Comforter

By JD Jones

Alan Pell was twenty-five when he met fifty-three-year-old Maria. She was the most wonderful woman he had ever dreamed of. He loved her instantly, forever, even from all eternity past. She was exiting a bad marriage, hurt and disillusioned with men. Alan gave her hope and his adoration. Together they created a life of love that transcended the universes and disbanded the very existence of time.
Alan's mother was devastated he would marry and older woman. How would she get grandchildren, now? Maria's children saw Alan in their own various lights. Thomas, her son, saw Alan as an interloper and a sorry replacement for his father, who he idolized for all the wrong reasons, exhibiting more than a few of his father's own bad traits. Jessica, Maria's daughter, saw Alan as a man she could have loved, if she had met him before her own failing marriage. The playful competition between the two women made them both love Alan more and each other supremely.
When Maria grows old and passes away, Alan is devastated. HIs grief is like a melting down of the universes and all time stops to observe him in his pain. Jessica feels a similar sense of loss and between them they mourn the loss of the great woman as a tribute to her lasting effect on them. IN their grief, they find they have always loved one another even as Maria loved them and transferring her love is a way of making sure her love never dies.
If Thomas was upset about his mother marrying Alan, he goes around the bend when he discovers that now his sister will marry the man. But love is eternal and not to be denied. No one can stop the love they feel and experience with one another. Alan discovers that love never dies. It is too much a part of the eternity of the ages and will always find new lovers to experience it. People may be different, but love is always.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JD Jones
• Release date: Nov 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005445195

JD Jones

JD Jones now writes full time. As a minister, he and his wife of 30+ years spent their days working with at-risk youth. He has three children of his own who provide him with the source of his belief that he has succeeded. "The greatest pleasures in life are the simple things so many take for granted. All we can do in this life is make a lot of memories. Everything else is just so much stuff."

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Comforter

Copyright © 2022, James D. Jones Jr.

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Comforter

by JD Jones

Maria

1

He was born Alan McTavish in a small area of Memphis Tennessee that time had allowed him to mostly forget and mercy had allowed him to overcome. He was named after his father's grandfather his mother had told him in the few stories she told him about the man. No doubt it was a noble name, carried by a great family that most likely produced wonderful stories and were embroiled in epic adventures whose telling had been handed down through the generations. But none of that history was part of his heritage because the man who had given him that name had disappeared from his life before he could even remember him. Apparently the greatness of that family line did not extend its nobility through his father.

He had legally had his name changed to Pell, his mother's maiden name, when he was in college. It was a small revolt and a minor rebellion against a man he never met. His mother had advised against it saying, a man passes on his name to his blood kin and, by changing it, he would end that name with his father. His only thought had been to distance himself from the man who had given him the name and thereby inflict punishment for abandoning them. But the thought of ending the name with his father made him like the idea more and more. He was not vengeful only hurt.

Raised by a single mother his entire life, Alan had watched as the woman he loved more than anything in this world struggled to pay the bills, keep the house up and make nutritious and appetizing meals for them both. As a child and later an adult, he had helped out where he could but always felt inadequate to the task his absentee father had left to him. His youth had been a series of moody cycles where he wished his father would return and take the burden off his mother and then evolve into a limited hatred of the man. Limited because he could never decide how to hate someone he didn't know. He was well into his twenties before he accepted the man's weaknesses and moved on with his life. But lessons learned in one's adolescence were hard to run from in adulthood.

The worst effect of this man, who was less than a man in Alan's opinion, was his mother's lonely existence. Because she feared the effect of having strange men around her son, his mother had never dated after his father had abandoned them. Even when he went off to college and later, married, she never dated or showed any interest in having another man in her life. She always told Alan that he was all the man she needed in her life. He always suspected that her failed marriage and the resulting experience of the daily struggle they had endured had soured her forever on the male of the species. He did not blame her. He forever looked at fathers, all fathers, with a sideways glance himself.

Pell, Glaser and Townsend, Counselors at Law, had grown to over forty associates and covered almost every area of the law in their day to day handlings. They were known locally as stalwart, upstanding members of the community. Twice, Alan Pell had been asked to run for local office and twice he had declined, although he was greatly honored by the confidence people had shown in him. The governor had wanted to appoint him as a judge once and he had respectfully requested that he not on the grounds that judges sit and watch the law and never get to practice it again. He always told his ardent supporters that he was nothing without his team from the office.

