Chapter 1

My dad is a nerd. No, really, he is. He’s a computer geek who designs hardware, makes it run faster, smoother, more capacity, more storage, more connectivity, all that sort of shit that makes the modern world go around. He calls it the modem world, for fuck’s sake. How he ever managed to get my Mom to marry him I will never know. He wears glasses! I mean, come on, a nerd with glasses and he manages to marry Melissa Goodwright, the hottest girl in College when they were both eighteen. She was the Cheerleader destined to marry Marvin Hardcastle, the top jock on the football, hockey, and swim team. He had offers of scholarships to three universities and could have taken his pick of the whole squad. I heard later that he probably had the whole squad at one time or another. Somehow, Toby Aston whisked Melissa away from under his nose and married her one weekend in Nevada during Spring Break.

Marvin almost died when term began and they announced their marriage. He was devastated. He threatened to kill Toby and marry his widow. Luckily that didn’t happen. Their last term at college was a bit fraught but Toby managed to avoid any further confrontation with Marvin. Happily for all concerned, Marvin chose a university on the east coast, over a thousand miles from where Toby and Melissa were studying. They set up home close to campus and both sailed through their respective courses. Halfway through her final year, Mom got pregnant with me. She went on to graduate with a huge belly, giving birth three days later.

Now we are alone. Just Dad and me. Mom was taken from us by a brain aneurysm at thirty-eight. Nobody knew, nobody could foresee that she had this ticking time bomb in her head. The doc told us it had been there for years but nobody saw it, or even suspected it. Mom was the health nut to end all nuts. She ran, swam, did yoga, meditation and Tai Chi and ate chartreuse not just green. I just had my eighteenth birthday a week after she died. Her funeral was the day before my birthday. Happy it was not. No party, no drinking, no celebrating. Just Dad and me with a reheated pot roast in the kitchen with a cold beer for Dad and a Doctor Pepper for me.

“Honey. What do we do now?” asked Dad.

I had no real idea of where we went from here. I was still in shock. Mom and I had been shopping for a new dress and shoes for me to wear on my special day. I was in the changing room and came back out two minutes later to find her lying on the floor. The medics arrived in minutes but she was unresponsive. They tried a few things but nothing changed. She was dead, really dead. Even I could see that. So asking me what we do was a bit beyond my ability to cope with just now.

“I have no idea, Dad. I don’t want to do anything much just now. I just want to sleep and talk to Mom. I guess I’ll have to just try the sleep part of it. I haven’t really slept since she died. I just cannot believe it. How did that happen? She was so full of life until I went to try on that dress, then phhtt! Gone. Just like a candle in the wind. I guess I want to stay here with you for a while, Dad. I need you and maybe you need me for a while, to get over this, if we ever will. I’m blathering again. Tell me to shut up.”

“No, it’s all right, Honey. You carry on. The house is so quiet without her.” Dad picked at his dinner and swigged some beer.

“Isn’t it? Now we know where all the noise came from. It wasn’t us.”

Dad almost smiled at my weak attempt at a joke.

“I’m going to have a long hot bath and an early night. Will you go to work tomorrow?”

“Er, well, I suppose so. There’s nothing to be done here. It won’t fix anything me hanging around here so yes, I guess I will.”

“Okay then. I’ll have breakfast ready for you at seven. Goodnight, Dad. I love you.”

“It’s only a little after eight, Honey. And it’s your birthday in a few hours. You’re eighteen and look at us, home alone with our sorrows when you should be out partying.”

“Good night, Dad. Sleep well, if you can.”

A week later and I still hadn’t decided what to do. I was supposed to go back to college but I felt the need to be close to Dad. We had settled into a sort of routine. Early nights and up at six to get his breakfast ready. He came home at seven and I had dinner prepared for seven thirty after his habitual two cans of beer before dinner. He had gotten into the habit of giving me one as we sat on the western porch and watched the sun lower in the evening sky. Drinking under parental supervision was legal in our state.

“So, what about college, Honey?” Dad asked one evening.

