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  All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Selena Kitt

  Father’s Keeper © January 2011 Parker Ford

  eXcessica publishing

  All rights reserved

  Father’s Keeper

  By Parker Ford

  Chapter 1

  “So why are we coming here again?”

  I glanced at Carl and grinned. “Well, for one thing it’s a cheap place to stay. Cheap as in free,” I said, making a left on Wicked Way. Yes, that was the street name and a few blocks down was Flying Monkey Road. I shit you not. My folks lived in a section of town where the streets are named for The Wizard of Oz.

  When I say folks, I guess now I just mean Gil. And Gil isn’t even my dad. He’s my stepfather.

  “Free is good,” Carl said. Carl works in honky-tonk bars playing guitar when he can. Works behind the bar when he has to and in the kitchen washing dishes only when he’s desperate.

  “I thought you’d see it that way.”

  “But why are we visiting Gil when you’re mom’s not even here, Jenny girl?” he asked.

  I hate being called Jenny girl. Truth be told, I prefer just Jen. Jennifer if you have to be formal. I shrugged, taking the long, steep hill that would lead to my house. All of Pleasant Parks was visible from up here and I put my foot on the brake to still our progress--just to look. Seeing my hometown did odd things to me. Part of me felt comforted to be home, part of me felt claustrophobic. Like I wanted to smoke a pack of cigarettes, drink a bottle of cheap wine and hit the road in a beat up old muscle car. And run like hell.

  Nostalgia can be sickly sweet. Delicious in one instant, cloying in the next.

  I shrugged, lifted my foot off the brake and let us drift down hill, let gravity and small town roots do their work. “I want to check on him. Gil and I didn’t get a great start,” I said, stopping at the corner before hitting the gas and dragging us closer to my house. “But he was a good dad to me. And now Marian’s up and left him. And me, if you must know. She won’t call me back or contact me or any of it. My mother has started a new life. It does not include Gil and it does not include me,” I said.

  “Think he’ll care?”

  “Yes and no,” I said. “I think I’ll be a suck ass reminder of her, but that’s the way the gene pool goes. But I think he won’t much mind the company and he is a family man--a good man. This is always to be my home. Told me so when I left.”

  “Ah, but what about me?” Carl laughed, putting his big, nicked up hand on my thigh and pushing it high up. I wanted to press myself down so he could reach me, I wanted to pull myself back so he couldn’t. I wasn’t quite sure where I stood on Carl right about now. Only time would tell, I figured.

  It had been fun and games and sex and drinking and parties for months. But now I wanted to start a new life somewhere, and Pleasant Parks was on the way to somewhere. So I was starting here. Carl was just along for the ride, and something told me that was how he’d live the rest of his life. Along for the ride. I wasn’t sure if I was okay with that or not.

  “You’re with me. That’s all he needs to know. I’m a big girl.”

  “I wouldn’t say big. I’d say curvy,“ he said and winked at me. That hand crept higher, his fingertip brushing under my short skirt, under the elastic band of my panties. I let him. When the tip of his pinky finger tickled at my clit, I held my breath. “What’s he do, anyway?”

  “Stained glass,” I said. “Custom pieces. He’s been doing it since I was a kid.”

  “Make a lot on that?”

  I shrugged. “You can. He has. Church windows and local dedications for big buildings. Funeral memorials and folks’ houses. He’s done okay.” I drifted my crappy Chevy ‘79 Chevy Malibu with it’s sagging headliner into Gil’s driveway and sucked in a deep breath. Carl pressed my clit again so that my pussy worked up around nothing and I made a sound in my throat. Then he chuckled softly and pulled his hand back. “Here we are,” I said.

  “Here we are,” Carl echoed.

  For whatever reason, my stomach rolled over nervously. My skin tingled and my heart felt a few sizes larger in my chest. Why was I so fucking nervous? Maybe because once I went in that house I was now in my home. A home without my mother. She had left. Left Gil and left me. But at twenty-eight, should I care? Probably not, but I did.

