1. The Legacy, Chapter 3: Echoes


    Date: 3/29/2015, Categories: Wife Lovers, Author: stormdog100, Rating: 24, Source: LushStories

    and then wait for the ambulance and lead it to their location. She jumped down from her own horse and helped Henry to the ground, where she cradled his head and held him close as she called 911 on her cell phone. They both knew, even then, that the ambulance wasn’t going to arrive in time, but they had time to say the things they needed to say to each other. And so they talked as she held him, and he died peacefully in her arms, content with the life he’d lived and secure in the knowledge that his son was loved and would be raised by these two fine, loving people. And that was the way Robert found them, his wife on the ground with the older man’s head in her lap, his last words spoken to her in love and peace, his magnificent heart finally stilled. Her face was streaked with tears and she sobbed, distraught and inconsolable, while the paramedics lifted his body into the ambulance, no heroic measures left to be taken on his behalf, their actions calm and measured in respect for the grieving. She had the comfort of knowing that he’d died with people he loved while doing something he still deeply enjoyed, in a place that he’d always considered the most beautiful place on earth. It turned out that he’d suffered a ruptured aneurysm in his abdomen, serious enough that he’d bled out internally; there was nothing anyone could have done, no CPR or anything else that would have saved him. They buried him in the family plot at Three Oaks, in a clearing on a hillside overlooking the ...
    fields and the old farmhouse below. He was laid alongside his beloved Mary, and in the company of generations of Pettigrews, black and white. The space on his other side they reserved for Beth, and the one next to her for Robert, so that someday she would lie at rest between her two beloved men. For all the years after Henry’s death, Beth made regular trips to the small cemetery to speak with him. She liked to go just before sunrise, either walking up the hill from the road, or else on horseback, so that she could watch the sun come up over the land she loved so much. With the sight of the mist laying in the bottomlands and her home in the distance, she was sure that sometimes she could still hear his deep, gentle voice whispering words of love, or telling her of the past and their ancestors - or perhaps it was merely echoes in the breeze. She would stay until the heat of the morning sun burned away the mist, and then return to her loving family, somehow more at peace. He was deeply missed – not just by Beth, but by Robert and their three children, and by his three older boys, who had accepted Hank as a brother – albeit a very young one! They all accepted Beth and Robert and the other two kids as well, not terribly surprised by the relationship that had existed between them; they knew of their father’s capacity for love and compassion…and, too, it was just the way things were! John, Henry’s youngest son – other than Hank, of course – soon moved back into his parent’s home, which ...
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