The alarm went off and it seemed way too soon. Not the alarm went off at the incorrect time. It just felt too soon to get out of bed from my comfortable spot with Abby curled up beside me.

I got out of bed and went to the bathroom to release the extra water that I had gained from holding that enema for such a long time.

I remember thinking "Wow! My ass is sore!" while I was in the bathroom. My ass wasn't accustomed to taking anything quite as large as that butt plug (note: today it wouldn't be a problem). It wasn't quite hemorrhoid painful but I knew that I'd had something big in my ass. But it was more than that. It was the workout that the tip of the plug had given my rectum and my prostate gland on the other side of it. I hoped it wouldn't be an issue as I walked around the facility I was visiting this day. I got dressed in my work clothes and prepared to get some breakfast.

I cuddled up next to Abby in bed and asked her if she wanted me to bring her something.

"Just your special cream sauce, please," she cooed.

"Later," I said and I told her that I'd be back in a few minutes after getting some breakfast.

While I was at breakfast, I was going over some of the papers and documents that I had gotten in Boise that were relevant to today's visit. I looked at my watch and knew it was time to get going. I stopped by our room to pick up a couple of test instruments I was taking with me, told Abby I was leaving and that I'd call her to let her know what our schedule looked like. I left her the phone number and the name of my contact at the facility in case she needed to reach me. I told her I hoped that I'd be done in just a few hours and we could leave and head to Eastern Oregon. After a bit more conversation about logistics, it was time for me to leave. I leaned down and kissed Abby.

"I love you," I said.

"I love you, too," she replied.

One of the lessons I learned from Catie's death was that we were never guaranteed that "next time" together. As painful as Catie's death was to me, the one thing I held close in my heart was the last words we shared together on the phone that expressed and reaffirmed our love for each other. Whatever else she felt or had happened in the last moments of her life, I knew we had shared the words that expressed our love and I found some comfort in that.

With that, I departed for the 15-mile drive to the facility. It was a cool and overcast day. The clouds hung low in the sky and at times there was a mist or drizzle. At other times there was a light rain. As long as there weren't thunderstorms or a driving rainstorm, my work at the facility wouldn't be significantly impeded. It would help in that there wasn't a lot of dust to deal with. Of all the facilities I had visited on this project, this one was unique in how they were able to recycle a waste into a usable product. It only took about four hours to see all the equipment, ask all the questions, and take all the measurements I needed for this assignment and I was ready to leave the facility shortly after 12 o'clock noon. I called the hotel to advise them that we'd be leaving by the late checkout time, and then I had them connect me with our room. Abby answered the phone.

"Hi! I'm done and getting ready to come back. We'll be leaving this afternoon." Abby told me that she'd be ready and everything would be packed to go. I told her that I'd be taking a quick shower before we left. With the details laid out, I said goodbye to the facility manager and the facility contact, got in my rental car and drove back to Pocatello. It had been a rather dreary looking day; the kind of day where I'd love to be laying in bed with Abby practicing our lovemaking techniques rather than driving back across Idaho.

When I opened the door to our hotel room, Abby was waiting for me...naked.

"I thought you'd be ready," I said.

"Everything is packed, just like I said. And I am ready...for you," she said. Yes, things were packed and ready to be put in the car. But she was ready to get in the shower with me, again, and wasn't going to pass up that opportunity. I stripped out of my work clothes and put them in a plastic bag designated for such storage and then stepped into the shower with Abby. This couldn't be a long shower or a long time in bed together even though the day seemed to be made for just that.

Abby got behind me and that was always one of the best parts of our showers together when we washed each other. We seemed to gravitate to positions where we washed each other when standing behind one another. For me, there was something always so sensuous standing behind her, back to front, and feeling the warm water flowing between us and washing "from behind" (though washing face-to-face was also needed to complete the effort). Of course, it helped when I was hard and could press my cock against her. In this case, she was behind me. She paid particular attention when she ran the bar of soap between my butt cheeks. She had me spread my legs a little more so that she could run the bar of soap over all me "parts.". I appreciated how gentle she was when she was running her fingers and the bar of soap over and around my bruised asshole.

She stepped close to me and up against my back so that she could run her hands and the bar of soap over my chest and abdomen, but then got to where she really wanted to wash; my groin, my cock, and my balls. I was semi-erect until she started washing my cock and balls and I stiffened in her hands as she gently rubbed and squeezed my balls.

"Gotta' fill-up those bad boys so you can fill me with as much of your special cream sauce as you can before you leave," she said.

There it was. In the background. We would be parting in just a couple of days for an undetermined amount of time. We were literally and figuratively trying to get our fill of each other before we went different places and different directions.