Nationally, when a team from Pell, Glaser and Townsend descended on a courtroom, whether to defend a business client in some class action suit or guide the defense of a criminal accusation, news outlets picked up the story and watched with eager interest to see how the PGT team got the defendants off again. Winners. That was the name attached to PGT. In law circles they were known as people who not only got the job done, but were trustworthy, honest to a fault and impossible to buy off.

Alan Pell was proud of the organization he and his partners had built. In a profession where so many are of a mindset to do whatever is necessary to get the job done, Pell had succeeded at creating a firm that went the extra mile, not only doing what needed to be done, but staying honorable and upholding the dignity of the profession along the way. He counted their success while maintaining their integrity as among his greatest treasures in the world, of which he believed he was holder of many.

As the years progressed and changes came even within his own firm, Alan found himself wistfully going back over the early days and remembering his good fortune in life. He believed that staying true to personal goals and having a worthy purpose as well as upholding the honor of whatever position one held were the keys to the life he had led. At sixty years old, he now felt he had assembled some little wisdom and maybe acquired the honor of being someone others would listen to. It amused him to think that as soon as one reached that lofty place in the world they inhabited, it coincided with the time when they should step aside and let younger men have a turn at seeking their goals and building their own base for the next stages of wisdom and honor.

He did not go bitterly into that abyss of retirement. In fact, he looked forward to it. Time had always been precious to him and he had always sought to make more and more of it available to the important things as the years gained on him. Retirement was his own idea. Many had urged him, even pleaded with him to stay on. There was still so much good he could do, they had argued. But they did not understand. He needed this time. It was important to him to use it wisely. A man only has so many years allotted to him on this earth, he was fond of saying. He was not planning on misusing any of what was left to him. He had done his work and built his career and established a law firm that will last long past his leaving. Now, it was time to live his life with his precious wife and gather all the glory of that relationship that time would allow them to before one or the other of them had to leave this world for good. Too well he knew the heart ache of losing a loved one and the pain of things left undone.

Mr. Pell? It was his secretary, Mrs. Shelling. For thirty three years he had been asking her to call him Alan when they were alone but she refused. Proper etiquette required her to honor her boss and his position and always address him in a manner suitable to his standing. She could not bring herself to break that tradition no matter how fond she was of him and he her. It usually made him smile every time she addressed him as such, remembering their squabbles over that detail. Now, it made him sad to think that after today she would not be addressing him by any name any more.

Yes, Mrs. Shelling? He looked up to see her standing in his doorway. As always she was dressed appropriate to her position in a smart, dark, business suit with matching skirt that came suitably below the knees and did not outline her rather abundant natural features too much, calling unprofessional attention to herself. She could not help that she was a beautiful woman but she was not going to distract anyone by accentuating what God had given her. Even at sixty three years of age, information which Alan would never share with another soul, she was still the kind of woman that turned heads when she entered a room.

All the arrangements are complete for the party this afternoon. I'm headed out to lunch, now. Mary Weathers will be at the desk in my absence. Can I bring you anything?

Efficient even to the last. Alan wanted to laugh at her belief that he needed someone to answer his phones and screen visitors but feared offending her sense of duty to him. Today. Of all days, there would be no one calling on him, except maybe a few well wishers. He had passed on his clients to other partners and associates over a month ago and his schedule had been cleared of any Firm business all week. The last couple of days he had felt like a visitor in his own office.

Thank you, Mrs. Shelling. No, nothing. Thanks for asking. Have a great lunch. I assume you'll be seeing Mr. Shelling at lunch so give him my best, please. Mr. Shelling, Bruce, had retired a year ago. His workplace had a mandatory retirement age of sixty five and he had reached that magical end of the line by their estimation. About six months ago, because he was bored with his forced retirement already, He and his wife began having lunch together almost every day. It was a a rare day when Bruce missed having lunch with his bride of forty one years. Alan envied him for that.

It was Mrs. Shelling's lunch dates that had begun Alan thinking about taking the time in his own life to have lunch with his own bride. They weren't getting any younger and though time had been good to both of them, physically and emotionally, he feared the career he had built was holding them back or at least him. They had traveled and vacationed and done all the normal things couples do within the scope of holding down careers and working a regular weekly schedule. But after considering the Shellings and their obvious love for one another, Alan determined that he would not be outdone and would show as much love and devotion to his own wife as he could with whatever time remained to him and her on this earth.

