Oh brother.. It's been a busy week; and that combined with this coming chapter being harder than normal to write I have to apologize for taking so long to post this Chapter 13 of the story. Busy because work wound up being more productive than usual, and writing this week required me calling on memories of some hard times for inspiration, so that made writing that much harder.

I honestly feel that grief is an essential part of life, a Payment, as it were, for the love we may be blessed with. But damn... It can really suck...