Ashley & Milo

  ******************

  We pulled around back of my apartment and Lilly Trevor was already there. She rose from a chair to meet us as we got out of the car. She was gorgeous! She was in a little black cocktail number. "Hi Lindsey and Marie. Hello Milo, nice to see you again. I'm glad you could make time for me this evening. I have a date later, and I appreciate you squeezing me in."

  "Jean, this is Lilly Trevor. She works for the newspaper. Lilly, this is my ex-wife, Jean Burgess. She is the mother of Lindsey and Marie." Two strikingly beautiful women were appraising each other. Jean, of course, had dressed up to tease me and I wondered if Ashley hadn't told Lilly she was going to meet my ex-wife.

  "Excuse me ladies, I have a roast in the oven and dinner to prepare. Lilly you know where the bedrooms are if you want to do your thing with the camera. Say, why don't you stay for dinner if you have time and I'll let Lindsey really give you a show immediately after. I absolutely have to leave myself by a quarter to nine at the latest."

  "Why Milo, I'd like that. I have to leave by eight. I'm headed out for an interview over cocktails about that time. I'll stay, and thank you."

  I had the girls help me put dinner on the table. Jean followed Lilly around as she took pictures of the bedrooms and some in the living room. Both were in awe of the completed effect. It was an interesting meal. Two beautiful women that never in this world would tolerate each other and here they were sitting down to dinner together.

  It broke open when Jean asked how Lilly knew me. "I was here to look into a story and was walking from the other house beside Milo. He acted like he didn't want to be near me and I was acting like an ass. I admit I was coming on to him just a little. Halfway here he stopped and pointed out I was acting like a street walker and not like a newspaper woman.

  "It shocked me and I stepped back and the heel of my shoe snapped off. I fell on what I had been acting like. He could have left me on the ground, embarrassed, with no way except to hobble the rest of the way.

  "Instead he leaned down, took my good shoe and snapped that heel off and put the shoe back on my foot. He gave me a hand up and we walked along just as if nothing embarrassing had occurred to me. Milo is one of the most interesting personalities I have ever run into. Anyone who can give away a million dollar treasure just because he can earns my respect. So Milo, what is new since I saw you last?"

  "Not too much. I've been making some new friends. You must have seen the gazebo when you arrived. That turned out well. Mrs. Winslip, Ashley, has been very nice by letting me do some work for other people instead of insisting that I work strictly for her as I originally agreed. I'm reconnecting with the girls, so all-in-all I'm pretty satisfied with my life right now."

  "I shouldn't ask, but is there any love interest between you and Mrs. Winslip? She is a very nice person. You two would make a nice couple."

  "I like Ashley a lot, but she is very well-to-do and I don't have much. That's an obstacle. Besides her husband was my best friend and like a brother to me. That is a complication, along with her being pregnant and him dying. She should go out and find a suitable mate from her own class to help her raise their child when it is born."

  Jean was bursting with questions. "Ashley is pregnant?"

  "Yes and Calvin never knew it. Pretty sad, isn't it?"

  Lindsey spoke up as the girls never tired of talking about the treasure. "Dad or somebody tell Mom how you gave away a million dollars."

  "I didn't really give away a million dollars. I didn't feel it was mine in the first place. Lilly, you tell it. That was the story you were here for the day we met."

  Lilly told it and then finished by saying that when her story came out in the Sunday supplement there was going to be a sidebar on how the paintings were found and a little about one Milo Burns, the one that found them.

  Marie, who was my quiet one, looked very much like she wanted to say something. "What is it Marie?"

  "Can I tell how Lindsey and me worked and we each were paid some money and given something for when we get married?"

  "Of course you can, sweetheart. Go get them." I explained that when I worked out, it was always predicated on their being looked after.

  "This Saturday, Lindsey and Marie are going to be helping out in the deli down the street. These things they are getting were given to them by a Mrs. Brown while I was trimming hedges. The girls helped her in the house and received ten dollars apiece."

  Marie came out carrying a fairly large box that was about all she wanted to lift and set it in front of her mother. "It's awful heavy, Mom. Mrs. Brown said it could become a hairloom."

  "That's heirloom, Marie." Jean opened the box to twelve napkins and one tablecloth big enough for a table that would seat twelve people. It was made of Irish linen. Even Lilly was envious.

  Lindsey was standing there with a wooden box that had a handle. She plunked that up on the table and Jean opened it to show a twelve place setting of silver plate along with several serving pieces. Jean exclaimed, "I never had anything this fine in my whole life. Milo where do you find these people to work for that give away things like this?"