I will. She gave him a quick wave and then was gone.

He marveled at how quickly she moved off. Love gave wings to the soul, his mother had often told him. Mrs. Shelling was proof of that when she was moving toward her husband. She moved like a woman half her age when she was headed toward that coveted lunch date. With so many divorced couples in the world, it made him smile to see the love still burning brightly in the life of the Shellings.

The empty space she left at his doorway was as much a sign of his last day as it was of how fleeting relationships in this life were. One had to savor every moment life gave them or too much would be missed. We're only given so many days on this earth, his mother had often reminded him. What we make of them is totally up to us.

2

Looking around his office, Alan drifted back in time on the winds of remembrance, seeing the beginning again. It was a favorite place of his lately. So much good had been crammed into one small life that he sometimes felt guilty, wondering if someone else had been shorted because he had so much. He wondered if it worked that way, only so much good to go around, some getting more and some getting less. He had certainly gotten his share and more. He was not a church going man but if God was looking down upon us all, he was most assuredly spending a lot of time looking down on Alan Pell and giving him extra attention.

Memories were not all Alan had left by any stretch of the imagination, but the treasury of those memories was a comfort to him and a reality he dared not forget. Some people remembered only the bad things in their life. Others could remember only the good. He preferred to remember it all and let it be what it would be. It was his life and he had enjoyed every minute of it. The good and the bad. They were all a part of what made him who he was. Moreover, it was in those memories that he could visit with all the people that had so affected his life over the years.

Like that first job out of college. Funny how he always started his memories after he had gotten away from where he grew up. Not much to remember from then. Hardship and struggle were things he wanted to forget. Not his mother. Not her sacrifices. Not her love. Just the taste of those dark streets of his youth.

Gary Gorman, GG to his friends, had personally recruited him to join the firm of Pepperman, Norwell and Gorman. They were known for their expertise in real estate law. He could almost taste the money. GG had come down to Ole Miss, where he went to school, and taken him to lunch and dinner and made sure that he understood how desirable he was as a new associate for their firm. Other firms had contacted him and made offers to employ him. But none had made the impression GG had made or gone to the lengths he had to impress upon him how desired he was.

It was a turning point in his life. He figured that was why so much of his memories began at that point in his life. GG's offer was like a rebirth of sorts for him. A coming out of the subsidized housing period of his life into the respectable and accepted part of his life.

Alan remembered the feeling that meeting GG had given him back then. The feeling of being wanted. It had been a new experience for Alan. Newly graduated and weeks away from taking the bar exam, he had only known struggle and hardship all the way through college. He had done well in his classes and was graduating with a law degree at the age of twenty five. But he could still taste the bitter dregs of having to work his way through every semester and summer and vacation period while he watched his more affluent classmates head off to vacation resorts and second and third houses planted in all the best places around the world.

He did not resent them their affluence at all. What he resented was how his father had left he and his mother and made all his struggle a necessity. Maybe he would not have been rich like them. But he would have been better off with a father. He dared anyone argue with that supposition.

But, as he looked back on his life, now, he counted even being fatherless as a good thing. The struggle had made him realize things that some of his classmates would never learn. Like making decisions on their own and not having that fatherly lifeline to fall back on. It had made him more self reliant. More accountable to those around him for networking purposes even before he understood what networking really was.

He had come to understand, the way in which people relate to one another mattered greatly. There were too many connections in a person's life for them to live it like THEY were all that was important. Considering the effect of his actions on others became a built in measurement for him at all points of decisions. He noticed the quick, self-serving decisions of his classmates blew up in their faces more than once. It was easier to consider the far reaching effects before the trouble, he reasoned.

How a person lived their life mattered. Honor and dignity and having a purpose with worthy goals was so important that those who tried to live life without them wandered aimlessly through one episode of failure after another. He saw it all around him every day back in college and even more so in the real world. Indeed, he had made a good living defending those who never learned that lesson in life. Decisions are nothing without guiding principles. Honor, dignity and purpose gave him his guiding principles and he lived by them daily and always. Everyone in the office could tell you Alan's guiding principles. They had all heard them expounded upon many, many times.

