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They arrived at the Sea Scape about thirty minutes later and were seated in ten minutes.

While they were waiting for their food to arrive, Alex asked, “Why did you become a kindergarten teacher?”

Smiling she answered, “Because I love kids. Growing up an only child after my brother was…I wasn’t happy. My grandparents on my father’s side are foster parents. They always had a houseful of kids of all ages. As I got older I babysat for them when they wanted to go out. Many of the younger kids were always asking me to help them with their homework. One day my grandfather saw this and told me that I should be a teacher. I thought about it for a long time before I decided it was a good idea.”

“Wow that was a mouth full.”

“Why’d you become who you are?” she countered.

“I love performing. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it is. Knowing that my music and mistakes and triumphs have made differences to people all over the world makes me happy. I just love to make people happy I guess.”

A few minutes later their food came and for a while they ate peacefully, then Alex asked, “You said you grew up as an only child after you brother was…something happened to him, what was it?”

“It’s too long and too complicated to get into right now.”

A while later after they had finished eating dinner and were contemplating whether or not to have dessert Morgan saw someone she thought she’d never see again. “Oh my god no!” she whispered.

“What’s wrong?’

“We have to leave now.”

“But why?”

“I’ll explain later but right now we need to leave quickly.” She said never taking her eyes off the person.

He signaled for the check and while he went to pay, Morgan ran to the bathroom to throw up.

He was waiting for her when she came out, “Are you….”

He was cut off by someone calling, “Morgan Ashleigh!”

Alex watched as a look of complete terror crossed Morgan’s beautiful face. She moved closer to him and silent tears fell down her cheeks and she whispered, “Please go no.”

The woman walked up and said, “Honey it’s been so long since we’ve seen one another.”

“Don’t touch me.” Morgan spat through clenched teeth as she shoved to woman’s hands off her arms.

“Honey what’s the matter, don’t you remember your own mother?” the woman asked.

Morgan screamed, “I don’t have a mother!” before running out of the restaurant crying.

Alex followed her and by the time he caught up, she was on the sand. She had stopped to take her shoes off and instead she fell to her knees and kept crying.

Alex went to her and wrapped his arms around her and let her cry.

After a while when it seemed as if Morgan was calm enough to talk Alex asked, “Who was that?”

Wiping her eyes, Morgan answered bitterly, “My mother.”

“But didn’t you just say you didn’t have one?”

“I don’t.”

“But then how….?”

“That person back there may have given birth to me but she isn’t my mother. And she never will be again.”

“What happened?”

“It’s a long story. It has to do with why I grew up an only child.”

“If you wanna talk about it go ahead, we have all night.”

She took a deep breath before she began her story, “I’ve never told anyone this. The only ones who know the truth about how my brother are my father, grandparents, me, Shannon, and Fred.”

She paused and took another deep breath, “I was only ten when it happened. My mother told me that I was staying home from school that day even though she knew I wanted to go. My father told her, Shannon, Morgan’s going to school. She’s not sick, she doesn’t have an appointment, and there’s nothing else to keep her from going.’ And so he took me to school. I was excited because that day my class was going to see a play that the high school drama department was doing. We went to the high school at three in the afternoon. And the play was like two hours long so we got back to our school at like five-fifteen. Since I lived like only three or four blocks from school I walked home. As I got to my street I saw flashing red and blue lights. There were so many police cars. There was an ambulance and the county medical examiner/coroner’s van.”

She didn’t dare stop. If she did she wouldn’t be able to finish. “I started to think ‘God please don’t let anything be wrong with mommy, daddy, or Jake.’ I was really scared when I saw two stretchers wheeled out the front door. One went into the ambulance and the other to the coroner’s van. I didn’t see who was on either stretcher. I looked into the back of the nearest police cruiser and saw my mother’s lover/boyfriend, or whatever you want to call him sitting in the back. I ran and tried to get into the house, but some lady stopped me. She told me to come with her. I didn’t want to but she didn’t give me a choice. She forced me into her car. She told me she was going to take me to my father, but she didn’t. She took me to a house I had never been to before. The people that lived there told me that I wasn’t going to see my father or grand parents ever again. I wasn’t allowed to go to school, or even outside to play. I was constantly crying and they would hit me because I wouldn’t stop. I was never left alone in the house until one day when they got a phone call. I had been there for three weeks when this happened. When the woman hung up she came to me and said, ‘we have to leave for a while, don’t make any noise, don’t go outside, and don’t eat anything.’ And then they left. When I had been left at the house three weeks earlier I told myself that I needed to remember the address because it might come in useful. I grabbed the phone and called my granma. She cried when she heard my voice. I told her I wanted to come home and I gave her the address to where I was at. I told her she needed to hurry because I didn’t know when they’d be back. Fifteen minutes later I was safe in her arms. The people that were holding me were arrested. When we got home from the hospital, where the police had insisted I go to be checked out, I asked ‘what happened at my house?’ My grandparents have always been bluntly honest with me. My grandfather pulled me into his lap and said, Baby Em, your mother and her boyfriend Fred are in jail. Your father was shot but he’s going to be fine.’ He stopped talking so I asked, ‘where’s Jake?’ That’s the only time I ever saw my grandfather cry, well except for when Devaigh was born. He told me, ‘Honey, Jake died.’ I went hysterical. I ran all over the house calling him, I have never cried that much, not even when Devaigh’s father left me. I missed my brother’s funeral because those people kidnapped me. My grandmother told me that my mother and Fred had done it. They decided that the only way that they could be together, instead of my mother divorcing my father and leaving us, was for all of us to be dead. So Fred told her to keep me home from school and he’d come over and ‘take care of’ me and Jake. And he’d get my father when he came home for lunch. Thank god my father took me to school that day. My father was shot in the back as he tried to save Jake. If the bullet had gone three or four centimeters to the left he would have died too. My own mother tried to have me killed.” She finished talking and began to cry again as Alex tightened his arms around her.

