I woke with a start as the television played a late night infomercial for a rotisserie oven. I had been dreaming� what was it. Something about Daddy� Something about Daddy and the way his arms went around me, caging me like a bird in cat�s claws while he stared lasciviously at another woman whose face I could not see. I had heard Michael�s voice in it too� him saying, �God, I�ve missed you Lola.� Regardless of his dashing good looks, Michael had always to my knowledge never even looked at another woman while we dated. Then somewhere in the distance, I could hear the sound of rushing wind through bare tree branches, icy cold fingers of wind that bit upon my skin. And then Daddy looking down at me with his dark unreadable eyes, growling at me, knowing that I had let a man touch me, touch that which was Daddy�s.
I had kicked my blanket off and I was freezing, lying there in my still damp underwear. I got up from the sofa and clicked off the television. It was almost 1 in the morning. The Duke had made raging love to Maureen O�Hara while I slumbered. I walked through the house to my bedroom, slipped out of my clammy wet things and threw on an old white t-shirt, too old and thin for the gym, and a pair of boxer shorts. Then I snuggled under my warm covers and tried to still my mind from all of its confusion. Michael. Daddy. The possibility that he had other interests. The probability that he had other interests.
We had never discussed it. He had never offered and I had never asked. I was stupid and had assumed. Goodness, he might even have some kind of long-term relationship that I didn�t know about. His house was decorated fabulously. No man could be have such perfect taste without the guidance of a woman�s eye for color and scale, my inner pessimist piped up. It had only been a little over a week since the first day I�d met him and what gave me the right to think that he was completely unattached? He was a very good-looking man, a very magnetically attractive man. Michael was right. There was likely another woman. In all probability, maybe I was even the other woman.
I closed my eyes but again, pictures from my dream haunted me. Thinking about how his sheets perfectly matched the color of his carpet. Thinking about how he�d held me in his arms and petted me like a kitten.
Quickly, I kicked off the blankets and turned on the bedside light. This wasn�t going to end. I had to talk to him. I had to see him. Daddy. Right then. It was a Saturday night� technically Sunday morning. Maybe he�d even have someone there right then and I�d know for certain.
I stepped into a pair of boots and a big alumni sweatshirt, then grabbed my keys and raced out the door before I could change my mind or consider the idiocy of my actions. I wanted answers. I wanted to know who would be sharing Daddy�s bed.
But most of all, I wanted him to hold me and tell me that it was all right that I had kissed Michael.
The rain smeared on my windshield, rending my wipers relatively useless. I squinted through sleepy eyes to guide myself to his home, sludging through huge puddles where the storm drains hadn�t been able to keep up with the deluge. I turned off the radio because every song made me feel simultaneously guilty and also overwhelmed by my feelings for Daddy, for Michael. If it wasn�t a song about how someone loved someone else, how they filled every empty spot in their existence or how they found their body simply irresistible, it was a song about how their lover had gone to another. Finally, I wound down Daddy�s street to find the beginning of his driveway. I hadn�t realized it before but it wasn�t paved all the way, making for muddy going. Even with my SUV, I was finding the wheels slipping and groaning on the wet earth.
I slowed to a crawl and then finally stopped the car, dimming my lights before they hit the house and would shine into one of his windows. What was I doing? What was I going to say to him? �Hi, I�m just stopping in to see if you�re cheating on me? Mind if I look around some?�
This was stupid. I was being irrational. I had allowed Michael�s influence, his legendary powers of persuasion that made him a Wunderkind in the courtroom, cloud my judgment. I trusted Daddy. I had told him that I trusted him and I did.
I shook my head in disbelief that I had been so gullible. Michael had been only trying to drive Daddy from me for his own selfish purposes. It was completely clear, actually, and I was amazed that I hadn�t seen it before. I put the car into reverse and began to wind back up the drive but found that I had absolutely no traction. I popped it into 4-wheel drive and tried rocking it. Nothing. The graveled driveway was simply too waterlogged and rutted for me to get out. I continued to rock, forward, reverse until it became obvious that I was only spinning my wheels and digging myself further into the mud.
I cut my headlights. I could see the vague figure of the darkened house up ahead. No lights on--not even a porch light, although that didn�t really mean much, as it was almost 2 o�clock in the morning. I sighed. I thought about calling a tow truck but in my mad dash out the door, I hadn�t grabbed my cell phone.
The other option was to simply run and hide in the woods and give myself over to the wild animals as a sacrifice. That option sounded better than the alternative, actually, which was to walk up to the house and knock on the door and explain to Daddy what I was doing here so late at night.
