The Days Ahead

There was no happy outcome, arriving back in gloomy South Carolina. The perpetual rain and gray skies matched Elizabeth's mood, and she wallowed in the despair.

They were back in their old house, the pool unused and needing a thorough scrub. Jamaal Jr. was fussy, and Douglas, with his wife utterly depressed, took the laboring oar in caring for a child that wasn't his.

They slept in separate bedrooms for week on ends, and Elizabeth mourned. The loss of Larry. The collapse of a marriage by temptation. But Douglas had came for her. And despite his own betrayal of her, he had shown an ounce of courage to rescue her. And wasn't that enough?

She knocked on the door to Douglas's bedroom. She looked haggard, her normally immaculate her tousled, bags under her eyes. She needed to heal, and though this wasn't the ideal path to it, it was the one that lay before her. They were both in pajamas.

"C'mon," she said, her voice a little slurred from the wine. "I'm tired of sleeping alone." They walked back to the bed, and she took his hand.

"But no sex." She said firmly. Douglas nodded.