EPILOGUE
“Honey, I've got great news!” Jordan burst in the back door and grabbed Andy by the waist and swung her around in circles. Andy never tired of reveling in the strength and endurance of her partner—and the passion of her embrace. It was food for her soul.
“What?” she inquired, hugging Jordan around the neck and gently kissing her.
“They approved my transfer to Tucson! We're moving as soon as we can sell the house and pack up!”
“That's wonderful, sweetheart!”
Jordan had put in for a transfer as a paramedic to a warmer climate shortly after Ken's death. It was approved almost immediately. There was nothing left in Colorado for them. There were too many bad memories here they wanted to forget. Jordan immediately put her house up for sale.
Andy, with Jordan at her side, had seen to Ken's burial and the many papers that needed to be signed. Everything was put in order in record time. The house she and Ken had shared for fifteen years was quickly torn down after Andy retrieved some of the valuables she wanted to keep—what was still salvageable. Her sons came out from California for three days to be with her, but went back immediately after the funeral. They wanted nothing to do with Jordan and had stayed in a motel while they were in Colorado, refusing the offer of Andy's bedroom at Jordan's house. They were embarrassed as well as dismayed that their mother had declared herself openly as being Jordan's lesbian partner.
Jessica and Bob Sessions were emotional and sorrowful at the funeral and felt badly for Andy. But when Jess saw Jordan standing next to Andy, holding her hand, she never spoke to her again.
Other friends and associates of Ken's thought what a horrible accident it had been that had taken Ken's life. If they showed any emotion toward the tall woman standing next to Andy at the funeral, it was suppressed in condolences. They had no desire to know Andy or get involved in what Andy did with her life from then on.
It had snowed the day of the funeral. It was still August, but the temperature in the past week had finally reached below the freezing mark during the day. The fluffy white snow had drifted over Ken's coffin by the time they lowered him into the ground.
* * * * * *
The global superstorm which came a few months later materialized in the U.S. It was extensive, but it was far worse in the rest of the northern hemisphere where Europe and Asia were devastated by its ferocity as it tore across that side of the world with a vengeance that had never been seen before. Over two billion people lost their lives—almost one-third of human civilization. As the world plunged into a new Ice Age, people found themselves trying to adjust to and cope with a new worldwide climate.
From all computer models, it had been estimated that the new Ice Age would affect mainly Europe and northeastern part of the U.S. No one could have predicted that the global superstorm would have repercussions over all of Canada and the whole northern half of the United States from Atlantic to Pacific—and as far south as Colorado. It brought three-fourths of the North American continent into the Ice Age as well as most of the European and Asian continents. The southern hemisphere was not impacted as much as the northern hemisphere, although they continued to be plagued with fierce storms that came up from the Antarctic.
Jordan had called her sister Monica before she and Andy moved to Arizona and told her she needed to move south. Monica refused. Six months after the global superstorm hit, Indiana was in the grip of the snow and ice that had begun to creep over the northern part of the nation.
In most of the northern hemisphere, power shortages dropped so far that heating was continued only in essential environments until finally there was no power at all. Canada and the northern United States turned into a literal deep-freeze, as ice and snow overran it.
The failure to listen to the warning signs and do something about slowing down or halting the global warming that had precipitated this new Ice Age turned out to be only slightly less devastating to the human population than the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years previously. Many people could neither adjust to nor survive in the cold climate and perished after a short time—adding another billion people to the number of lives lost after the global superstorm.
Jordan and Andy settled near Tucson, Arizona, about as far south as they could go without crossing over into Mexico. They found a gay community that welcomed them with open arms. Here was their future.
The climate was moderate when they moved there, but it soon turned colder as the ice continued its relentless push southward. The climate finally became similar to Minneapolis in the wintertime, but bearable for people to live there.
They didn't have to worry about finances. Jordan had sold her house in Colorado Springs almost immediately after she put it on the market. The people who bought it didn't believe in global warming. She made a handsome profit. She wouldn't have needed to work, but she was a rescuer and felt a thrilling sense of fulfillment in her job with the Tucson Fire Department.
Andy had settled with the insurance company over the fire damage to her house to the tune of $150,000—total destruction. Ken had also left her a life insurance policy of half a million dollars. And she had finally realized her dream of teaching yoga, getting her full certification two years after coming to Arizona, with Jordan lending her full support. Jordan continued to teach chakra workshops.
Megan took the news of Andy's and Jordan's budding romance very well after Ken died. She thought that was how it should be. If two people loved each other, it didn't matter if they were male and female, or the same sex. She loved having two ‘moms.' She didn't need boys in her life, she decided, and attended an all-girl private school in the community where they lived.
* * * * * *
What a price to pay for finding your real self, Andy later reflected. And then trying to live that life, to be true to yourself. Andy remembered some words Jordan had quoted in one of her workshop sessions that Andy had attended. “Sometimes in order to get what you want—and need—you have to go through what you don't want.” Hers was the ultimate price: the loss of a husband and home, the rejection of a friend, the abandonment of two sons.
But she had Jordan.
Guilt had hung heavily over her for quite a while after Ken died, but finally resolved itself in the deep love that existed between herself and Jordan. They were a comfort to each other. In spite of the tragedies she'd had to endure in her quest for who she was, Andy possessed a glorious freedom. It was a freedom that she wished all women everywhere could find as they searched the deep inner recesses of their beings and wondered if there wasn't more to life.