Helen Maley had to find a job now that Earl was gone and she had herself and Bart to support. While she looked, she had plenty of support from the neighbourhood. There was always someone over, encouraging and helping out with things. Perhaps because of good timing or good fortune, she found a semi-professional position as a personal assistant to an up and coming lawyer. He felt her middle aged maturity would bring order to his life. He was right. With community support, and newfound tenacity, Helen excelled. She was determined to do well, and brought home case files to study at night. She began to understand the procedure of law, and the precedents that guided it. Soon she was pre-assembling her employers active files with little or no direction, including precedents she expected to be pertinent. Sometimes, she included an Act, study or decision that her employer hadn’t even thought of. Helen had found a whole new World of fulfillment in her life. Soon she and her boss were meeting for morning coffee to discuss the cases they were working on. Helen had become an indispensable part of the organization.
The neighbours were overjoyed Helen found employment she was happy with. They all pitched in to help her around the house and with Bart. If Mr. Finnigan was mowing his lawn, he mowed Helen’s lawn too. Hers was attached to his. Bart, along with Johnny, spent a considerable amount of time at Erwin’s. Whenever someone was helping Helen at home, she often instructed Bart to get out of the way and go over to Erwin’s, which he did.
Johnny was always hanging out at Erwin’s. At first he was working off his punishment to Al, but after a while, he and Al knew that was over, although Al liked to order Johnny around just the same. Sometimes Johnny would help out when Ethan and the girls were doing something, but he ignored Al’s excessive demands. Al then would threaten Johnny with violence, but was too lazy to chase him down.
Still, Johnny admired Al and Ethan. They were so cool, the way they walked around in jeans without a shirt and medallions hanging from their necks. Soon Johnny wasn’t wearing a shirt, and had a cool gold colored medallion Al had given him. One day, Johnny was slouched on the couch and Priya came up to him. She told him to clean up the mess he had left in the kitchen. She was completely naked. Johnny went into the bathroom and beat-off first. He loved hanging out at Erwin’s.
Johnny and Bart were learning how to be human at Erwin’s, and later in life, they turned out to be pretty good people. With Earl gone, and Helen working, life returned to a new normal for the neighbourhood. They had regained their harmony, and everyone was content.
It was right around that time, Ethan realized what Crystal meant to him. One day, he and Crystal were hanging out on Haight Street and Crystal ran into a few friends Ethan hadn’t met before.
“Crystal Waters. I swear, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. Where have you been?” asked the one who first recognized Crystal. Like her friends, she wore her hair long, and the faded jeans and halter top associated with young women of the time.
“Ah, you know,” Crystal said, gesturing towards Ethan. “This is Ethan. Ethan, this is Jan, Julie and Edith”.
Ethan exchanged a friendly nod with them, even though he had a stunned look on his face.
“So what have you been doing?” Jan asked.
Crystal told them how they lived with Erwin and Priya, and that Al, Dobro, Lisa and Kelly moved in at the same time. Jan knew Priya and Dobro. She was surprised to find Dobro was in the army. Crystal told her how he tried to ignore his draft notice, and that the army came and got him. They laughed. Typical Dobro.
After they parted, Crystal noticed the perplexed look on Ethan’s face.
“What?” she asked.
“Crystal Waters,” Ethan said.
“Yeah,” Crystal asked.
“I don’t remember you telling me your last name”.
“Probably not,” Crystal replied. “it’s kind of corny”.
“Your mother was Claire Waters, and her mother was Celeste”.
“That’s right!” Crystal exclaimed, looking at Ethan like he had just read her mind. “How do you know that”?
“You’re going to have a daughter named Leita, and she will have a daughter named Chelsea, who in turn will have a daughter she’ll name Leita after her Mother.“You’re Leita’s Great Grandmother”.
“What do you mean?” Crystal asked, now the one looking perplexed.
“You’re Leita’s Great Grandmother”!
Crystal knew who Leita was. Everyone at Erwin’s knew who Leita was.
“What?” Crystal asked, now really confused.
“You are Leita’s Great Grandmother. This quest is an opportunity for me to make things right with your family”.
“Didn’t you kill her or something?” Crystal asked.
“I may as well have,” Ethan answered. “She is the reason I go on these quests and seek redemption”.
“You’ve mentioned that,” Crystal replied.
From that day on, Ethan coveted and doted over Crystal. She loved it, possibly because her father left when she was a baby, and her mother, a social creature by nature, didn’t pay much attention to Crystal. When she was home, Claire was usually entertaining an ‘Uncle’.
One morning, having just woken up, Ethan and Crystal were lying in bed holding each other. The thought came to Crystal that she had let herself go too far with Ethan and fallen in love. It scared her. It scared her to know he would be leaving her someday. She needed him, and never wanted to lose him.
“When are you going back?” she asked.
“Back where?” Ethan asked.
“To the future. When are you going back”?
“I don’t know. No time soon,” he said, grabbing her ass and pulling her over to him. He pressed his hardening dick against her pussy and thigh. “Not while you’re around”.
“I don’t want you to go,” she said, knowing he would some day.
“Oh baby!” Ethan said, sensing her anxiety. “I’m not leaving you. Not even if you kick me out. I’ve decided that”.
Crystal smiled, grabbed his cock, and guided him into her.