  “Is that him?” Carl asked.

  I brought myself back from spacing out and looked at the small front porch. Gil caught my eye, gave me a half grin. He crushed out his cigarette in a coffee can I knew would be full of kitty litter, though my parents didn’t have a cat, and took the steps slowly.

  “That’s him,” I said. “My father. Sort of.” But for all intents and purposes, Gil was the only dad I‘d ever known. There when my real dad wasn’t. In fact, Marian had never truly copped to who my real dad was, just that he’d left us. But it was Gil who had taught me to parallel park and to change a tire (not that I could still do that). It was Gil who picked me up when Gary Grace kicked me out of his car one night when we’d been drinking because I wouldn’t fuck him. It was Gil who watched over me, kept me safe and paid my way and sometimes, my dues, when it came to teachers and bosses and anyone who might look cross-eyed at me.

  Carl opened the passenger door to beat me to Gil. Already starting his ass kisser routine. Gotta love a good bullshitter. Somehow I always managed to find them, too. “Mr. Russell, nice to meet you, sir.”

  I watched him from the car, foot tapping the gas pedal though I’d cut the engine. Gil allowed Carl to pump his hand like he was trying to draw water from a well, but his stony gaze found mine and he cocked one eyebrow and pulled a face that only his daughter would recognize as a smile. “Who’s this yahoo?” is what that smile said.

  I blew out a sigh and laughing softly, opened the door and got out. “Dad. Gil.” I went to him, let him pull me into the circle of his arms and hug me. Even after decades, I always floundered with that Dad-Gil thing. It felt natural on one level to call him Dad and on another Gil. Ours was an odd relationship.

  “Girl,” is what he said in my ear. Soft like a whispered prayer. He tugged me tight to him and hugged me like he was dying. For a moment I worried that he had bad news for me. About him, about mom, about something. But I realized, feeling his heartbeat banging against my chest, that Gil was lonely. It broke my heart.

  “How are you?” I said in his ear.

  “I’m still here. Who is this joker?” he said into my hair and I had to swallow a laugh.

  “Give Carl a chance. You might like him.” I pulled back a bit and kissed his stubbly cheek. At forty-six he wore the rugged, working man handsome of small towns.

  “How many beers will that take?” he asked. Carl was making busy by taking some small duffels out of the trunk.

  I shrugged, rubbing my hand to his back as he turned to help with the bags. “Four? Five?”

  His laugh was dry and soft. “I can do that. How long you her
e for?”

  “Firstly, I should ask if we can stay,” I said, glaring at Carl. He’d started to unload as if I had already cleared it with Gil. My cheeks flamed hot red and annoyed with my boyfriend.

  Gil just looked at me, those stormy eyes pinning me with a look of surprise mixed with disgust. “Of course you can. This is your home, Jenny.”

  Carl glanced at me and I grinned, shook my head. “Only Gil’s allowed to call me Jenny. Right dad?”

  “Guess so,” Gil said and laughed again as he left Carl standing there looking somewhat put off.

  Chapter 2

  We grilled fish for dinner. I made corn and potato salad the way my mother had all the years I grew up. I put out pickles and pickled onions with the dinner, just as she had. It made me kind of sad, her not being here. It also pissed me off. Who the fuck was she, anyway, to up and leave a good man who had pretty much worshipped the ground she walked on.

  Gil came in the kitchen while I was cleaning up. “I can do all this.” He put his hand on the crown of my head and just left it there. The way he always had when I was small. When we’d first met, Gil and I, he’d done it to sort of irritate me. I’d been a miserable brat to him at first, not wanting to share my mother’s attention with a stranger. But over the years, his hand on my head had become a sign of affection for me from him. Something we shared that spanned time.

  “It’s fine.” I watched Carl, that goon, picking out a Lynard Skynard song on his guitar out by the fire pit.