He had come to believe that what one does with their TIME on earth mattered most of all. Men and women were not just bumps in the road of time or fleas on the back of a dog named Destiny. People were part of the living organism of the cosmos and as such every part of that organism mattered to the health of the whole. It was the duty of each individual to be as healthy and vibrant a part of the whole as possible. Such were the connections we all had to each other that all of us fed off the successes of the next.

GG had been the first man in Alan's life to make him feel wanted and desired. No man had ever tried to make him part of their life before. His father had made him feel unwanted in the extreme and no other man had ever reached out to him in any way except as was necessitated by normal social contact such as schooling or part time jobs. He had avoided any unnecessary contact with strange men.

Alan had never had time for sports or any kind of organized clubs, so he never met any of the other guy's fathers, except in passing. His disdain for fathers extended to anywhere he observed where fathers gathered. Sports teams was one of them. He never felt the urge to have some man telling him what he should do in life. The only example he had was of a weak man who had run away when the chips were down and he didn't need any of that in his life.

GG's efforts to go the extra mile and woo him over to his firm left a lasting impression on Alan. When he was able, he wanted to be the kind of man that made other men and women feel like they were a wanted part of his life. So impressed was he by GG's efforts that he made it his permanent goal in life to make others feel wanted always. Some said that no litigator had ever made a jury feel so wanted and accepted as when Alan Pell was orating before them. Many attributed his great success in the courtroom and outside it to his determination to make sure others felt a part of life.

Meeting GG had left an indelible mark on young Alan Pell back then. It had changed his outlook on life. The man had caused a young Alan to determine in his heart what kind of man he would become. Being the man he had determined to be in his heart back then, became a major character trait of what people would know of Alan Pell.

As large as his firm was, it was like working in a great big family. Mr. Pell's office door was always open and no one ever went away without whatever help they needed. When Mrs. Pell walked through the offices, it was like old home week for everyone, like maybe Mom had come by for a visit. No supervisors hovered close by, urging back to work while Mrs. Pell was talking with her people. She kept in touch and made promises that she kept. She attended birthday parties, showers and engagements as well as every wedding. Like family, the Pell's were involved with their employees.

Even on the eve of his retirement the conversations among office staff drifted eventually to how much the place would change when Alan and his wife stopped being there regularly. No one could imagine such a thing. They had always been there. One Mrs. Pell or the other, anyway.

More than one client had been heard to comment that sometimes they felt like the firm was not as professional as they needed to be – personal phone calls were allowed at all times – but they all conceded that every time they had to visit the offices they were treated as though they mattered and nothing else. Alan amplified personal details and their importance in every relationship and taught it to all his associates from day one. Some called it the Pell approach. Whatever it was, it was a totally different way of doing business and living life for most people he met. Alan would point the blame or credit for its discovery to the fact his father had abandoned him and GG had made him feel welcomed. Of course, it was all peppered by the love that his mother shown him every day.

His mother had been a large part of the man he had become. Probably the largest factor in shaping his life had been the struggle he had watched her overcome on a daily basis and the way she had smiled through it all. He had heard her crying in the night when she thought he was asleep. He had seen the dark circles under her eyes from the nights she had lain awake, praying and trying to figure out how they were going to make it. Seeing the way she dealt with the struggle his absentee father had thrust them into paved the way for a lot of the lessons young Alan had absorbed over the years. Lessons that, to a large extent, he felt were forced upon them by his uncaring and heartless father.

It wasn't the struggle or the problems that got young Alan's attention back then. They knew lots of families in the same boat as themselves. The struggle was not only real but it was universal in their neighborhood. Everyone experienced the trials and setbacks that came with living life one day at a time and hoping for a better future or at least a better paying job.

The real lesson that he brought out of that time was the way his Mom chose to deal with everything. She acted like she expected the problems and setbacks to crop up and when they did, she went into action to handle the situation and turn it around. Sure, they struggled like other families. They went without a lot of the times just like other families. They wished for better times like other families, too. But they never forsook who they were. They stayed true to who they were every day. The honor of life was in the living of it for a greater purpose every day, his Mom would always say. Keep your eyes on the prize, she would tell him all the time. Don't aim for the small things, he remembered her saying repeatedly. Aim for the stars and when you fall short you'll still be in outer space.

