Chapter 21

I'd just handed Daddy a fresh cup of coffee when his cell phone rang. He went out into the living room to talk and came back a minute later.

"That's an emergency. Are you going to be OK?"

He had his attention on Mary when he said it and she scrunched up her face a bit as if she was trying not to cry and nodded her head.

I said, "I'm staying home. We'll be fine, Daddy."

"Mary, I'm sorry I wasn't any more help. You know Charlie. If there's any way he can get to a phone, he'll call you tonight."

She sniffed, gave him a halfhearted smile and said, "I know."

He held his arms out to the side, sort of a 'Sorry, I wish I could do any more' gesture. That's not the way Mary took it, though. She ran over to him and he had a sniveling female clinging onto him before he knew it. He just wrapped his arms around her and stroked the back of her head the way he used to with me when I came crying to him.

She stayed there a bit, then backed off, took a deep sniff and said, "I'm OK now."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. You don't know how much you helped me today. I don't know how I can ever thank you."

"Mary, you're family. Don't think anything of it. There's nothing to thank me for."

He made more excuses and hugged me, then went out to his car and took off as Mary and I stood in the driveway, watching until the car was out of sight.

I heard a quiet humming sound and noticed that there was a new garage door and it was lifting up from the ground. When it got high enough to see inside, I saw Alex with a remote in his hand.

"Hi, Jill. Mary"

We both said Hi back to him.

"That door looks good, Alex."

"Thanks, Jill. At least it matches the rest of the garage now. Pretty soon the house will, too."

He pointed over at the front of the house. The whole thing was gray with white trim, just like the garage. I saw the edge of the scaffold sticking out a foot or so on the far side of the house.

"Are you going to be able to finish today?"

"Probably not. Some of the trim needs repair. We'll need to replace a couple of pieces and Bondo the rest."

Mary said, "Bondo?"

"It's the stuff they use to fix dents in cars. Like a super thick putty. It dries real hard, real quick and you can sand it."

He took her hand and led her out to the side of the house and pointed up above the kitchen door. "See that wood up top? How it looks like it has pits in it?"

"Uh huh."

"Well, that's from the weather. We've already checked it out and the wood's sound except for those pits. It would be crazy to replace a twelve foot piece for that. A little Bondo and a coat of paint and it'll last another twenty years. Heck, it'll probably last longer than the wood. Termites don't like Bondo. There are a couple of pieces in the back that have some dry rot and we need to replace them, though."

I said to him, "Does that mean you're going to drag this on for the rest of the week?"

He looked at me. "No, we should be done before noon tomorrow. Of course, if you two lovelies are going to be around all week, I have some workers who might like to drag it on."

"Good luck with that. Speaking of workers, I didn't see Rudolfo."

"Rudolfo is supervising another job today. He's going to be heartbroken when he finds out you were here and he was stuck somewhere else."

"Poor Rudolfo. I'm sure he'll survive."

"Oh, I'm sure he will, too."

"He's probably sweet talking someone over at the other job."

"I don't know about that. He couldn't stop talking about Mary's mom this morning."

"Well, if anyone can handle him, she can. See you later. You have a house to paint and we have some dishes to do."

We went inside and I picked up dishes while Mary started filling up the sink.

"So, little girl. Are you trying to steal my Daddy?"

She dropped a mug in the sink and it made a splash. Her whole body slammed back as if she'd been hit and she looked petrified.

"I didn't mean anything... I just..."

"Hey. Hey. It's all right. I was kidding. There's plenty of him to go around."

She looked up at me, hopeful but hesitant. "Really?"

I hugged her. "Really."

"It's just that I haven't had a dad since I was five..."

"I know. Mary, I know how you feel. I haven't had a mom for longer than that. Not until I met Jack and your mom let me have her. There's plenty of Daddy for all of us. And he's not as gruff as he pretends to be. He's really a great, big teddy bear."

"It felt so good when he was holding me."

"Yeah. I trained him good."

Mary washed and I dried and put the dishes away. I was surprised; I knew where just about everything went. Mary talked about Charlie calling tonight and how she felt better now that she'd heard from him and my father had called around and talked to us. She said she wasn't too worried about his mother because he didn't say anything other than they got her to the clinic. If anything was really wrong, she was sure Charlie would have mentioned it.

It was 11:30 when we were done. Mom wasn't going to be home till tonight and Jack wouldn't be here until at least 5:30. It was kind of dumb for me to go to school, especially since I didn't have any way of getting there.

I asked Mary, "Is there anything you'd like to do?"

"Yeah. Can we go up to your place?"

"Sure. What do you want?"

"I want to show you something on Jack's computer."

Jack has never said anything to me about his computer. Well, once he told me he'd put a password on the picture files of the day Mary and I got the stuff down in the garage and washed the cars. That was the day we teased the hell out of him with our shorts and our tight shirts with no bras.

I know computers. I want to work in the industry and I'm taking classes at the JC. If he wanted me to keep my hands off his computer, he probably would have said something. Or maybe he didn't feel he had to because I really had no interest in his system. It was a few years old and I had a notebook that would run circles around it.

Anyway, when Mary said that, I felt a little twinge of something. If you wonder what would happen if you got caught at something, that's a pretty good indication that whatever you're planning on doing isn't completely kosher.

"Have you used Jack's computer before?"

"Oh, yeah. Lots of times."

"With his permission?"

"Jill, he let Sara write her reports on the thing. It's no big deal."

I didn't see any real problem. He'd let her use it before. She couldn't hack it with me standing right there, even if she wanted to. And it's not like I could call Jack at school. Right. Pull him out of class to ask him if we can use his computer.

"Mary. I've got a new laptop. What do you need Jack's for?"

She was practically dragging me up the stairs by this time. Bozo had barreled through us and was up at the door already but Dino was following us patiently. "I'll show you. This is gonna be great."

She went right over to the computer and turned it on. I went into the kitchen and got us a couple of glasses of juice while it was loading up. Mary was leaning forward, her eyes stuck on the screen, tapping her right foot impatiently. I stood behind her, a little to the right so I could see the monitor.

As soon as the hourglass was replaced by the standard cursor, she double clicked on My Documents and then on a folder marked Stuff. I felt that little cringe when she was asked for a password. Mary typed six digits and it opened up. She looked up at me and said, "His birthday." She turned back and I saw that there were quite a few folders plus a bunch of avi and a few Quicktime files. Most of them had names of a two to four letters with an added number here and there.

"Mary? What is this?"

"You'll see." She had the closest thing to an evil grin I'd ever seen on her face.

She moved the cursor to a folder labeled BBVG and double clicked. There were six avi files, numbered 1 — 6.

"Oh, Goody."

She double clicked on 6 and Jack's media player opened up. The screen was about an eighth the size of the monitor and she expanded it to full screen. I knew one thing she said was true — Mary had done this before. Lots of times.

It looked like an ordinary movie. It displayed the name of the production company over a blue screen, then there was a shot of a volleyball game. All the players were women. One team had black shorts and the other had white. They looked a little old for high school; maybe college. But they sure didn't look professional. All of the women were a bit on the heavy side. Not grossly overweight but a little chunky. And there wasn't a sports bra in the bunch. It sure didn't look like any of the girls had played volleyball before, either. My team could have taken on both of the teams on the screen and skunked them. They played for about half a minute and I don't think either team returned a ball that made it into their court. Except for the bouncing tits, they looked like a bunch of young kids playing around at a company picnic.

Then the title came on the screen and I knew this wasn't a movie you'd see at the local cineplex.