A path! A sign? No. As that warming orb sank toward the horizon, the beams ducked under the graying skies. She smiled as she remembered solstices long... ago.Then, she was young; she was beautiful. She was eager to perform the rites needed to ensure the light would return; the crops would grow; the livestock would multiply.Now she was old. No longer would she return from the solstice night carrying a merrily-begotten child within her womb. No, that road was closed long ago. And good that it. I cursed her all the way home. I lay awake at night thinking of all the ways I could get even with her. Slashing her tires kept coming to mind, but I kept rejecting that one as not being good enough. Besides, that seemed awfully juvenile. For the same reasons I rejected spray painting various names for her on her house, writing her a nasty letter and mooning her although my younger brother thought that to be a good one.I knew though, that I had to do something. Each day was the same for me. My. I open my rucksack and take out some tissues, wiping my face and neck dry, before cleaning off his cum from my blue blouse. It is a sticky mess and his semen stains will show all through the day at college. He watches me clean off his semen in silence. “I do hope you didn’t mind,” he says. I don’t really know how I feel. Ashamed of myself for not getting out of there? Disgusted with what he has done to me? Guilty that I have let him do it? Like a dirty slut? I shake my head. “No, I dont. “He will be jail for a long time. He will lose his cushy job, and maybe, if we are lucky, he will get beat up a few times by someone who thinks he has a pretty face.”Instead of slapping him for that, we both laughed, waking up Jeri.“How are you doing, Mom?” she asked.“Better, because of how brave Richard was. Have you given him a big thank you kiss?”She giggled, climbed off the bed and they had a really beautiful kiss.I told everyone to change into dry clothes, and that Chinese food was.