It’d been years since they ended:

“Why, Donald?”

“Ann.” His tone slightly sliced with threat.

“Is there someone else?”

“Christ.”

He started to rise then fell back into the chair. There never had been someone else and there never would be. He’d loved one woman and would love her until he went “into the dust that was always the end.”

“It’s the sex, isn’t it?” A slight streak thru her tone.

Don came back, right over the top:

“What sex?”

“You knew the rules, Donald. My father forbids it.”

That forbiddance failed to stop Donald Hollinger one night. She’d held no grudge, had told no one, not Daddy, not even her mother, nor her Priest. Not a soul. She’d kept it close to her heart, it was the only way she could find the strength to forgive him.

“You can never forgive me. You won’t even look at me.”

“I did forgive you. I can forget, Donald. I will. I am looking at you, Donald. Please look at me.”

“Your father won’t let me, Ann.”

“Donald, my father is not me. I am not my father.”

“Yes, yes, yes, the great Danny Thomas.”

He’d waited for her to launch him. He pounced:

“How does he introduce me, Ann? Let’s see,,, oh yeah, I got it:

“And Ann’s power mower, (paramour) Donald Hollinger, a beat writer for a great metropolitan newspaper.”

She used to have to stifle a laugh at such introduction, no more, it had been a while. And he wouldn’t stop, no matter how many times she’d approach him, appeal to him:

“Daddy, please.” He wouldn’t even look at her.

“He’s a comic by trade, Donald. It’s his craft, his way, his very life.”

“Also his way to prompt my ability to support you at marriage?”

“$67.50, huh, hot shot? You going to pay the rent on that fancy apartment, that boundless wardrobe, that Hollywood lifestyle in New York City? On $67.50? I don’t think so, Don. Not from where I stand. No, kid, I pay for all that. Holy smokes, more than half the spots she gets are thru her old man. She knows that. That stops, all that stops when she says ‘I do.’”

“Donald.”

It broke her heart to hear it all again. It was hideous, vulgar and tragic. She’d not been privy to that sit the two men had conducted one afternoon at his production offices there in the city. She’d gotten it second hand from Donald several months later. How he held onto it that long never ceased to amaze her. And upon reflection, perhaps he shouldn’t have. She thought about approaching her father, but, she knew better. It was much too late. He was intractable.

“Daddy, please. I need to talk to you about him. I love him, Daddy, please.”

Her father passed on the opposite coast in early February, 1991. They’d discussed Donald Hollinger not once in the interim.

Five years later Donald Hollinger, his broken heart---failed to beat again.

“When a child is treated at St. Jude families never receive a bill for treatment, travel, housing or food - because all they should worry about is helping their child live.”