Weekend Warriors by Fern Michaels

then stretched out at Kathryn’s feet. “He understands German, as I do,” Kathryn explained.
    “Tell us how you came to us and then tell us your story, Kathryn,” Myra said gently.
    Kathryn ran her hands through her hair as she struggled for the words she needed and wanted to say. “I’ve only ever talked about this once and that was to Nikki Quinn, the day after Alan’s funeral. It wasn’t easy then and it isn’t easy now. I was walking down the street and there was this walk-in legal clinic where lawyers do pro bono work. I walked around the block a few times before I got up the courage to go inside. I waited seven years to tell my story and when I finally told it to Nikki Quinn she told me the statute of limitations had run out and there was nothing I could do legally.
    “I’m very nervous talking about this. It’s still as painful as the day it happened. It’s like a beacon in the forefront of my mind. I’ve lived with it every hour of every day for seven long years.”
    “You have to tell us everything, Kathryn. It’s the only way we’re going to be able to help you,” Myra said gently. “Start at the beginning and tell us everything you can remember. We’ll ask questions when you’re finished. What kind of a day was it? Where were you headed? What were you hauling?”
    Kathryn took a deep breath. “It was a nice day. The sun was out. It was one of Alan’s better days. He loved riding shotgun, as he called it. Listen, I need to tell you, right now, right up front, how much I loved that man. He was my white knight. He was the wind beneath my wings. He was the reason and the only reason I wanted to get up in the morning. He was my one true love. You need to know all this so you don’t misjudge me or Alan when I finish my story.
    “We were both orphans, both of us working our way through school. We met in one of our engineering classes. Back then we thought we were going to build a whole new world. In our third year, Alan was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He was one of the unfortunate ones because it attacked him quickly and viciously. By the time we graduated he was using a cane to get around. Suddenly, building new worlds didn’t seem important to either one of us. We both worked for a year and the money we saved during that year was used to put me through truck driving school. I made enough money the first couple of years to put a down payment on that rig out front.
    “There were no remissions for Alan. He just got steadily worse. The day came when he couldn’t walk anymore so I took on extra jobs to get the truck outfitted with a hydraulic lift so he could get in and out of it and then into a wheelchair. In addition to the multiple sclerosis he was also diagnosed as having Parkinson’s disease. He loved being on the road. It was what he lived for. He used to sing as we tooled along. He’d talk on the CB to other truckers. They all knew us. When we’d pull into a truck stop they’d always help so I could shower and they’d help Alan. He hated that part of it but the other truckers were good to him. After a while it didn’t matter. It was so hard for him in the beginning to let others see how incapacitated he was.
    “We didn’t have a house or a home base of any kind. We lived out of our truck. Sometimes if there was a long layover, we’d camp out in a cheap motel. His medical bills bled me dry. He . . . loved me so much. Sometimes late at night I’d hear him cry. In the daytime, he kept this tight control. You know what I mean. I used to cry in the bathroom at the different truck stops and then wear my dark glasses so he wouldn’t know. He always knew, though.
    “That afternoon we drove into Bakersfield, California, to pick up a load of computers to be delivered up to Mojave and from there we were going on to Vegas with some repaired slot machines. We headed up Highway fifty-eight through the Tehachapi Pass, delivered the computers to the military base and then stopped at the