As she approached her dorm, she noticed a limousine idling in the parking lot. That was a strange sight. And as she approached her door, there was a man standing there. From behind, she could only tell that he was tall with gray hair, and that he was immaculately dressed. She thrust her bandaged hands into her pockets, despite the pain it caused her.
“May I help you?” she asked.
The man turned around. He appeared to be in his fifties and was wearing a three-piece suit. What the hell was someone wearing a suit for at seven o’clock in the morning? And why was he knocking at her door? Heather couldn’t shake the feeling that he looked familiar to her.
“Are you Ms. Heather Englund?” he asked.
“Yes. Can I help you?”
The man bowed his head. “I suspect you can, but I question whether or not you will.” He looked Heather in the eyes. “My name is Michael Loomis. I’m Laurie’s father.”
Heather would have been less surprised in the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes crew had been waiting outside her door. And she probably would have been a lot more pleased.
“Your daughter isn’t back yet. She’s still in Florida. And when she gets back, I SERIOUSLY doubt you’ll be finding her here, which should make you quite happy.”
“I figured you’d be stubborn. I’m not here to speak to Laurie. Actually, she doesn’t know that I’m out here. I came to speak to you and whether you want to listen or not, we have a great deal to speak about.” Heather could tell this was a man used to getting his way. He was a lot like his daughter in that respect. “Please,” he continued, “I’ve gone through a great deal of trouble to get here before she returns, and I’d like to be gone before she gets back. All I’m asking for is ten minutes of your time.”
Heather looked him over. “Fine. There’s a convenience store about fifteen minute’s walk from here. You’ve got until I grab my first cup of coffee.”
“So we’ll be walking?” he asked, a hint of amusement in his voice.
“We walk,” she responded and headed towards the store. If she was going to endure his presence, it would be under her terms and not his.
He signaled to the limo for the driver to kill the engine and quickly caught up with the angry brunette. “First, can I assume that my daughter has told you about my lack of involvement her growing up?”
“Yeah, but what does . . .”
“It is relevant to the discussion, I assure you. I love my daughter. I never consciously decided to minimize my role in her upbringing. It wasn’t until she was a teenager that I realized how little I really knew her. She seemed to be such a happy and well-adjusted child that I decided not to try and over-parent to make up for my lack of involvement earlier. But I did try and take more of an interest. I discovered that there was a delightful young woman who had grown up in my house, but I had never even noticed.” He sighed before continuing. “I’ve only wanted the best for her, but I’ve tried to respect her very potent will. When she told my wife and me that she was gay, I tried to be supportive despite my own concerns. And no, I am not nor was I ever homophobic. But it is an area of confusion for some young people, and I just wanted for her to be sure. I wanted her to go to an Ivy League school, but she wanted to come here,” he said as he pointed his chin in the general direction of the college. “When I wanted her to major in something sensible, she wanted to pursue music. No offense. But I supported her, letting her go where she wanted and do what she wanted. But then there came you.”
“What about me?” Heather asked, curious in spite of herself.
“About a year and half ago, I noticed when talking to her that she wasn’t quite as lively as she had been before. I thought at first that she was having trouble adjusting to college life. I kept asking her if there was anything I could get her that would make her feel better. She kept telling that the one thing she wanted,” he said and then, after a pause, “couldn’t be bought.”
Heather started to blush. She had an idea where this story was going.
“I can see that you have probably guessed what happened next. Sometime last summer, she ‘got happy’ again. Actually, she was happier than I’d ever seen. Because she’d gotten what she had wanted and hadn’t needed my help. I’ll give you three guesses what that thing was, and the first two guesses don’t count.”
“I’m quite familiar with the story at that point,” she said a bit acidly. ‘Probably more familiar than you’d like to hear about,’ she thought smugly.
“I’m sure you are. Anyway, since then, you’re all she talks about. And I’ll admit to having been a bit jealous. I’d be talking about important legislation, and she’d start talking about how you sang Pat Benetar at some karaoke bar.”
“O’Malley’s.”
