Wow! This is number 100. I never thought that I'd make it and I want to thank all of those readers who've encouraged me to press on when I could quite easily have given up. There are, of course, those who will maintain that I should have given up years ago.
CM
I didn't really know the meaning of the word guilt until I woke this morning, up until that time I had considered myself to be guilt free. But all that changed with one phone call.
I was sitting at home, alone as usual, not a position that I was happy about but that can't be helped, and I had just finished my evening meal and taken my last sip of my last 2001 'The Angelus'. I was feeling pretty good about myself, I'd survived another week in the salt mines (my construction company) and the architect had signed off on a project that meant that I would receive my final payment next week. My bank balance was well in the black and the future looked brighter than it had for almost a year since the divorce settlement that almost wiped me out.
My marriage was now behind me and I'd almost forgotten that she had ever existed. There were no child support payments coming out of my bank account and the mortgage had been finalized six months ago. I was home free, but there was one small problem that kept me awake some nights, the lack of female companionship. Some nights I would wake up with a raging hard-on and memories of a time when my sex life was satisfying, wondering if that would ever happen again.
I've digressed enough and should be getting back to that fatal phone call. The dishes were in the dishwasher (a weeks' supply) and it was humming in the background as I flicked through the information on the TV screen to see if there was anything worth watching or if I was going to have to dig into my DVD collection, when it rang.
"Hi Daddy, it's Sara, is it all right if I come over and see you?" Sara was my twenty year old daughter from the wreckage of my marriage, the one good part of it.
"Sure Honey, is everything okay?"
"I'll tell you when I get there, I should be there in twenty minutes. Love you daddy."
If you're a parent you will realize that the next twenty minutes until she got here would be the most excruciating twenty minutes of my life. Something was wrong but she didn't want to tell me over the phone. All sorts of scenarios flashed through my fertile imagination, none of them good.
Sara was your normal young lady who'd evolved from your normal teenager. She was pretty in an athletic sort of way, her blonde hair she wore simple, usually a pony tail and her tanned complexion existed without the benefit of a tanning salon. From memory her boobs were full and firm, they didn't sag or need to be held up by a suit of armour type bra. Her legs were long and shapely and her arse swayed enticingly when she walked. She was a constant reminder of what her mother was like when I first met her, and because I was her father it took all of my will power to keep my hands off her.
I heard her car pull into my driveway and had the door open before she got to it. I didn't even have a chance to say 'Hi' before she was in my arms sobbing. "Oh Daddy it's so awful I don't know what to do."
"Calm down, take a deep breath and tell me what's wrong, from the beginning." I led her into the living room and sat her down on the sofa. I sat next to her and had my arm around her shoulder.
"You know how Mummy got me a job with her boss?" (How could I forget that little bit of news, her boss was the cause of our marriage breakdown.) "Well," she paused to collect her thoughts, "it was going fine, I was coping with my duties and getting on with the other staff, I'd even managed to get beyond the 'she's only here because she's the boss's daughter." (Technically she now was, since the two of them had married.) "Well, yesterday morning he called me into his office, at first I thought that he was going to blast me for something I'd done wrong, but that wasn't it."
"Sara, I think that it's about time that you tried something different."
"What do you mean?"
"I want you to take over the Rep's position. Do you think you can handle that?"
"I'd need someone to show me the ropes but, yes, I can do it."
"Good girl. This afternoon I'm going to take you with me on the road, we'll fly to Melbourne and I'll introduce you to our business associates there. I want you to go home and pack a few things, a change of clothes and whatever make-up and stuff you'll need. We'll be coming back tomorrow."
"How do I get to the airport?"
"I've a few things to tidy up here but I'll call home and pick you up on the way."
"Okay, see you soon."
I drove home and threw a few things into a carry all and was ready to go when he pulled into the driveway. He came in and grabbed his bag that Mum had left for him before she went to her meeting in Adelaide, and we headed for the airport.
We visited a few businesses before checking into a hotel for the night. He took me down to the restaurant for dinner and when it was over we went back up to our room, there were two bedrooms, where we have a drink while we discussed the businesses we'd seen and those we would see in the morning. I went to bed just after ten o'clock and was just dropping off to sleep when I heard my door opening and the next thing I knew was him sliding into my bed. "What are you doing?"
"I just wanted to keep you company."
"No, this is not right, you're married to my mother, don't you feel that this is wrong?"
"No, your mother and I have an 'open marriage', she's probably with another man right now."
"That doesn't make this right, for a start I don't want you here, I don't like you anywhere near well enough to even consider sleeping with you." His hand was on my boobs and I tried to push it away.
"I've seen the way that you look at me when you think I won't notice, I know that deep down you want me."
"I suppose that this is the line you used on my mother to fuck up her marriage to my father."
"Your mother didn't love your father, she told me that they hadn't had sex for months."
(This was news to me, I thought that Rachel and I had a good sex life, we did it just about every night up until a few months before she left, but then she was spending a lot of time interstate at meetings, at least that was what she told me, and I believed her.)
"Despite evidence to the contrary." I told him.
"That was what she told me and I believed her, that was how we got close and eventually became lovers."
"I'm really not interested in you or your 'open marriage' with my mother, all that I'm interested in is your not being here in my bed."
"You do like your job, don't you?"
"Of course I do."
"And you'd like to keep it, wouldn't you?"