Chapter 1

She wasn’t much to look at. Maybe five feet tall. Not thin but it would be a stretch to call her fat. She was chubby. Like a cherub. Perfect. She had baby fat. Baby fat kills me. She was fourteen, I guessed. But that kind of fourteen that actually looked fourteen. She wasn’t one of those little girls who already looked twenty.

She was white, like most of the girls who got on the train from her neighborhood. Dirty blonde hair and wide green eyes. Her face was somewhat round and covered in freckles. Her hair was short, only to the middle of her neck, usually done in two stubby little pigtails.

I saw her every weekday on the train. She got on with a gaggle of other girls, all in their white blouses and their green and blue tartan skirts and vests. St. Agnes girls. She was one of the only ones who always wore her little criss-cross tie. I assumed the other girls didn’t put theirs on until they got to school.

Even as a middle-aged man who was completely out of the loop I could tell she didn’t dress fashionably. Sure, they all wore the uniform, but many of the girls had stylish pea coats, patent leather pocketbooks, lots of makeup. In my girl, there was a childishness to her style and affectations. Oversized pink sweatshirts with hearts or flowers. Her backpack had dinosaurs on it. She was one of the few girls who always wore tights, never anything sheer on her legs. She never wore makeup other than light pink lipgloss.

I coveted her every morning. I didn’t often see her on my way home from work but every morning I held my breath when we came to her stop.

I heard her name early on. A tall blonde was teasing her and shouted: “don’t forget your Care Bears lunchbox Becky!”

Becky. Rebecca, I was sure, but Becky suited her.

She pouted that whole ride, lip quivering and on the edge of tears and I swear I almost broke and went over to comfort her.

That would have went over well, right? Some strange man who was probably older than her father, sitting next to her and putting his arm around her.

She had noticed me staring at some point. I mean, I had been obsessed with her for four months at that point.

It was late spring, and I was getting depressed because the summer would soon take her away from me. I had a busy life, a busy career, and seeing my little cherub every morning was one of my few solaces. It was around then that I started writing while I was on the train. Little scenes I wanted to play out with her. Little descriptions of her sweet innocent beauty. Once a page just musing on her cupid bow lips.

I would type these things on my laptop as the other businessmen around me worked on their Powerpoint presentations.

Little Becky, as my pretty stepdaughter. How I snuck into her room at night. Or maybe I suddenly had magical powers and stopped time to do all sorts of things to her right there on the train. Or mind control to make her desire me and follow me home.