During that same year my best friend George decided to do something for me that I didn't seem to want to do for myself. He forced me to come back to t...e living; made me by the force of his will, not mine, give up drinking and go back to having a life.I did however get the last laugh where Brenda was concerned. In an ironic twist of fate the woman who left me for someone else who could give her all the material things she wanted got to pick up the paper one morning and read about her ex-husband. She liked it. We both knew that we were always going to be together. I called her 'Fish', cause she was real good at puckering up ... like a fish does when trying to breathe in the bottom of the boat after you pull it out of the water. She didn't like that name at first, but it stuck, and she got used to it.We went to our grad dance together, of course. Drove there in my really old, puke green Toyota. I loved that car. I had bought it from a scrapper and then fixed it up with stuff from Daddy's. Her elder brother was an ex-Marine who mainly worked out of New York and was decorated for his service. Though he lost one leg to war, he knew how to carry himself around and caught my attention on the first day I met him. Well built, deep voice, solid pecs and that charm that could melt any woman in the room was part of him. I mean who doesn’t like a guy in uniform and I was a daughter of an Indian navy man myself, so he definitely was a cut above the others. For the long Thanksgiving weekend,. At thirteen my first impulse was to sneak up on whoever was there and shout boo. When I left the new stable a half-hour ago, the other five horses were still their stalls, so whoever was here must have just arrived. I looped Marshal's rein around a low branch, and walked up to the bluff overlooking the pond, and the Hudson River shimmering golden in the distance.Christina was standing in the soft light of dawn, far more beautiful than any model; she was even more beautiful than God's dawn. I.