(WARNING!: This work of fiction contains non-consensual, inter-family intercourse)
******
"Dad? Are you home?"
Charles started out of a sound sleep, glancing around the room. He'd fallen asleep in his recliner while watching an old black and white western on TV. What had it been called? Shane, yeah, that was the name of it. Lousy film, but there hadn't been anything better on at the time.
The sound of the front door closing caused him to wake up a bit more. The clink of keys on the table in the entryway told him who was there.
"Dad?" came the query again.
Charles started to respond, but it came out a croak. Clearing his throat, he tried again. "Yeah, Mandy, I'm in here," he called, starting to rise from his chair. The chair groaned under his weight. He wasn't a giant of a man, but he was certainly no lightweight, measuring six feet three inches, and weighing just at 250 lbs. He wasn't what one would call perfectly fit, but he did take care of himself (though he still fell victim to the curse of "love handles"). Of course, at his age, perfectly fit was a hard thing to achieve, even with all the physical labor he did in construction.
"Did you get off work early?" Amanda ("Mandy") asked from the other room.
"Yeah, got rained out on the new project. Probably won't be able to get started on it for a couple of days now."
"Oh, that's too bad," she offered, her voice fading a little as she walked into the kitchen. Charles could hear her setting down some paper sacks. "I brought you some Chinese food. I didn't know if you'd eaten yet."
Finally standing up, he followed the sound of her voice and the smell of the food. "Honey, you didn't have to do that." But as he entered the kitchen to the sight of her unpacking all the cartons, he added, "But I'm glad you did." His words were suddenly accompanied by the growling of his stomach, which caused Amanda to chuckle and smile. She handed him a pair of chopsticks. "How's Sarah?" he asked, bringing up the inevitable question of her mother.
They had separated just over a year before, with a divorce in the works. "Irreconcilable differences," they'd told their daughter. Since then, Charles hadn't bothered even trying to date, he just buried himself in work as much as he could.
Amanda sighed. "She's good. I've . . . I've moved in with her."
THAT caught his attention. "Really? Why?"
She bit her lower lip for a second, making her the spitting image of her mother. Short, dark red hair (natural), slightly curly, bright green eyes, a faint splash of freckles across her nose. And she had her mother's stature, as well. Where Charles was very tall, Amanda stood at five feet two inches. She'd always been small for her age. Even now, at the age of 20, she could still pass for 16.
She stopped biting her lip and answered. "I ran into a little money trouble. My rent went up, but my paycheck didn't."
"Honey, you know you could have asked me to lend you some money."
She was already shaking her head. "Dad, I'm not going to take handouts. When you say lend, that's what you always mean. And before you say it," she added, forestalling him, "I'm paying Mom rent, I'm not leeching off of her."
Charles held up his hands in surrender, still holding the chopsticks. "Alright, it's none of my business. But if you need anything, all you have to do is ask. I love you, honey, you know that." He had always been very careful with his own money, only spending what he needed to be comfortable and putting the rest into a savings account. Sarah had known about his extra money, but amazingly enough, she hadn't demanded any of it in the divorce. She hadn't wanted anything she couldn't earn for herself. It didn't matter to her that his savings now amounted to well over $100,000, not including the value of the house and all his belongings.
"I know you do, Dad," she said. "I just wanna try to get by on my own as much as I can."
It wasn't the words she said that made him proud of her, but the fact that he knew she meant it. Just like her mother, stubborn and independent, all in a good way.
He decided to let it go at that and changed the subject. "Hey, did you know that Pacific Rim is supposed to be on tonight?" He checked his watch. "In about ten minutes, in fact."
"Really?" she asked, interested. "I love that movie! Best sci-fi flick I've seen in a long time. It is to sci-fi what Shane was to westerns."
"Ugh!" Charles grunted. "Hate that movie . . . But do you feel like staying to watch Pacific Rim?"
She lightly slugged his arm for his slight against one of her favorite films, but then she picked up as many of the food cartons as she could carry in one arm. "Try and stop me," she said, sticking her tongue out at him. He chuckled to himself as he gathered the remaining cartons. In many ways, she was still that little girl he used to carry on his shoulder.
As they sat down and watched the film, it started to rain outside, a little at first, but slowly growing. During one of the commercial breaks, an ad for some pop star's new album came on, showing a dozen or so scantily-clad women dancing about provocatively. This, of course, prompted Amanda into a short tirade about how "women like that just make it harder for ALL women to get any REAL respect".
That was actually another point that Charles was proud of in his daughter. Without any sort of prodding on the part of her parents, she'd decided that she was going to wait for marriage. As she told it, "I can't think of a better way to tell my future husband that I love and respect him." Yes, Amanda was certainly one in a million.
At any rate, her rant was short-lived, as the commercial break ended and the film resumed. With only five minutes left in the film, Amanda found herself yawning heavily. Outside, it continued to rain in spite of (or perhaps because of) the warm temperatures.
"I really don't want to drive back in this," Amanda muttered in between yawns. "It's a two-hour drive back to Mom's."