“Oh sweetheart, I’m so sorry.” He said as he too began to cry.

A few seconds later, Morgan’s cell rang. Thinking it was Nick to tell her something was wrong with Devaigh she answered, “What’s wrong?”

“Morgan? Its dad, you need to come to grandma’s house right away.”

“If it’s to talk about Shannon being out of prison, I already know.”

“How? Just found out.”

“My date and I had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting her just a few minutes ago as we left the restaurant.”

“Oh? Let me talk to your date.”

“Ok,” to Alex she said, “He wants to talk to you.” and handed him the phone.

“Hello sir.” He said almost immediately after taking the phone.

“Hello to you to. What’s your name?”

“Alexander. But please call me Alex.”

“How m any times have you been out with my daughter?”

“This is the first time we’ve gone out sir.”

“Are you planning on asking her out more than just this once?”

“Assuming she’ll say yes, I plan on it.”

“How old are you Alex?”

“I’ll be twenty-eight in January.”

“Do you have children and/or do you have a problem with people who do?”

“To the first question, yes, three, two girls and a boy. And to the second question, no, I don’t.”

“Ok then, put my daughter back on the phone.”

“Certainly.” He handed the phone to Morgan who giggled almost immediately after taking the phone from him.

“All right daddy, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She hung up and said, “Sorry about that. Dad’s just a little overprotective of me and Devaigh.”

“I can totally understand why. How old are you by-the-way?”

“I’ll be twenty-three next September.”

“When did you graduate high school? You’re only twenty-two and you’ve been teaching for two years already.”

“I was fifteen. I went through about five school years after my baby brother’s death in just a few years. I started high school as a sophomore when I was almost thirteen.”

“Wow.”

“I guess. Anyway, what do you want to do now?”

“Why don’t we take a walk on the beach?”

So they did just that. When he next looked at his watch he was surprised to find that it was nearing midnight, what was going through Nick’s head about how late they were out he didn’t want to know.

“What time is it?” Morgan asked rather sleepily.

“It’s nearing midnight.”

“Wow. We should get going don’t ya think?”

“Yeah.”

They walked back to his car and he drove back to his home so Morgan could get Devaigh and he could take them home.

When they walked into the living room where Nick was, he jumped out of the chair he was sitting in and stood with his hands on his hips, “Where have you two been? Do you know what time it is? You had me worried sick!” He then proceeded to collapse into a fit of giggles.

Alex laugh and he laughed even harder when he saw the puzzled look on Morgan’s face before she too began laughing.

After he regained his composure he told Morgan, “Your daughter was a complete angel.” To Alex he said, “You girls behaved fine, your son on the other hand…”

“What’d the little devil do?”

Nick told him, “James tried to pull all sorts of stuff, none of which he got away with.” He added a look that said, ‘I’ll tell you later.’

“Can you stay until I get back? I’ve got to get Morgan and Devaigh home.”

“No problem.” He said with another look that said, ‘I want details.’

Morgan put her sleeping daughter into her car seat and was ready to go.

“It was nice meeting you Nick. And thank you for babysitting Devaigh.”

“It was nice meeting you too. And it was no problem, like I said, she was an angel.”

Nick sat back down as Alex picked up Devaigh’s diaper bag and he and Morgan left.

A few minutes later they were at Morgan’s door.

“I know it sounds corny, but thank you for a wonderful night. And thanks for listening to my little sob story, I’m sorry about it.”

“No it doesn’t sound corny. And you’re welcome. As for the story, it wasn’t a problem.”

They leaned in for what was the first of many goodnight kisses.