Angel

I came to savor my life with Mark. He had a sharp mind, a ready wit, and he never failed to compliment me. He was an excellent father and a terrific provider. While I came to love all of it, bath times may have been the best. After Lilly's turn, Mark bathed me. He was supremely attentive and gentle. He shaved my legs and underarms with supreme care and skill. The first time Mark gave me a bath, he gently shaved my blonde pubic hair into the shape of a valentine and stated, "Let this be a visible symbol of the love that will grow between us." Now I ask you, what woman can resist that!

After Mark bathed me, it was my time to give him a bath. I grew to appreciate his muscular body as my soapy fingers ran over his skin. Invariably, I ended up giving him a hand job. No matter how often I jerked him off, Mark was still able to get it up when we went to bed. Every night for more than a year, Mark and I made love to conclude our day. The vast majority of those times, I had an orgasm. I never felt forced or pressured a single time, but to myself, I maintained the fiction that I was unwilling long after I knew it to be a lie. My life with Bob faded as I grew closer to Lilly and Mark. The day she first called me "Mommy" brought tears to my eyes. I wondered what had become of the sober, detached, exo-archaologist who had come to Dormer to study ruins She had to still be inside me, right?

Then came the weeks when I woke up queasy every morning. For a scientist, I can be pretty dumb. Mark noted my behavior and deduced I was pregnant before I did. There could be no going home now. I had known that for a long time, perhaps even from the moment when I was was first intercepted while on my way to the well. I can feel the new life in me now. The midwives cannot tell yet whether it is a boy or a girl. Lilly wants a sister, Mark wants a son, I'll settle for healthy and normal. I know my future. It's not grading papers and reading theses, but it has its own rewards. I am content. Still, I feel the need for someone to hear my story. I have taken this time while MY daughter sleeps to compose this note. I intend to secretly place it into one of Mark's bundles of correspondence to earth. This is not a call for rescue. I simply want the world to know that once I was Pamela Olsen (nee Ketcham) and to tell the man who was once my husband, Robert Olsen, that I am safe and that part of him still resides in my heart. If he has not yet completed the monograph we began, have him dedicate it. "To what we had."

Sincerely, Angel.