Chapter 2

In my meeting with the estate lawyer, I was handed a manila envelope, filled with papers. The cover letter was computer generated, dated five years ago, and signed by the old man himself.

It read:

Wow! A lie that went back all through the years of our marriage. I was shaken.

I read through the papers that were the DNA reports. There was no doubt about it. They were my daughters, but somebody else provided the sperm that conceived them. I sat there for a long time, under the gaze of the lawyer.

I looked at him. "Now that Jarred has died, do you have any client relationship with my wife or children?"

"No, just the estate," he said.

"So, if I hire you to represent me you could do it? Providing there is no conflict with the estate?"

"The Calhoun family has been a client of mine for several decades. I would not take any assignment that would harm them."

"Fine. I'm not asking you to do that. Just to take this envelope, not open it, and not reveal its contents to anyone. How much retainer would you need to do that?"

"Ten dollars, would cover it. I'll hold it with my private papers, not to be opened by anyone but you."

I pulled out a ten, resealed the envelope, and scrawled my signature across the flap. Then I went out into the outer office and put my John Hancock on the dotted line as administrator of the girls' trust.

It was a good thing that we were still in the nearly-nothing stage of our sex life, because I simply didn't know what to do. Finally I decided that I would do nothing. So she fucked around before we got married. I didn't but that was my choice. I loved the girls beyond reason, and I loved Liz, too, despite her occasional quirks. She never put a new roll of toilet paper on the holder when the old one ran out; she'd just put the new one on the floor. She'd almost never put her dirty dishes in the dishwasher. She squeezed the toothpaste from the top, and didn't put the cap on, either. And she had occasional fits where she'd try to decide everything for everybody. I just ignored that when it happened, and the girls learned to follow dad's method as they grew older, too. You pick your fights, and none of these rose to the critical level. I guess fucking around ten years ago, before we got married, was in that category, too.

We fell into a Friday night/Saturday morning pattern of sex. That was quite a comedown from the five or six nights a week, but I put it down to the sadness of losing her dad. I had hopes that we'd get back into our stride.

We never did.

But we got into a new routine. If it wasn't as exciting as the old one was, it was still gratifying, and the girls were getting older. They had different activities at school and I was so damn proud of them. The horse breeding business was doing well, and I was moving up within the FBI. I had just about forgotten Jarred's letter entirely.

Then the girls started dating; they were thirteen. As they entered puberty, they exploded into twin bombshells. Not all at once, of course, but they developed breasts, and hips, and curves. They started being worried about their nails and their hair and their complexion. I had to buy so much anti-acne cream, I was gonna buy stock in the company.

I explained to Lexi (who was the more adventurous of the two) and Mandy that I was kinda like Old Yeller, from the decades-old Disney movie. When some strange boy was gonna come around, sniffing at my girls, I was gonna bark and howl at him, maybe take a bite if he seemed too aggressive, and in general make him afraid to do anything with anybody in my family.

"You know, Dad," said Lexi, "that they shot that dog at the end of the movie, right?"

I laughed. "Point to the young miss. But I'm still gonna let 'em know that I work for the FBI and I have a gun."

I got two kisses – one on each cheek – for caring about them enough to make a fuss.

When they were fifteen, something happened. Their attitudes changed a lot, and neither Liz nor I could discern a reason.