It was his mother's attitude that he brought with him when he left the rundown tenements where he grew up. Remembering her smile and vivacious character carried him through more than one hard time in college. Recalling how she handled everything that was thrown at her made him a better man and a wiser student of life. He was determined in his heart that he would honor her bravery and fortitude by living his life at least as well as she did. He attributed all his success in life to having a Mom who not only cared but cared enough to teach him to care, too.

If any boy had a better mother in life, you could not have convinced Alan Pell of it. He was a lot like the proverbial Texan when it came to his mother. She'd done it better, bigger and with greater quality than it had ever been done before. Whenever anyone commented on the love that Alan liberally laced every action with, he unequivocally gave the credit for all the love in his heart to having a mother that never let him forget what love was all about. Love was paramount to success in his book.

Alan didn't talk specifically about his mother but he did quote her quite often and attribute almost all the good he had ever done to some attribute he felt she had placed within him through her gargantuan efforts to make something better out of their lives. To know Alan was to feel like one knew his mother. Then, when a person actually met Alan's mother, they were surprised that so much strength and goodness could possibly come out of such a diminutive woman with such a simple outlook on life. Her's was quite possibly the most powerful quiet ever expressed in this world.

And then there had been Maria.

Maria had been the dutiful wife of GG when he first met her. She was stately and beautiful in that older woman sort of way and vibrant in the way only those that grew up with money could be. She was class in every way that Alan would define it. She carried herself in a manner that brought honor to herself and her husband and her life in general. Everything about her captured one's attention and stimulated the imagination at the same time. She was the anomaly in life because she represented the elite but did not walk over the little people to show it off.

Her beauty was apparent inside and out. Dark haired and coiffed perfectly every time, her dark eyes laughed easily and often as she talked with people and heard their stories of life. She was never rushed or too busy to share in the lives of others. When she walked, whether towards him or away from him, Alan felt like he was watching the greatest beauty pageant contestant in the world. Her very presence mesmerized him and excited his imagination of what he would look for in a wife one day. Everything she wore looked like it came off a fashion show runway and, as a model, the designers could not have chosen a better representative in his mind.

Alan worked directly for her husband and was surprised she even deigned to talk to him at a company meet and greet when he had only been in the office two weeks. Overwhelmed by the surroundings of power and money and a lifestyle so far outside of his own existence, Alan remembered the time as though being viewed through Cinderella glasses. Large and center stage was the visage of Maria walking through the place, talking with people and laughing. Always laughing. Enjoying life on a level Alan Pell had never even been to. She was the epitome of womanhood in his eyes.

He walked those hallowed halls not believing he was allowed to be there, let alone part of the place and its honorable work. He was still in a state of awe and wonder the first time he met Mrs. Maria Gorman. She was like the queen of the ball. His awe at standing in her presence was due as much to her beauty and vibrancy as to her position as the wife of his mentor and boss. When she smiled at him, he was at once captivated by her presence. Not in an obsessive way but more like a desire in the back of his head to please the boss' wife and make a good impression.

Being raised by a single mom, Alan was naturally more comfortable with women than he was with men. GG being the exception, most men still seemed fake and contrived to Alan. Full of issues and false information. They talked big but seldom, if ever, completed the things they talked about. Women, on the other hand, talked about things he understood. Their feelings and what was important to any situation at the moment. Women were a safe place for Alan. If the boss was a safe place, his wife was all the more a safe place.

If GG had made him feel wanted, Maria had made him feel accepted. Though she was the celebrated wife of one of the firm's partners, she had once been a practicing lawyer herself. Some said she was pretty good in her day. Many said she was better than her husband and the law had lost out the day she had decided to become a full time wife.

Alan only saw someone who treated him with respect and made it part of her plan to acknowledge him every time she came and went in the office. One time, she had even stuck her head into his little office as she was passing by and said hello just to make sure she did not leave without greeting him. He had responded with some inane and usual greeting of his own and after she was gone, like a vapor of sweet smelling incense, he thought of a much wittier response he should have used, mentally kicking himself all afternoon. Such had that kind of affect on him. She made people want to elevate who they were when she was around.

