Bay of White Sands
an excerpt

The phone woke him. Its insistent ringing finally broke through the mist of sleep and dream. Jeane, who woke earlier when the phone rang the first time, poked him into total awareness.

"Hello? Who is this?" He asked, blinking sleep out of his eyes as he tried to focus on the alarm clock in the light of the bed lamp he had just now turned on.

"Its Charlene." He heard his sister's voice, and heard it's fragile edge.
"Charlene, what's wrong?" He knew there was something wrong. His sister rarely called, and never at three thirty in the morning.

"Papa died" was all she could squeeze out of her throat before she apparently lost out to an attack of tears and sobs.

"When? Where? What's going on?" Douglas knew his father was not feeling well. At least twice a week he berated himself for not taking the time to drive up and visit since the illness started two months ago, but he didn't think it was this serious.

Gaining composure Charlene explained that in the last forty eight hours their father's immune system had simply collapsed, and shortly after eleven last night, he lost consciousness and died twenty minutes ago, shortly after three in the morning.

The quiet was palpable. The thoughts raced through Douglas's mind with a fury that didn't offer him the opportunity to give them expression. It was Charlene that broke the awkward silence.

"Doug?" she asked. It was only after she had called his name three or four times that he finally responded. It was a response born of cold fury and a sense of righteous indignation that he carried with him every where, all-the-time just under the surface. "Why in god's name didn't you call me earlier?" was all he was capable of asking, for fear he'd say more, lashing out and hurting his sister with an anger that would benefit neither of them.

Hearing the distress in her husband's voice, Jeane stirred herself from her warm comfortable cocoon under the covers in the bed next to him and gently wrapped herself around him from behind, resting her sleepy warm head next to his on his shoulder. Words were unnecessary and Douglas felt the distress slowly fade away, as if sucked up into the mystery of the woman he called 'wife'.

"He begged us not to call you until it was over", was all Charlene could say, after a long period of silence.

The next voice Doug heard was Stanley's, Charlene's husband. "I'm really sorry Doug, I really didn't agree but the old man was so emphatic, I just couldn't go against a dying man's last request even when I felt it wasn't right. We even tried getting the priest involved, remember Father Laviere? He came down to do the last rights, and even he said we had no choice but to respect your father's wishes."

Doug listened in silence. He liked and respected Stanley. Not a man he'd choose for a friend, but nonetheless a person he knew to be honest and straight forward.

Apparently deciding the silence was some degree of acceptance, Stanley continued. "The last thing he said to me before he lost consciousness last night was 'Tell Doug he was a good boy! Tell Doug I was always proud of him!"

Finally, hearing the words his father had never in his entire life ever said to his face, the reality of his loss hit home. Handing the phone over to Jeane, he quickly walked to their bathroom where he shut the door, buried his face in a thick bath towel and in a growing crescendo of unsuccessfully stifled sobs, cried over the death of his father.