her around before putting her back down and holding her out at arms length.

“I was so scared I had lost you. I mean, I knew you needed your space. I knew you needed to set your house in order. I knew all that. But the longer I waited for you the more I began to think to myself that the beautiful rich princess in her woodland castle had come to realize that it was no prince who had rescued her that night but just simple pauper in three room shack at the other end of town.”

The strangest look came across Dawn’s face as she stepped back away from me.
“Oh Chance. I’m sorry. Let me assure you, I don’t think of myself as anything special. I sold all that stuff of Ray’s and gave the money to some very needy local charities. You’ve got me all wrong if you think just because my built this… this mansion on a hill, that I’m some sort of, what did you call me, rich princess? I’m not. I’m just Kendel Dawn, Gil St. Claire’s . Nothing special. And don’t you ever let me hear you put yourself down like that again. I don’t know what happened between you and your , but I’ve see nothing but good in you. You are modest, self effacing, kind, giving and as loving a man as I have ever met. But I had to get away, Chance. I rushed into marrying Fred and I stupidly got swept off my feet and rushed into marrying Ray. After those two, I couldn’t trust my feelings. I simply couldn’t. That’s why I ran off. Do you understand that? You have no idea how hard it was for me, especially having to come to terms with this whole thing with Max. Give me time. I fill you in on what’s going on there but not tonight. God, not tonight.”

Dawn then stepped forward, wrapping her arms back around me as she snuggled her way back into my life. I heard her sigh as if something long endured was over.

We ate our chicken. Dawn told me about things her and Audrey had done. Told me how well her business was doing. Told me that no one other than me knew what had happened. Not even Tracy knew about the bridge. When Audrey had asked who I was and how I was involved, even then, Dawn had chosen give a vague accounting of who I was and how I had been just the right person, in the right place, at the right time and left it at that. So the attempted murdering of Mrs. Rudolfo Maximilian Clarke had remained a secret between just her, myself and a man who had fallen into his own black abyss.

Eventually we let the fire go out in the kitchen. We chattered like long lost friends as cleaned everything up and put it all away before walking hand-n-hand past that neatly piled stack of firewood in the living room and on up the stairs to the five star master bedroom on the second floor.

The routine remained the same. I was led into the bathroom where she slowly undressed me, running her fingers through my chest hair in some lost reverie. I returned the favor before we showered off the time of separation and made our way to Dawn’s large, California King bed. There were no satin sheets this time but rather, warm and comforting flannel. In that same bed we made love till we were each exhausted, fearful of falling asleep. We laughed about it but we were each feeling the same fear that it was all a dream. In the morning we would each awaken in our own beds as if we had read it in a book.

Once again I opened my last. There, resting on hand and elbow was my princess of the deep staring back at me with bright eyes and a wide open-mouth smile which leaned forward to kiss my own. As if the night before hadn’t be enough, naked as the day she was born, Dawn slid over on top of me before placing my morning tent pole into wet and warm pocket full of wonders. There she rested for a bit, twirling my chest hair in her fingers and her feminine muscles worked me deeper and deeper into her womb.

“I know you said your mother named you Chance because you were an unexpected surprise. And now you are my unexpected surprise. You don’t know but about every night before falling asleep I slipped that big pillow your head is resting on in-between my legs and prayed to God, thanking Him that it wasn’t mere chance that you were in your little boat beneath the bridge. It wasn’t by chance that your mother got pregnant. It isn’t by chance that you’re here laying next to me.”

At that I rolled her off and onto her back, careful not to lose the penetration. In fact, the maneuver had driven my shaft deeper into her satin glove. She moaned with delight, attempting to wrap her arms around me before letting them fall to her side. As I set about to properly pound my way into that inner chamber, her hands captured her jello breasts as flailed majestically back and forth across her chest. Succeeding to drive that final door open, Dawn released her mounds of glory, sinking her fingers into the hair as her eyes rolled back up inside her head. Once again the convulsing began. Wild with pleasure. Enraptured by eight thousand nerve ending telling her that she had succeeded in reaching the summit, I continued to drive my manhood into her as the fingernails, now digging into the flesh, sought to tell me she was wanting to stay on her mount of transfiguration. Finally, my volcano erupted inside her as I groaned and shouted, ‘Yes, God YES!” repeatedly until my strength left me and I collapsed onto my heavy breathing princess.

Our true bliss wasn’t in achieving orgasm. Our bliss was in that final commingling of our beings. Dawn’s morning after glow was more precious to me than it had been the night before. It was the “dawning” of a new day. We had suffered in that darkness long enough. Today, by the grace of God’s “chance,” we had together entered into the lightness of being till death due us part.