  “She left with Marty McMurtry, if you want to know. They went off on his boat he got with the life insurance from his old man biting the big one. Thomas McMurtry was a mean son of a bitch, but when it comes to life insurance, the man bought so much I’m surprised there’s any left for the rest of us.” His voice was thick and clogged with emotion and Gil tousled my hair before opening the fridge.

  “What a fucker,” I said and rinsed the potato salad bowl so roughly, I was afraid I might crack it in the sink.

  Gil laughed and took the bowl from me, gently. He dried it and set it in the dish strainer. “He always had a hankering for your mother,” he said.

  “I meant my mother,” I said.

  “Jenny.”

  “Don’t Jenny me, Gil.” Now the tears had arrived. Hot and angry and overwhelming. I bit my tongue to stave them off, tasted blood.

  Gil pulled me into the safe circle of his arms again. “It’ll be okay.”

  “How could she?”

  He smoothed my hair and kissed my forehead. “She left me. Not you, girl.”

  I pulled back, my eyes flowing freely now. He wiped the tears with his thumbs. “She won’t call me back!” I yelled. “She left us both!”

  “That’ll change, that’ll change,” he whispered. “She knows you’re going to give her a raft of shit, so she’s avoiding it all for now. Even you. But Jenny, I promise you, that will change.”

  “She has to come back to you,” I said.

  “I’m starting to think she stopped loving me way before now,” he said, letting me go and putting the bowl back where it belonged. “And Jen, I’m wondering if we maybe fell out of love a long time ago.”

  That made my throat close up and I shook my head. “But it’s okay,” he said.

  “No it isn’t. Don’t say that. Don’t. You guys…I thought you loved each other. It’s the thing that made me think that one day I could be in love.”

  “Goober boy out there is in love with you,” he said, forcing a chuckle. But his face was a bit closed and he looked hurt. There was something under it, too, that I couldn’t quite read.

  “I don’t love him, Gil. He’s just along for the ride. Figuratively and literally,” I said with a vibrant bite of anger in my voice.

  “Hey, now. I don’t want to know that stuff,” he said and turned from me before I could really see his face.

  “Yes, Gil, I’m a virgin,” I laughed.

  “Can we pretend?” he asked over his shoulder. That time we both laughed.

  “Whatever floats your boat,” I said. His hand rested on my crown once more, but only for a heartbeat, and then he was out of the kitchen, pulling a cold beer from a cooler on the back porch. I watched him sit in a chair near Carl who was still plucking away on his guitar. Gil looked both forlorn and at peace.

  For that moment in time, I hated my mother for leaving him. But I envied her for ever having him at all.

  * * * *

  “Anywhere around here I can get a job picking and grinning, Mr. Russell?” Carl asked. I thought it was sweet that he called Gil Mister. Gil lit a cigarette and I briefly wanted one. That first dark smell of burning paper and tobacco always made me lusty for a smoke, but I’d gone through hell and back to quit, so I wasn’t about to ask for one.

  “The Garnet up by the highway might take you on. They don’t pay much, I hear. And they’ll make you wash dishes and tend bar and mop the floor too.”

  Carl shrugged, picking out the opening chords to a Pink Floyd song that always made me feel homesick even when I was at home. “I can do all that,” he said.

  “So I figured,” Gil said, dropping me a subtle wink in the orange light. The fire popped and cracked and grumbled like a fourth person in the conversation. Gil pushed out of his lawn chair and bent to kiss my head.

  “I’m off to bed, kids. Long day tomorrow and it’s coming fast. Plus I’m getting old.”

  “Sh-yeah, right,” I said. “Truth be told, you could run circles around me.”

  He grinned. “Truth be told, you’re right, but I am tired and I am trying to leave you two be. I’ll call out to Mike Branch at the Garnet tomorrow and ask if he’s shopping for some talent. Or maybe John at The Tavern‘s looking,” Gil said to Carl and Carl reached out a hand to shake. After a moment of considering that hand, Gil took it and shook. “You be good to her,” he said. There was a hint of malice in his voice that made me look up and made Carl blink.