We got out of the shower and dried each other. Abby led me out of the bathroom, had me lay down on the bed, got me good and hard again, and slipped my cock into her warm (and still) wet pussy.

"There it is," she said once she had slipped me into her. After a couple of orgasms, she was knew that we had to get going. "One more for the road," she said, before cumming again.

"It's too bad you can't cum as easily and often as us," she said. I knew the "us" she was referring to was other women, though I also knew women who didn't cum either easily or often. Abby was fortunate that she did cum easily and often.

"Are you going to be okay?" she asked as she slipped off me. She didn't want me suffering from blue balls on the way back to Oregon.

"I'll be fine and they'll be nice and full for you when we get to Oregon," I said. Abby smiled at the thought.

We put on some comfortable clothes (sweatshirts and sweatpants) for the drive to Eastern Oregon and loaded the car. I turned in the hotel room keys, thanked the front-desk staff for the late checkout, and we were off and headed back through Boise to eastern Oregon.

As we drove west on Interstate 86 and then Interstate 84, I commented that this was when I missed my car. I had a Plymouth Satellite Sebring Plus that had a center "seat" between the two bucket seats up front. Rather than having a hard console between the seats, the arm rest folded upward to form the seat back and it had its own seatbelt. It was times like this when snuggling and being close would have been nice. No hanky-panky, though. I had already been in an accident where the driver of another vehicle slammed into me because he and his girlfriend were fooling around.

The skies were getting brighter and the clouds were now higher in the sky as we drove west. By the time we reached Twin Falls, Idaho there were hints of sunshine through the clouds. There are two bridges across the Snake River in the Twin Falls area. The Perrine Memorial Bridge is the one that is the most impressive to me. We took a slight detour off the Interstate highway to head to the bridge over the Snake River and to look over the gorge to the river down below. I commented that this was nothing like the Columbia River Gorge when comparing gorges. The Columbia River Gorge is lush and green without the sharp edges that are evident on the Snake River. Of course, another difference is the fact that the river flows though what is mostly desert.

"This is the type of place my dad would take us," I told Abby referring to the road trips that we took. We got back on I-84 and continued our journey west as we headed towards Boise and points west.

"Can I ask you something?" Abby asked a few minutes after we were back on the interstate highway.

"Sure," I replied. I don't remember any apprehension in my response to her.

"Do you feel guilty being with me?" she asked.

Where I immediately went in my thinking was this was a question about our age difference. I was now 33 years old, she was 18 and about to reach her 19th birthday and we were both aware (but largely did not care) that some looked upon our romantic relationship with disapproval. That was certainly true of her oldest brother and a few other nearby relatives. And there was the concern that I might hijack her life and not allow her to find her own path to adulthood. Blah, blah, blah,....

That wasn't what she was asking me at all and I'm glad I asked "what do you mean?"

She told me that sometimes she felt guilty about "us" and sometimes she thought she saw the same thing in me: that absent the incredible fucking that we did together, the only reason we were together was because her sister died.

"Should I really be fucking my dead sister's boyfriend?" was the simplest form of what she was asking and what was generating the question of guilt (if the answer was no). I realized that she was serious and I did know what she was talking about and avoided a response something like "isn't incredible fucking enough?" I didn't jump in right away and let her continue to speak about what she was feeling and what she was wondering about.

In the months following Catie's death, she and spent hours on the phone together processing what we had just been through and discovering her sister together through her journals. At the time, I didn't want to abandon her even though we couldn't answer immediately was "Is there an us?"

And then there was all the fury about the discovery of us after Catie's death. Abby was defiant in those moments defending her right (as an adult) to choose who she was involved with and/or slept with. The surprise had been (outside of us) that her older sister had facilitated and participated in this threesome. And I knew, as did Catie, that Abby was competing with her for my attention and favor.

Suddenly, Abby was involved and in a way that even she didn't anticipate. Catie and I were concerned about the long-term implications of this threesome of ours. However, when Catie died, worrying about how the three of us played together died with her. It's easier for me to see all of that four decades later. At the time, it was more difficult to see and to process because it was all too fresh and raw. But I knew this at the time: I didn't want Abby to feel used and discarded (by me) as if she was just a piece of flesh and had no meaning to me. I had feelings for her, too. They were different than those feelings I had for Catie. But she was much more than just a fucktoy to me. Abby knew this from our other conversations. But, it didn't hurt to restate that for her.