“I dunno, Dad. I just don’t feel the urge. I have no interest in anything much right now. I still can’t get her out of my head. How could she do such a thing? I just sit here waiting for her to come in the door. It’s taking some time to get used to her not being around. I’m sorry. But I just feel at least I can do something useful when I’m here helping you. I am helping, aren’t I?”

“Of course you are, Honey. More than you know. You know you look exactly like her when I first met her. You remind me so much of her. Even your voice is the same. I don’t feel so lonely when you’re around, really.”

“Are you sure I’m not making things worse for you, Dad? I mean, if I’m a constant reminder of her then surely that’s not a good thing, is it?”

Dad leaned closer to me on the swing seat on the porch and put his hand on top of mine. He almost whispered.

“Please, stay a while longer. You can pick up college next year if you like or you can come and work for me. You know as much about the business as I do and more than most of the guys I’ve hired. You can be my PA or whatever. I’ll find a job for you. Jerry’ll do whatever I ask him to do. He’s only got forty-nine percent, remember!”

I looked at Dad. His face had that hang-dog, lost puppy look that is hard to resist.

“If that’s what you want, Dad. Of course I’ll stay. As long as it takes. I can come to work with you and if you can keep me busy with something really worthwhile, I’d be happy to work for you. I need to do something during the days. Right now I do the slowest shopping trips and the longest time in the library you can imagine. I have the coffee consumption at around two hours a cup right now. I started running again yesterday. I’ll come with you on Monday, okay?”

“Honey, that’s great, really. I’ll tell Jerry when we play squash tomorrow. He’ll be pleased to see you, I know. That’s settled then. I feel better already, knowing you’ll be around for a while.”

“Yes, it feels good to have made a plan. You’re right. Sitting around all day achieves nothing. I need to shop for a couple of suits if I’m going to be your PA. Got to look the part, eh? Can I have your card tomorrow?”

“Of course. Get three suits, no, make it five, one for each day of the week. A thousand bucks, okay?”

“Okay, Sugar Daddy. That’s more like it!”

The next several weeks and months, Daddy and I got real close. We spent most of the day together, well, nearly. I was in an outer office but we spoke and met frequently throughout the days. Evenings we spent together on the porch, then over dinner and sometimes a Netflix or HBO in the evening. I still got up to make breakfast, only now it was for both of us. Weekends we hung out, shopping or a movie and on Sundays we both cooked lunch and spent the afternoon watching sports. We sort of became a couple, I guess. We had easy, friendly conversations, not like father and daughter but more like partners. We discussed anything and everything. We began to touch, not intimately or anything, just gestures, fingers on wrists or a hand on the shoulder, that sort of thing. We were comfortable with each other. At least that’s what we were until something happened one Sunday afternoon while we dozed after a big meal. We sat watching a varsity college football game. I was wearing a tank top and shorts, it still being a warm autumn afternoon. I only wore bras to work. Dad had drunk a couple of beers after lunch. I had one.

“You want another beer, Honey?”

“No thanks, Dad. One’s about my limit during the day. I’m not used to drinking like you are. When’s your AA meeting?”

“Cheeky monkey. Three beers on a Sunday afternoon is not a problem. Your mother used to tell me to stop after two because she wanted to have some private time around four o’clock every Sunday. It became a habit, a sort of tradition. But now she’s gone, I can have that third beer.”

To this day I have no idea why I said what I said next. It came out of nowhere, way off out of left field, for sure. I was looking at my dad as he paused to talk to me in the doorway to the kitchen when I said,

“What time is it now?”

Dad looked at his watch and spluttered.

“Er, it’s four o’clock. Why did you ask?”

I had no real idea why I had said that but the implication was clear. I was suggesting he forego his third beer because it was four o’clock. And why should he do that? Because it was the time he traditionally had sex with Mom. Mom wasn’t here to give him what he wanted so I had implicitly volunteered to take her place for the four o’clock session on a Sunday, as was their tradition. I couldn’t very well back out now.