Image by John Hain from Pixabay
“The hard thing you're going to have to deal with, Capt. Ludlow, is that basically, you love being in the Army. You love taking out the country's enemies. What you're going to have a hard time with is adjusting to a world in which enemies get to live on and you can't get at them.”
“With all due respect, sir, my ex-wife is still alive and well. I think I've gotten past that already.”
R.E. Ludlow Sr. had made a difficult counseling client in his early days, and he knew that – he also knew that the loss of his children to an enemy they chose over him and their own children had provided him the humility he badly needed.
“When your idea of your personal power has come down to nothingness, what do you do? Where do you go? As a man, this is the end of you, or the beginning.”
Mrs. Thalia Ludlow found that written in one of her husband's notebooks shortly before dinner … after 15 years of marriage, he was so comfortable with her that he did not remember to close his occasional journal on his nightstand. That would not have happened with that first wife … but much had healed and changed.
Capt. Ludlow was on the porch gently calling his grandchildren in from the back of the house to go wash up for dinner … he had been watching them playing while Mrs. Ludlow got Sunday dinner situated, and as they went in, she came out for a moment, and his whole body shuddered with pleasure as she wrapped her arms around him from behind.
“You know you are a songwriter, but do not know it, just like the man whose funeral you sang for, singing his one and only song of testimony,” she said.
“Woman, do you want me to rip your clothes off right here?” he moaned. “Stop purring in my ears telling me you think I'm greater than I know that I am while holding me like this – it just feels too good!”
Mrs. Ludlow knew he had to go back to Big Loft and jump adoption hurdles that Monday … she knew what she was doing … he was carrying a lot of tension about it, and he let go of a lot of it just then.
But also, the thought was now planted in his mind, and that was good, because she knew what he did not know: money was trying desperately to chase him down because of his rare and gorgeous bass voice, and he might as well own some of those songs he would eventually record outright.
Capt. Ludlow went back to his bedside, laughing at himself because he knew what he had done... she had seen his journal because he left it open. And that was all right … they handled each other's phones and knew all of each other's passwords and never thought anything of it. Both of them were making money and handing it off to the other at that point in their marriage, and thinking nothing of it.
The captain took up his pen, and his journal … he had to learn all manner of English literature as part of his upbringing, and so making a decent rhyme was actually not that hard.
“I just have to see what Thalia sees here … somehow that woman sees in me and my grandchildren … us messed-up Ludlows … all this greatness, and we just can't let her down!”
Sometime later, Mrs. Ludlow returned to the bedroom to take off a necklace that was catching on her apron, and saw this written in that journal that still had not been closed:
“When all of your power is shattered as dust,
And your pride lies destroyed on the ground,
When your knees have been pressed by defeat to the dirt –
You are lost, but you still can be found.
“When all hope you cherished in yourself is dead,
At the end of all paths you have sought,
Yet look up – there is One Who yet waits in His grace
He remains when all your dreams are naught.”
Just before dinner, Capt. Ludlow felt a caress that made him see fireworks, as Mrs. Ludlow purred in his ear: “I knew you could do it, Robert.”
Eleanor, Edwina, and Amanda Ludlow all saw that, and smiled.
“I love it when they do that,” Eleanor said. “I'm not sure what it all means, but I know it means they love each other.”
“And that means we're safe and can stay,” Edwina said.
“And there's enough love to go around!” Amanda said.
Lil' Robert also saw it, and was confused at just five years old, but then smiled.
“I don't know what y'all see or what anybody is doing, but if it makes you happy, keep doing it, because if everybody else is happy, then I can be too!”
“You get it, Robert,” Eleanor said as she went and hugged her baby brother. “You really do!”
The Ludlow grandparents found all four grandchildren in a group hug in the next minute, and just joined it before everyone went in for dinner.