In many ways Maria reminded him of his mother. Though she was an older woman, Maria made an effort to make every day count and everyone in it a vital part of how it counted. He could see much of his mother's attitude toward life when he looked at Maria. He visualized that his mother would have been a similar type individual had she been born under different circumstances with different resources.

One of his goals in life was to change his mother's circumstances. Seeing Mrs. Gorman regularly was like a boost to his motivation. He was working hard to become successful enough to bring his mother up out of the rundown, subsidized tenements and place her in a comfortable house of her own. Nothing would cause him to divert from this first and foremost thought in his life.

It was impossible to miss Maria when she came and went through the offices. Everyone made time to greet her except the newest associates and very busy clerks and secretaries. Still, she found a way to say hello to almost everyone every time she visited. Alan was impressed that she took the time to learn people's names, too. She had never called him by name during those first months but he heard her using the names of others many times. Very impressive for the wife of a partner. Her people skills were the kind of things a good lawyer aspired to.

Though Maria had only visited the offices maybe half a dozen times in those first four months he had been employed there, and those being very brief periods of time, her entrance brought the kind of electrical charge that lit up the room and made one sit up straighter and take notice of what was happening even if nothing was happening. She had that kind of presence.

Alan attributed his sensitivity to Maria's presence as a conditioning of loving and living with his own mother all his life. He was intimately aware of his Mom's emotional state at all times and acutely mindful of the part he played in her life. It gave him a sensitivity to the heart of an older women that many his age never developed until they were older themselves, if ever. He had always been forced to act more mature because of the life he and his mother had to live. Consequently, he understood things about older women and what they felt and sensed going on around them because he had to learn those things in order to be there for his mother.

He had never had much time for dating because he was always working some part time job, trying to help out at home. But even when he had, he found himself with little in common with those empty headed young girls. Those girls acted very immature, mostly thinking only of themselves and what they wanted out of life for themselves. There were very few second dates in Alan's life. Not because the girl didn't want them but because he could not tolerate any more time with what he termed airheads. He wanted to share his time with a woman of some mental and emotional substance. Someone who thought of others and lived for the sake of life, not gathering to themselves physical treasures.

His Mom constantly reprimanded him when she heard him use negative terms toward another person. She always reminded him that just because he was after different things than they were, it made his desires no more important than theirs. His Mom had even made him apologize to a girl he had said some hurtful things to, once. She had taught him that lots of people were living life on different levels. That made them no less important.

Never hurt someone when you can choose to help someone, his Mom had often told him. That day, when he had hurt that girl's feelings, she made him live it out as she marched him over to that girl's house and made him knock on the door and apologize for his very unmanly actions. Then she had marched him home and subjected him to a lecture of what a real man should be, do and act like. He had never forgot that lesson. Mom had been right. Real men helped, not hurt.

It was a lesson he had taken with him into his service of the law. He met people from all walks of life and everyone of them was living life on a different plane of existence than he was. Understanding their needs made him a better counselor at the law and a better person overall.

He saw much of the same qualities he prized in his mother in Maria even though her visits were brief and usually with people far from his office. After she was gone, people talked about her as though she were still there. They admired her and liked her and talked well about her every time.

Alan wanted people to talk about him in the same manner they talked about Maria when she was not around. Like some idea stuck in the back of his mind, he wanted to live his life in the kind of way that made it possible for people to talk about him as they did Maria. Though he did not presume to believe he was in her class, he did aspire to climb up to that tower where she shined for everyone to see.

3

A knock at his office door. Alan looked up to see another well wisher come to send him merrily on his way into his retirement with thoughts of leisure and enjoyment on their lips. He waved him in and he entered the office like he was coming into a holy shrine. Looking side to side to make sure he had plenty of room and was not going to topple some iconoclast or sacred element to the ground in some act of irreverent clumsiness, Terrence Bottoms took three tentative steps into the room and stopped.

Just wanted to personally wish you a happy retirement, Sir, Terrence announced as soon as his feet were planted.

Thank you very much, Terrence, Alan gave the man his warmest smile. Won't you have a seat and talk to an old man who hasn't got too many more hours to enjoy the atmosphere of this august association of great minds? Alan beckoned toward a chair.

I would dearly love to, Sir, Terrence waved him off. I'm on an errand for Mr. Gregory and I fear it may take me longer than he has allotted me to accomplish it. But I did want to personally wish you well and not just at the party with everyone else. Terrence paused and looked down at his feet.

