I.
Expecting the power to go off at any time, now, I'd finished the last of the document scanning to DVD. All the 'special' packages had been sent to California.
The doorbell took me by surprise: as the town's new-minted pariah, the last thing I expected was a visitor. I got up from the table I was using for a desk, down the hallway, crossed over the spot where the fire-bomb had burned and went over to answer it.
Standing outside was a pretty brunette, her face obscured partly by shadow, and partly by a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes. Looking just past her, I saw a little sporty car, a 2-door. One I'd never seen before in town.
Opening the door, and starting to say, "Yes?," I was staggered to hear the girl say, "Hi, Dad."
"Sophie?," I kind of chocked out.
"The one and only," she said, and grinned. I remembered that grin. 100 watts of power, and her mother had never been able to erase it, though Dolores had tried hard.
"Is Mom home?" my daughter added.
I answered truthfully, "Your Mom won't ever come back to this house again."
The grin went up to 150 watts immediately. "Thank God for big favors," she said, "I really dreaded meeting up with her, but I just HAD to see you again, and here I am. You gonna let me in, or am I gonna sleep in the flowerbed tonight?"
I know I'm supposed to guess accurately and describe my brunette daughter, gone for years from mid-teens, by exact weight, height, bra and cup size, etc. Give me a break! I had a quick chance to glance at a slim, tanned and toned brunette, wearing a short denim skirt and a crop-top, bare-midriff, and high-heel sandals. I saw the usual pretty bumps on her chest, nice hips and lovely long legs. Being a man, that took all of 2 seconds.
I'm Noble Goode Freeman, Ph.D., a former university historian. Also former cuckold, accused-homosexual, impotent, wimp, ne'r-do-well, unemployable, child-raping, fraud-indicted failure of a human being, if you listened to the hysterical gossip spread around town, the last couple of months. I'm tall, about six-foot-two, but not athletic, with a middle-aged gut that I'd like to loose, if I ever get around to exercising, which I hate with a passion. For the last 24 years, I'd had the sexless, loveless, marriage-from Hell, barely existing in helpless hatred, wedded to Dolores Ramona Luisa Daemona Freeman, nee-Guzman.
My daughter, Sophia Freeman Noble, aged about 20, had just swayed into my front room, after a self-imposed absence of 4 years. She left, with my tearful blessings, when she was 16. But I'm getting ahead of this narrative.
I gestured her in to the old living room, with the battered couch and two chairs, all that was left after the vandalism. She looked around at the bare spaces, and at the plywood panels that graced most of the front window panes that overlooked the street, more sudden memories of the sudden township dislike I'd been living with these last couple of months. She stared at the charred and melted circle where the fire had been, too.
I turned around, just in time to absorb a chaste, daughterly kiss on the cheek. I growled, but also grinned, saying, "OK for a 'hi, how are you, Dad' kiss. I just said your Mom wasn't here and won't be coming back. You haven't seen me for four years. How about I get a real kiss, like the one you gave me when you left on the bus?"
The grin expanded to 200 watts, and included a devilish tint, and I found myself on the receiving end of a thorough, wet, sloppy kiss, delivered with full tongue, combined with roaming hands slipped under my t-shirt, with full body press and one leg brought up to crook around my waist. This went on for quite some time.
"Wow," I said, when she broke the kiss, for more air."
"Lots more, where that came from, you dirty old man."
She added, "Hi, Dad. I'm glad I'm home, with you. Just you."
"For as long as the electricity's on," I kind of whispered to myself. She quirked her eyebrows, but I didn't add anything right then.
Sophie dashed out to her car, and dragged in two suitcases, which she then carried in to the back of the house, and re-parked her car around back. When I caught up with her, she'd dumped both in the master bedroom. Silently, we toured the house, which didn't take long, it being a typical 3-bedroom rancher, in a small town. Sophie's old bedroom was full of junk and wreckage that her mother had done, during her last rages, and I was using the 2nd room as an office.
"I'll rig up some kind of a bed for me, and you can have my bed," I said.
"Damn right, I will," she said, "and you can have it too, you old pervert. I'll take the right side, you take the left side, and we'll have meetings in the middle. And that settles that. End of discussion!"
Sophie marched out of the master bedroom, hips swinging exaggeratedly, flashing me a look over her shoulder. I was left sort of stuttering, "um ... er ... well ...."
I joined her in the living room, and we talked. About what? Just about everything. What I'd been doing. Old memories of my wife, her Mom. She was sort of evasive about her job as secretary and girl-Friday to an executive in MegaCorp, in Las Vegas.
And I was just as evasive about her Mom's current whereabouts, and why there was plywood in some of the front windows, and a big charred-melted spot in the front room carpet. I figured I'd have to tell her about that, but, oh, not yet, not yet.