"I'm not too old anymore."
Rich looked at Anna, but she wouldn't meet his eyes.
He glanced over at Corrie, who was frowning. "Are you afraid to go to sleep by yourself?. Is that it? Have you been having bad dreams? We could leave your light on for you."
She shook her head emphatically. Too emphatically.
"It's all right, honey," Corrie said softly. "We're here to protect you."
"I'm not afraid!" Anna pulled away from her father, jumped off the couch, and stalked out of the room.
Rich and Corrie looked at each other. The anger, the unborn argument that had been building between them had dissipated, and all they saw in each other's faces was concern for their daughter.
He stood. "I'll find out what it is."
"No, I will," Corrie said.
He followed her down the hall. "We both will."
Am Hewett stared into the muzzle of the cocked pis for what seemed like hours before finally turning it a from his face. He slowly uncocked the gun and placed on the table in front of him. His hands were wet sweat, and perspiration streamed down his forehea stinging his eyes, dripping onto his nose.
He really had been planning to kill himself, to bl, his brains out, but at the last minute something has held him back; the feelinguno, the knowledge---that life would be better sacrificed some other way. Donna was going to the police. He had no doubt of that. She'd packed all of her clothes and personal belo ings and had taken Dawn with her, and the two of them were probably in the police station right now, spilling their guts, trying to make him look like some sort of sick perverts.
Or were they?
If Donna had planned to press charges, the cops wot have come to him by now, would have shown up at the store or, at the very least, would have been waiting him when he arrived home. Besides, why would Don pack all of her clothes if she was just going to turn him in? There would be no reason for her and Dawn to go out or find someplace else to stay if he were in jail.
Maybe they weren't going to the police. Maybe they were just running away.
Head pounding, he stood up and walked from the kitchen, through the living room, to Dawn's bedroom. Leaning against the door frame, unwilling to disturb the sanctity of her sanctuary even though she was gone, he took visual inventory of her room. She'd taken her clothes and her books. She'd taken her stuffed Winniethe-Pooh. She'd taken her high school photos, the ones she'd taped to the edges of her dresser mirror, as well as her old transistor radio. She'd left her Walkman. And her unicorn picture. And her camera.
Everything he'd bought her........... He felt a twinge of unreasonable hurt, a flash of pain in a vacuum of emptiness, but he was glad of the hurt. It meant that he still loved her.
He stared at the reflection of himself in the newly revealed mirror. He blamed Donna. He would bet a dollar to a donut that it was Donna who'd made her leave all those things behind. The bitch was jealous; that's all it was. She wasn't concerned about her daughter. She didn't give a rat's ass in hell about Dawn's welfare or happiness. She just wanted to get back at him. She was hurt and she wanted to hurt back. It was her own fault. She should have known what to expect. She should've seen it coming. He liked them young. Always had. She knew that.
She'd been sixteen when he'd married her, he'd been twenty-six. She'd known that it was her youth that had been one of the chief attractions for him, and she should have known that when she crossed that line into middle age, he would be forced to look elsewhere for his pleasure.
Only he hadn't meant for it to be their daughter.
He stared at Dawn's bed, remembered all of the good times they'd had there.
It had started innocently enough: he'd seen Dawn masturbating.
It had been a Friday night. He'd gotten out of bed after the ten o'clock news to go to the bathroom, and as he walked by his daughter's room, he saw movement through the crack of the open door. He had not looked closely, but that one quick glimpse had been enough. He'd seen Dawn's hand, massaging between her legs, backlit by the small wall night light.
He had not been able to get that image out of his mind--his daughter rubbing herself---and he began to notice, at breakfast and at dinner, that she was growing up, starting to fill out. That she was becoming a very attractive young woman. He began thinking about her when he was taking off his clothes, when he was taking a shower, when he was with Donna.
One day he came home from work at lunch to find a note from Donna waiting for him, explaining that she'd gone to the store with a friend.
He'd started to make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when he noticed a rolled up pair of Dawn's white cotton panties on the tile floor next to the washing machine. Putting down the butter knife, he'd walked over to the washing machine and bent to pick up the panties. He stood slowly. They were small, delicate, and they felt soft and sensuous to his touch. He unrolled them, and pressed the thin material to his lips before guiltily dropping them into the washer.
He began coming home at lunch more often after that, secretly hoping that lightning would strike twice, but not daring to admit such a desire even to himself. He ate his lunches at the counter, staring toward the washing machine. His hope soon graduated into an obsession, and after two weeks he gave up all pretext of innocence, contriving as often as he could to get Donna out of the house before quickly sifting through the hamper for Dawn's panties. They hadn't had much of a smell at first, only cloth, but he'd soon begun to discern through the material the faint fishy scent of female arousal.
He hadn't intended to have sex with her, and probably would not have done so had she not caught him. He probably would have continued playing with her panties, fantasizing about her when he was with Donna, masturbating. Perhaps he would have eventually found a girl who looked like her......... But she'd come home one day at lunch, and he'd been sniffing the crotch of her underwear, inhaling the delicious perfume of her panties a she'd walked through the door into his bedroom. Dawn hadn't said anything, hadn't done anything, had simply stood there, staring. He'd slowly lowered his hands, feeling the guilty red heat of embarrassment flush across his face. He'd wanted to say something, wanted to apologize, but he hadn't been able to speak.
She'd backed up, started to move away, but he found his voice and said in his stern Father tone, "Dawn! Stop right there!" She'd stopped, turned ashamedly around to face him, and then he had rushed forward, taken her in his arms and held her, hugged her, pressed against her, kissing her full warm tips. He knew that she could feel his hardness against her and that made him even harder. He slid his hand under her shirt, feeling the tiny nipples of her firm young breasts. She was whimpering, crying, her eyes closed, but she was not fighting back, and he knew that she wanted it, and he pushed her to the floor, slid her shorts down and felt the rough hair of her vagina beneath his fingers.
He'd taken her there, on the carpet next to the bed.
She'd stiffened at one point, and he knew that she'd come.
He'd wanted to roar in triumph; he'd wanted to cry in shame. He'd wanted to hug her with gratitude; he'd wanted to beat her in disgust.
They'd done it regularly after that, at least twice a week for the past year. He had not told Donna; of course, but he had not forbid Dawn to tell her mother, and he'd assumed that she'd known.
More than once, he'd even considered a threesome. But Donna had not known, until yesterday. Despite the extra attention he'd shown Dawn, the extra things he'd bought her, the obviously un paternal kisses he'd bested upon her, the stupid bitch still hadn't figured it out If she hadn't been snooping where she wasn't supposed to, sneaking through Dawn's diary, she probably never would have found out.
But that was all water under the bridge now, and after reading Donna's letter, he'd known that his time was up.