Fractal art by the author, Deeann D. Mathews
Mrs. Maggie Lee smiled broadly on the back porch, finding nine-year-olds George Ludlow and his best friend Milton Trent sound asleep, leaning against Col. H.F. Lee, who was reading the newspaper.
“That's basically relief,” he said softly to his wife. “They realized I wasn't going to kill them.”
The colonel carried Milton across to his house, where he was received by his smiling grandfather Thomas Stepforth Sr., while Mrs. Lee carried George to his bed.
“So, I figured out what is going on with George and Milton today,” the colonel said to his wife as they went back into the Ludlow house where they had charge a few more days. “How many nine-year-olds do you know that can actually get to an engine's fan belt?”
“Not many,” Mrs. Lee said.
“How many can put everything back together again, accounting for their hands not being quite strong enough to tighten things up for long-term safety?”
“Even fewer,” Mrs. Lee said.
“George and Milton are natural engineers, just like George's brother Grayson is a natural architect. The difference is, Grayson is six years old and Legos are still enough for him. George and Milton have outgrown that and are devouring engineering videos and are just following the steps. This is why they constantly are hatching their projects. If we get them onto more advanced junior engineering, they will be fine.”
“It takes a world-class military investigator to figure a few things out,” Mrs. Lee said.
“I do my best,” Col. Lee said. “Love and law enforcement and command leadership have one thing in common: in order to do any of that right, you have to know the people you are dealing with.”
The colonel went to get George's and Milton's grandfathers on a Zoom call to share his discovery, leaving his wife to be overwhelmed with love for him … he was so consistent, and it explained something about him … he observed her carefully, and often surprised her with little things she didn't always remember she enjoyed. To many other people in the world, his ability to recall things in detail about them was an absolute terror to consider, and those who didn't consider that found that the terror overtook them anyhow. The Fear of Lee had not been as high in Virginia since Gen. J.J. Hooker had gotten the Army of the Potomac thoroughly routed at Chancellorsville in 1863.
But at home – true to form, actually, given that the younger Col. Lee resembled his most famous Lee relative in many way – that same attention to detail was given to love. George and Milton were a whole situation of a handful … but now, they would end up starting their journeys in robotics together.
Col. Lee got off his Zoom call with a smile … he had memorized and even written down all the things that George's grandfather and now adopted father, Capt. R.E. Ludlow, had observed about his own grandchildren, but because he had been so busy gathering the seven up from various foster care situations and getting them settled safely in Lofton County while dealing with his own grief for the loss of their parents – his children – that he had not been able to figure everything out. But the colonel, very much loving his little cousins but not trauma-bonded with them by the loss of the middle generation, had simply built on what he knew and did what he did: built a profile of each of the little personalities, and set about figuring everything out.
His next thought was one of love for his wife … not a partner in crime, but a partner in good, full of love and deeply empathic and intuitive … she had primarily “solved” Edwina, and before any of that, she had “solved” him, a 27-year widower who never thought he could know love again … and then met her, and got to know her, and then observed … and decided to give love a second chance … and found the love of his mature life, against all odds … for she was just a gift of grace from God.
Think of the angel, and she appears … the colonel turned the desk chair to get up and Mrs. Lee was there, glowing … and his mind went back … both of them had fallen in love with the other because of observing the other's kindness toward children … both had lost a mate and child, both had refused to be embittered, and both had been kind and loving to everyone else's child that they had ever met in the years of their widowhood … they had been made for each other, in those years, and when finally the colonel had been honest with himself about what he was observing in her feelings toward him, and the alignment in his own heart toward her, all that lost hope had flipped and hit him like a love bomb.
Mrs. Lee was more than delighted when her husband stood up and embraced her, and kissed her with a tender intensity that let her know that later, when their little Ludlow cousins were asleep, they would finish that thought.
“I love you, Maggie, so much,” he purred in her ear after that sweetness.
“I love you so much, Harry,” she answered, and they just danced around that room to a melody only they could hear … the colonel was a talented composer on plucked strings, and had presented her “Maggie's Waltz” just a little before they had come down to help their Ludlow cousins out.
“I don't know why they are doing that, because I don't hear any music,” eleven-year-old Eleanor Ludlow said to her ten-year-old brother Andrew, “but it's the kind of stuff Papa and Grandma do, and it means they love each other!”
“Yep,” Andrew said. “All is good on the love front, and we're all safe here.”
