Page 71 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

"Carol was younger than I expected."

"How much younger?"

"I'm not sure, but she looked around forty-five."

"That's not younger. That's your age in ten years. That's closer to you than to your father."

"I'm aware," I replied curtly.

"And?"

I tried to find the word for it. I went with the simplest.

"She was nice."

Janice waited.

"She was extremely nervous. She loves my father." I tried to put a shape to how much. "She loved him the way people love each other in romance novels, except the romance-novel version has the decency to settle down by the third chapter, and Carol's wouldn't settle. It kept leaking out of her. She finished his sentences. She squeezed his knee under the table. She turned to him before she answered the questions I'd asked her. That kind of thing."

"That is a lot of detail for someone you've described as nice."

I looked down at my tray. "I noticed things about her."

The plane bumped through something.

"I wanted to dislike her," I said. "But I couldn't. She's the kind of woman I'd have made friends with if Dad had brought her over as a colleague from work. I liked her, and so I couldn't be angry about her like I wanted to."

"Why did you want to be angry?"

"That she was younger. That she had a body. That she was wearing a dress."

I hadn't meant to say it that way. Janice didn't say anything.

"It was a wrap dress," I said. "Knee-length. Neckline structured. Not low. Stockings. Pumps. Hair done. Full face. She was perfectly put together."

"All right."

"My father loved it."

"Sure. Your dad is male, right?"

"If I'd worn that dress at fifteen my father would have made me change."

Janice looked at me. "That dress."

"That dress. Or a less interesting dress. I wore a sundress to a school dance when I was fifteen that had nothing on it. No neckline. The strap was a regular strap. He sent me upstairs. He told me I looked like I was inviting attention. There was a cardigan in the back of my closet that I was supposed to put on before I left. My father is dating a woman whose entire wardrobe consists of clothes he taught me a woman wasn't supposed to wear."

"Ah," Janice said.

"He's happy. He's happier than I've ever seen him."

"That's good, right?" she asked.

"I'm not sure what to do with that."

The flight attendant came down the aisle with the cart. We waved her on.

"Lacey," Janice said. "You have to talk to him. You've been holding this too long."