He stopped and looked confused. “Excuse me?”
“O’Malley’s. It a restaurant that has a karaoke machine. It’s the place where we work.”
Suddenly, he looked very confused. “What do you mean by ‘ we work’? Laurie works there?”
Heather was surprised. She had just assumed Laurie had told him. “Yeah. Since January.”
Mr. Loomis looked mildly annoyed as he pulled out his PDA and started writing something down. He glanced up at her. “Sorry. I apparently have to have a discussion with the lady who does my taxes. Soon.” He shook his head, but he was still smiling. “That girl is going to be the death of me.”
Heather grinned a little bit herself. How many times had she thought that about Laurie?
“Anyway, I realized I couldn’t compete with you for her attention. But she still called and came home from time to time, so I didn’t think I was really missing out. She was happy, so I was happy. She was becoming more and more . . . well, brazen. It seems that being with you gave her a great deal of confidence. Now, we skip ahead to the recent unpleasantness. The hierarchy in my political party has been looking for a new leader in the Senate, and I’m fortunate enough to have been the primary choice. When I heard that Laurie was going to be going down to Florida for spring break . . .”
“Yes,” said Heather bitterly, “I got that part. You didn’t want her to embarrass you and I guess that I was what you meant.”
“Actually, no. There have been a number of incidents recently where indiscretions on the part of children of political figures have made front-page news. I didn’t care that she was going out with a girl. I couldn’t hide that forever, even if I wanted to. And I don’t. I just told her to be discrete in her behavior. I guess I didn’t explain myself that well. I didn’t want her getting drunk and doing something illegal or stupid. I didn’t want her showing up one of those ‘Wet and Wild’ videos. And maybe I didn’t want her wearing the smallest possible swimsuit she could find, and don’t tell me that you would have discouraged her. Maybe I’m being a little paranoid, but I was young once too. I know what young people do in that kind of environment. I never asked her to do the things she did. She was trying to help me out and she got carried away. I had no idea what was going on until the night after you left.”
Heather stopped. So everything had been a misunderstanding? Had it been entirely Laurie’s idea to shut Heather out? Had it been Laurie’s idea to lie? She felt her shoulders start to shake and she struggled to keep back the tears. It would have been so much easier if she could have just hated Laurie’s father. But the idea of hating Laurie still felt like a knife in the gut.
Mr. Loomis realized that there was something wrong with Heather. Her eyes had closed and her lips were trembling. “Listen, you don’t have to believe me if you don’t want, but I’m willing to bet everything that Laurie did what she did because she thought that’s what I wanted, but without specific instructions, things got out of control.” He stood in front of and caught her gaze. “She thinks the world of you. She knows now that she made a mistake. She called me the night after you left. She told me that she wasn’t willing to give you up just for my career and that if I really loved her, I would accept that. Obviously I was confused since I never asked her to give you up. We talked a long time. Once I got it through to her that I had never wanted her to ‘not have fun’ over spring break, much less to give up something she had fought so hard for . . . well, she cried for a bit. Then she said that regardless of what I’d meant, I’d have to trust her to know the difference between having fun and being stupid. She told me that she’d been stupid often enough that she had learned the difference.”
Even though she was mad at the girl, Heather’s instinct was to chastise Laurie for that comment. Laurie wasn’t stupid. She was just . . . confused. A lot.
The two of them had reached the convenience store and gone inside. Heather pulled her hands out of her pockets to pour a cup of coffee.
“What happened to your hands?” he asked.
She suddenly felt very self-conscious, and her hand was trembling so much that she had to put the coffeepot down. Mr. Loomis grabbed it and poured them both a cup.
“What do you take in yours?” he asked, his voice gentle.
She steadied her hand and took a cup and sipped it. “I like it black.”
“You must have a stomach of iron,” he joked, still staring at her hands. Then his face grew serious. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that she’d been hitting something. “I have one question for you. She told me she hit you. I also know from previous conversations with Laurie that you have a temper. From a purely rational standpoint, you would have been perfectly in your rights to hit her back. So why didn’t you?”