Is there something else, Terrence? Alan prompted him.

Yes, Sir, Terrence looked up. I want to thank you for taking a chance on me all those years ago and seeing something in me that I did not even see myself. You have truly saved me and because of you I can boast about my beautiful family today. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much and for so much. Then Terrence was gone like a wisp of autumn air seeking other places, taking his color with him as he left.

Terrence brought more good memories to Alan's mind. In a life filled with many successes and good deeds, Alan counted Terrence as one of the greatest blessings his life had ever received. He knew the man truly appreciated the help Alan had afforded him long ago but Alan counted that little help as almost nothing when he viewed all that Terence had done to build upon that simple hand up so long ago. Having come from a hard life, Alan knew the true value of a small hand up when dealing with such heavy hands holding one down all the time.

Terrence Bottoms was down on his luck when he met Alan Pell for the first time. Alan had just started his new law firm and was doing some research in the local library, combing through back dated newspapers for specific reports of an accident he was investigating as part of a bigger investigation that his client was involved in. In the course of the research, he had occasion to visit the local library of the town where the original accident – a family called Tracy had been wiped out – had taken place. Unfamiliar with the area, he had made several requests of the librarian.

He noticed that as she took his requests, she looked toward the man sitting at a table by the front door several times and he assumed she was just making sure he was not bothering anyone. The man was disheveled looking, sitting alone at a wooden table near the entrance of the library but Alan paid him little mind other than to acknowledge he was there. He looked like a bum or vagrant who had come in out of the cold to warm himself in the heat of the library.

Alan remembered wondering why the librarians allowed him to stay in the building. Not that he was bothering anyone. He was just sitting there and minding his own business. Intent on his research, however, Alan did not give the man any more attention after his initial observation.

Then, while he was looking over a couple articles that pertained to his needs, the man approached him and Alan steeled himself to rebuff the man's attempt to beg some money for whatever reason he might have trumped up. Instead, he heard a very clear voice that asked his forgiveness.

Excuse me, Alan responded to gain back his equilibrium. Was this some kind of new approach to begging? Asking forgiveness first?

I'm sorry to bother you, the very rumpled man began. Here it comes, Alan thought. I heard you talking about the Tracy accident. He waited for Alan to acknowledge his search was indeed about the Tracy accident.

Uh – Yes, Sir, Alan felt like he had assessed this man all wrong and was quick to change his address of the man before him. He also put more effort into seeing the real man standing before him. He talked with an education. Maybe not Oxford, but somewhere. He carried himself as someone who could control situations, not some decrepit shell of a used up man. His clothes, though rumpled and totally in need of washing, were at one time the clothes of a man who took care of himself. His smile told Alan that he had once spent considerable time in a dentist's chair.

I'm Terrence Bottoms, the man announced. Then he stood there like that should have meant something to Alan. Alan just stared at the man, waiting for him to continue. The name meant nothing to him.

I'm the bus driver in the Tracy accident, the man announced when he perceived Alan did not understand his name.

A light went on in Alan's mind. Then, being Alan Pell, he did the unexpected. He stood up and greeted the man more formally and treated him like he was the most important person in the room. The librarian who had helped Alan retrieve the information he needed, saw the action and immediately stopped what she was doing to watch them. Most people treated Terrence Bottoms like some kind of pariah or leper when they found out who he was. The town refused to forgive him for wiping out one of their favorite families in a senseless accident.

It had been almost three years since that terrible accident had claimed the lives of the four members of the Tracy family. She had known Terrence before the accident. A good family man, she would have answered anyone that asked. Now, he was a shell of a man, casting about in public and private, waiting for death to swallow him up. Accused of wiping out an entire family, he could not deny it. He had been at the wheel of the big school bus when it left its lane and slid sideways across the highway. Blocking any forward direction for oncoming traffic, which consisted of three single passenger vehicles and the Tracy family in their minivan.

He had claimed the bus had not responded to his turning of the steering wheel but nothing had been found wrong mechanically with the vehicle and he had been blamed by everyone for the massacre of the Tracy family in every social circle. His wife deserted him at the worst of it, unable to take the criticism she was receiving because she stayed married to such a man. Obviously, he had lost his job. Next to go were