He was. They fit together. In every way that counted.
EPOLOGUE
Cann took over the business that had originally been his brainchild and was feeling optimistic about ideas for expansion. In March he bought a stone house in Dripping Springs with a big backyard that backed up to a creek and huge mature mesquite trees, the kind that are perfect for climbing.
With the azaleas in full bloom it looked a little like a fairy tale. But it also had a dark side. Cann made sure it had its own state of the art security system that included live feed cameras inside and out. Anytime someone turned the alarm off, any coming or going, he watched the feed on monitors if he was at home, and watched it on his smartphone if he was away. He was also compulsive about making sure Bud’s car was in perfect running condition.
Bud didn’t mind that his behavior was paranoid sometimes. She understood that we’re all just an aggregate result of our experiences.
They got married in their own backyard. The club spared no expense and paid for the entire thing. Bud gave up her job as house mom, but trained her replacement and left the girl wondering if she would ever be able to live up to Bud’s standards.
On the last day of May, Bud delivered a little girl, as Cann had predicted. When the new nurse on duty brought the pink bundle of joy into the hospital room, Cann reached out.
“Are you the father?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, as he took Rosebud Dew Johns into the crook of his arm. “This baby is mine.”
He and Bud had struggled for months to agree on a name. When she first jokingly suggested Dew as a middle name, in remembrance of the Mountain Dew machine where they met, Cann had laughed. But as time went on, he came to like the idea more and more.
In September Bud began matriculating toward a degree from the University of Texas. Cann’s business was doing well, but the SSMC still insisted on giving her a scholarship. They claimed that the club did a certain amount of charity every year for tax purposes and that it might as well be her. She was grateful because that meant she could hire someone to stay with Rosie while she was gone to class.
When she thought back over the past eleven months, she was amazed at how much things had changed, in ways she could never have imagined.
Life was strange.
But good.