  “Yes, sir. I will.”

  Gil nodded. “Be sure you do.”

  The screen door slammed on its rusty hinges when he went in and I jumped a little.

  “What the fuck was that about?” Carl asked, dropping back into his chair and strumming absentmindedly.

  I wished upon a star for a smoke, got nothing. “I have no idea. But I’d listen if I were you.’ I smiled. Something in me feeling warm and loved from that low key warning to the man I was sleeping with.

  Carl snorted. “Yeah. No shit.”

  “So come on,” I said, draining my beer and setting the empty in a bushel basket of other dead soldiers for recycling. I had to shake my head that recycling had come to Pleasant Parks.

  “What?” He looked up, giving me that slightly stupid look that made me pity him and go out with him in the first place.

  “Come on and take care of me. Come upstairs and fuck me good.” I took his hand to help him up and he slammed into me.

  “In your bed? From when you were a teeny bopper? Dreaming of boys touching you in the bad places. Boys putting their lips on your pussy and their fingers deep inside of you?”

  My pulse jumped in my throat and I could only nod. God, he could be so dirty. It was one of the things that made me stay with him. When other things made me want to toss Carl to the curb, that dirty streak of his, how he seemed to innately understand me, kept me coming back for more. “Yes, yes. Now come on. Take me upstairs, you beast.”

  He did, softly humming something by Ozzie Osborne as I led him to the top floor that had always been one big loft room. Mine. And it still was. My posters were there, some of my furniture. Hell, even some cheap plastic beads hung along the sides of my oversized mirror.

  I dropped onto my double bed, the royal purple canopy on my bed shivered lasciviously. “What a room. Man. I had a room the size of a small closet and a twin bed. No sheets!” Carl set his guitar on an overstuffed chair and stripped off his concert tee. He dropped it on the throw rug and shucked his busted up jeans.

  “Sorry, baby,” I said. I knew he’d
had no money growing up, which is why he was so comfortable working for beer money and eating noodles. That wasn’t distressing to Carl. And at first it hadn’t been to me. But I wanted to settle down. Eat a steak once and again. Have a permanent place to call home, not just hang out somewhere.

  “It’s fine. Fine by me, because girly’s got sheets,” he whispered with a lupine smile and then he came at me, running like a wolf in a forest, pouncing, hitting my bed with a muffled thump and a muted squeal on my part. “Girly’s got lots of good stuff,” Carl said and pushed my legs wide, forcing his narrow hips between my thighs. His mouth smashed hot to mine, his teeth skittering across mine for just an instant while his tongue dove in and then the kiss was urgent and warm and eating up my thoughts.

  “Easy, wolf boy,” I laughed, but didn’t meant it. My legs locking behind his back. His cock, hard and long nudged me between the legs, brushing over my clit under all its insulation of fabric.

  “What is all this stuff?” Carl said quietly. He tugged at my skirt, at my panties. I heard something in the hall but felt the quick and distracting burn of a fingertip to my tender flesh. I wiggled under him.

  “Us humans call them clothes,” I joked. I stopped joking when he tugged my tiny skirt off and whipped it over his head like a war flag before promptly launching it across the room.

  “Fuck that,” Carl growled and took my panties in his teeth, tugging briskly so I rolled like a wave under him to help him work them down my thighs.

  “Not fuck that,” I sighed. “Fuck me.”

  Hours and hours and hours piloting my piece of shit down a blacktop highway. Hours of listening to Carl ponder guitar riffs and how much pot any given band smoked. Hours of picking at the still raw wound of my mother’s abandonment. The confused feelings of relief and peace of being home to the restless crawl of small town stifle already settling over me. I was a wounded nerve, a throbbing tooth, a fucking breathing tortured oxymoron. I wanted the swirling and twirling and tilting in my head to just stop for a moment.