  I laughed. "They find me. I was walking down to the deli for sandwiches for us. Mrs. Brown beckoned to one of the girls and it ended with me doing work for her. She paid me very well and it looks like she did Lindsey and Marie too. I had them hand deliver a thank you note. Ashley helped them write it because she knows more about things like that. How to word it I mean."

  "Milo, that thank you note from the girls will be a treasure to Mrs. Brown. She will be as impressed with that as you are with the gifts. That shows class and that is important. I'm impressed that you made them do it."

  "Sometimes Lilly, I'm more than a rude handyman. It was obnoxious of me to talk to you like that the first time we met."

  "Maybe, but I deserved every bit of what you said."

  "Okay, enough girls. Lindsey you get ready to show your Mom and Lilly the living room. Marie, you pull the shades. Lilly and Jean, I hate to ask you but would you both go in and lie on the living room floor. I don't think it will harm your dress just for the few minutes you will be there."

  We went in and I positioned the women where I wanted them. Marie turned out the lights and it was dark. Lindsey turned up the rheostat so the blades of the fan just barely moved and then turned the outer lights on very dim. This was at first and then increased the lights and the fan so that it seemed that stars were appearing in the heavens.

  "Lilly, this is what I wanted you to see when you first saw this room. And Jean, I wanted you to see it too. I worked hard to get it completed last night so I could show it to you tonight before I left. Ashley made the stars that are scattered about the ceiling and did most of the moons in the corners. I'm thinking she was pretty depressed from losing Calvin and all and then having to deal with a fatherless child coming. I guess you could call this therapy for her."

  Suddenly Lindsey switched into kaleidoscope mode and I had to tell her to stop, but how the two girls laughed.

  I helped Jean up to her feet and Lilly laughed when I pulled her up. "This is the second time I've been on my butt and you've given me a hand up. You're going to have to watch that, buster."

  Lilly was going to help with the dishes, but Lindsey said that she and Marie promised me they would do them so their Mom wouldn't have to. Lilly left after thanking me profusely for a fun dinner and show.

  I had to leave in an hour. Jean was watching me constantly. Finally she said, "Milo you've changed. I don't know you anymore. I was so bored with you when we were married. I went and found excitement. Now it seems like you are the one that has found the excitement I was looking for. Even the girls' lives seem exciting. Why?"

  "Our life was pretty boring. I worked for years doing the same old thing and never was really getting ahead. All that time, though, my mind was active and I suppose it was a fantasy world I was in. When you cut me
loose, I was pretty down, but then I said to myself that this could be an opportunity to change. So I did. Now if I want to do good for somebody, I go ahead. If I want to work hard, I know it is for my self and maybe I'm helping someone at the same time.

  "It shouldn't change much from now on. I'm slowly building up some clientele that give me work. I have work lined up ahead of me all the time now and I have to hire help to keep up. I hired your stepson Mark for a few hours. Maybe he will work out and maybe not, but while he is with me, rest assured he will be treated fairly and maybe he will learn a little from me."

  I then got around to what I really wanted to bring up. "I would like you to consider letting Lindsey and Marie live with me. They have asked me to ask you and I said I would. I know the court said they should be with you and I guess they are right, but I miss them. They have been here a week and I have been totally happy. If I had them with me, you still would be their mother and you would have full access to them at all times."

  "But they need a woman's influence. You can't give them that."

  "I think I can. Mrs. Hamlin, eighty-five and lonely with a full cookie jar and a wealth of information about people. Mr. and Mrs. Brown, wealthy and class with the sense of the older values. Kim and Will Grover, under thirty with two kids the girls' age with another baby due in six weeks. I'm doing their nursery over starting on Monday.

  "Patrick and Linda love the girls as if they were their own. By the way, Linda says hi and is looking forward to finding out what is happening in your life so she can gossip about you. Then there is Ashley. She thinks a lot of the girls. This is a nice community and I would like my kids to grow up here. I think they would have a better childhood than you and I had when we were growing up, so would you at least think about it?

  "You and I are always going to be their parents and should consider what is best for them. After our divorce I planned to get the kids away from you somehow, someway. Eventually I decided it wasn't about me and how you treated me, but just about them. I guess it boils down to your decision. You have the court on your side and I know you love them, but damn it, I love them too."

  Jean didn't answer and I didn't expect her to. "Hey, I have a long drive ahead of me and have to get going. I'll say goodnight to the girls and I should be home by nine in the morning. My bed is pretty comfortable even if it is centuries old."

  Just as I was leaving Jean said, "Lilly said something strange to me. She said you told her you were married at one time to a very beautiful woman. Do you still consider me beautiful compared to her younger, more vibrant beauty?"

  "Jean, I'll always consider you beautiful."