Abby's variant of guilt was that she was experiencing what Catie didn't. What would our lives have looked like if the accident hadn't happened or if there weren't the serious injuries and death caused by it. "What if's" are difficult to deal with because they draw you into a world where that isn't the reality in the here and now. Maybe that was easier for me to see, given my life experiences up to that point compared to Abby. Maybe that was the vision difference due to our ages.

I told Abby something like this:

"You and I are together because your sister and I met on the train. If we hadn't met, if we hadn't immediately been interested in each other, there would be no "us." But we did (meet) and we were (interested) and everything that happened then and after lead to our meeting. Catie will always be a part of us. The way she would always be part of us differs because you and Catie were sisters and I just had a few months to be with Catie. You had your lifetime with her as your sister."

"Yes, at times I feel some level of guilt that's almost like I'm disrespecting my love and memory of your sister or that I've substituted you for her. But I also remember that's not true. We share a common experience at our beginning that required your sister. You're an attractive young woman who is very, very pleasing to look at and just as pleasing to be with. But without your sister it is very unlikely for there to be an us. But there is us. And I am very glad there is. As time has gone on, I know I love you for who you are, not because of your sister. Does that make sense?"

Abby told me that it did. Abby told me that with the passage of time, she felt much the same way. But every once in a while, she felt just a bit guilty about having me.

"I was surprised by how rapidly and intensely my feelings of love for Catie developed. I was developing similar feelings for you, too, and I was open about this with your sister; that I was worried about how complicated things could get for all of us. What I wrote to you in your Christmas card was true. You were and you are one of the women I love and I'm not in the habit of giving out diamond ear studs or silk lingerie to anyone." Abby smiled at that.

"And as time has gone by, I find myself in love with you just as intensely as I was with your sister. The love feels different because you are different. But the intensity feels the same, even if it's taken longer after Catie's death."

"Do you think of Sis when we're together?"

"Rarely in the moment. I'm with you, not with the memory of her," I said.

Abby felt comforted by this.

...........

As we continued westward our conversation turned to her moving onto the campus. She had heard what I was about to say before but I shared in in a different way from the way I had shared with her. I told her that although it seemed like she was her past and that was what she and everyone else who thought they knew her accessed to define her.

"When you get on campus, you are not that person. You're going someplace where there are very few who have known you in your past. You are not your past. You are a person, a young woman, who has experienced certain things and had certain thoughts about your past. You might act and experience things in a certain way because of the past. But you don't have to carry it all with you as you move onto campus, unless you want to."

"You mom and sister are dead. They died as a result of another vehicle colliding with the car they were in. You can use a variety of adjectives and adverbs to add to what happened and how you feel about it. You're still discovering and processing how you feel about it. And for people who don't know you, you can define yourself as the daughter of a dead mother and as the sister of a dead sister. But that's not who you are unless you choose to define yourself that way. They might find out later and that alters their perception of you. But you choose what to share with them from your past."

"Besides, everyone moving onto that campus is going through some version of that," I said.

I told her there was a word of caution with respect to friends that knew her now and that some fight hard to let go of the past you they knew.

"There may be some who think they are not going to let you go be someone else because they have too much invested in the person they've known you as before. Sometimes that doesn't work out. Just remember, it's your choice. It's always you choice."

Abby posed a different question about what if she changed so "too much" or she found someone else that she loved and wanted to be with?

"A part of love is being able to do that AND let go when that is what is needed for love to survive."

"Like your wife?" she asked.

"Yes, like my ex-wife. I still love her and always will. We had some wonderful times together and chose to share and make a life together until she wanted something and someone different. Being with someone is a choice and she chose something and someone else. That was a painful experience and lesson. She is the mother of my child just as Catie was," I said. "It's not that I don't love her or Catie anymore. It's that my love for them is expressed differently. If you truly love someone, I don't think it goes away. It just gets directed or redirected differently."

"And just so you'll know, I do and I will always love you no matter what; whether we choose a life together or we choose to go our separate ways. Like you sister, you will always be a part of my life and I hope I will always be a part of yours. Love means freedom, not bondage."

"Now I know why Sis loved you so much," Abby said.

"You knew that before," I replied.

"Yes. Hearing it from you like this is a great reminder," she said.

Before we knew it, we were already beyond the Boise-Nampa area and nearly to the Idaho-Oregon border. And the sun was out and it had become a beautiful day in the Idaho and Oregon mountain desert. Our stop for the night was in Ontario, Oregon just over the state line and on the edge of the Pacific time zone.

The conversation had been a good one and, in looking back, it was funny that the news we left with about Abby and Catie's mom and dad had largely faded from our more serious conversations. We joked about it. But, the shock had worn off.