Ch 10 Sweet Motherboard of All That is Good and Pure
The longest mini-chapter yet! And Sookie's coherent! Beta'ed by the lovely Jamie...
"Whoa!" said blond blue blur as he held up his hands in the universal gesture of peace. "Relax, sugarbabe."
Sugarbabe? I thought. Who is this guy? So I asked.
"My name is Eric Northman. I work - well, I'm sorry to say I used to work - with your husband. I didn't know what had happened. I'm so, so sorry, Sookie. Well, you must be Sookie. He described you to a tee - used to talk about you all the time. Ummm, I guess I should go back a bit. I'm the district manager for the tri-state area. I cover Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas. I mostly work out of New Orleans, but my office is kind of my car. I talked with Bill every so often, but he was such a reliable worker I didn't need to check on him much. I pretty much left him to his own supervision. When he didn't complete a project he was assigned and I hadn't heard from him, I decided to swing through Shreveport and check on him. No one was at his office space and it looked deserted so I came here."
Oh. Bill's office. I guess no one - or rather I - didn't think to close it up, call the home office and let them know he was gone. Come to think of it, I hadn't done anything with his life insurance or anything like that, either. I knew Bill had left me well taken care of, but I just hadn't been in a state to cope. This Eric person was clearly waiting for a response. "I ... I just ... well, the way you found me yesterday was the way I've been since he passed. I've just been ... existing."
Eric nodded and said, "Now that you know who I am, can you put the motherboard down? I promise not to hurt you," he said with a grin.
I looked down at my hand, still holding out the computer piece at my side. "Oh," I said, abashed, and set it back on Bill's nightstand.
"No problem, I understand. You woke up to a strange man in your bed, you freaked out. Totally understandable. I was just trying to give you some comfort." Eric finally climbed out of the bed, and now that my eyes weren't blurry, Holy Motherboard of All That Is Good and Pure! God, Bill and Gran forgive me, but the man was a God!