Author's Note: All characters in this work are 20 years of age or older.
That was a mistake.
Emily's heart is beating through her chest, pounding like it's trying to escape. She wishes she could escape her own thoughts, but it's impossible to unsee what she's seen now. What had compelled her to scroll through her dad's phone in the first place? She always had an incessant need to know things - gossip and rumors of forbidden tidbits of information - she thrilled at a secret ever since she was a child. Nosiness came naturally to her.
Nothing good ever comes of snooping. Her father chided her as a child when he found out she had been going through her parents' sock drawer and bedside tables. She was never sure what she was looking for, nor was she able to figure out how he knew she had been in their bedroom - she was always so careful to cover her tracks and leave things exactly as she left them. She never did find anything of interest. No evidence of a double-life, secret identity, or even embarrassing hobby. But now she wishes she'd taken his warning seriously. She's discovered a very good reason dad didn't want her to get into the habit of sticking her nose where it didn't belong.
Why has Daddy been taking these pictures of me?
Questions crash into each other the moment they form in Emily's brain and the room starts spinning around her. She's got to pull herself together quickly, it won't be too long before he realizes he's forgotten his phone and comes back to the house. If he sees her in such a panic, he will start asking questions, and she's never been a good liar under pressure.
Emily's knees wobble and buckle like a newborn's as she struggles to make her way over to the kitchen sink. She turns the cold water on full blast and the faucet hisses to life. A few scoops of icy water on her face helps the room stop spinning, she can focus on the physical discomfort rather than the emotional. She fixes her eyes on the lip of the drain and focuses all her attention on it so she can drown out all the noise in her head. Water swirls around the drain before being swallowed into the black hole of the sink.
She stares into that dark hole for answers to the questions as they come, slowly now, one at a time.
What's mom gonna do when she finds out?
Is Daddy attracted to me?
Does he want to fuck me?
The last one brings a flutter to her heart and the blood ringing in her ears makes it impossible to hear the sound of the front door opening.
"Hey Emmy! Have you seen my phone?" Eddie bellows as he walks through the front door. He can't believe he forgot his damn phone again. More and more often, he's been setting things down and forgetting to pick them back up again, and then getting frustrated when he can't remember where he last saw whatever it was he was looking for. It's an increasingly regular occurrence and it's making him feel his age. The other day, he put his wallet on top of the fridge and spent about half-an-hour playing detective, retracing the steps of the crime scene of his own making. Why he set it down there to begin with, he has no idea. Losing track of things is just a new little idiosyncrasy that's part of his identity now.
Thinking about it now, the last time he saw his phone, he was making a checklist for things to pick up at the store. He was standing in front of the fridge taking inventory when Emily started rattling off a list of snacks and desserts. That girl had her mother's metabolism, she could eat like a Ninja Turtle and still maintain a stick-thin figure.
When Eddie walks into the room, Emily is sitting at the kitchen island nervously playing with her pink tipped fingernails and staring a hole through the wall. Her long legs are crossed elegantly as though in meditation. Perhaps she is in a deep meditative state, she hasn't even noticed him enter the room, which is not something Eddie is used to as a six-foot-two, two-hundred and twenty pound man. He walks to the opposite side of the kitchen island, but Emily stares right through him.
"Emmy? What's the matter?"
Her eyes shift down to her nails. Eddie can feel Emily's bad mood thickening the air in the room. She was so happy when he left for the store a few moments ago, the promise of Vanilla Fudge Swirl ice cream - a flavor that seemed exclusive to their local Publix - had her practically bouncing off the walls. But now, he may as well be talking to a wall. He hasn't seen this side of her since she was sixteen, the tail end of her teenage angst phase. Eddie didn't miss this inscrutable indignation, but he knew how she responded to prying questions while her fuse was lit. He found it was easier to make it hard for her to stay mad with him instead.
"I know. Where's my ice cream? Your silly old man forgot his shopping list and didn't wanna risk getting the wrong thing." He spies his phone next to the fridge. He grabs it as he walks around the island and toward his sullen daughter. She shoots him an icy glance as he sticks his phone in his pocket.
He kisses her on the forehead. Her skin is wet and clammy.
"I'll be right back, honey. Just text me if you think of anything else you want from the store."
With that, he's out the door. No fuss, no muss.
Before he pulls away from the house, he checks his phone and opens the locked folder in his gallery, checking over his shoulder before he punches in the secret PIN.
The pictures make his heart palpitate. Sure he knows it's wrong. He also knows if he's ever found out, it will mean the end of his marriage. Fuck that, the end of his family. Even knowing this, a firm swelling in his pants bulges in protest.
At least that hasn't faltered with age, he isn't at the point where he needs the little blue pill to get it up. He stuffs his phone back into his pants before they become too tight to do so and tries to think about being a better father.
Eddie starts his car and drives to the store. His little girl needs her ice cream.
Emily can't sleep. The ice cream hadn't helped. It felt like a bribe to placate her, to keep her mouth shut about what she saw on the phone. She wonders if he already knows that she was snooping. All those years ago, when he figured out so quickly that she had been snooping through their things, she began to suspect that the house was secretly rigged up with hidden security cameras. She spent the next few months furtively checking clocks, book cases, and every knick knack in the house for devices that might be spying on her.
But once again, all her investigating turned up nothing of note. Though a small part of her now feels righteous that all her years of prying finally paid off, she only wishes it had been something more innocuous. It wasn't very often that meddlesome behavior yielded anything of interest. She could count on one hand the number of Nancy Drew-esque cases she'd cracked by forcing herself into someone else's private life. She was so proud of herself when she got her high-school art and history teacher put on probation after giving the school board an anonymous tip that they had been fucking on school premises after-hours.
Yet despite the betrayal, she doesn't want to retaliate against her dad. He's always been a pillar of support when she needed him to be, and she had returned the favor by digging through his phone, looking to unearth trouble and complicate everyone's lives. She was so mad at herself she could scream.
Mom would be back from her work conference in three days. Until then, it would just be Emily and father alone in the house. She tried to be good conversation over dinner, but she couldn't hide her nervous habit of picking at her cuticles. When her dad gently inquired if something was wrong, all she could manage was one or two syllable answers. Thankfully, he didn't continue to push her and she slinked off to bed before she said something she would regret later.
She unlocks her phone and prays that Natasha is still awake.
Hey. Do you have a few minutes to talk?
