"Daddy! Where are you?" I heard my twelve-year-old daughter, Rhegan, screamed as she tore through the house, frantically looking for me. "DADDY!!"
Her voice didn't sound distressed, so I kept brushing the BBQ sauce over the slowly roasting chicken that I had spinning on the spit of my grill.
"Outside by the pool, honey!" I finally gave in, laughing to myself as she and her mom, Tuesday, walked out onto the deck. Rhegan ran and jumped into my arms, kissing my scruffy cheeks. She was such a Daddy's girl, the love of my life.
"Smells good, Honey!" Tuesday exclaimed, smacking me on the rump. "I hope that you have some extra, we are having company!"
"Oh yeah? Who?" I asked.
Rhegan was quivering, she was so excited about something, and she looked fit to burst.
"Can I tell him, Mommy?!?"
Tuesday nodded her assent, grinning from ear to ear.
"AMY!" She squealed, dancing around with glee.
"Wh-what, who?" I stopped momentarily.
"Our old babysitter, Amy." Tuesday told me. "She is starting to college in Denton this fall and she kind of, uh, needs someplace to stay and, um, she can't afford the dorms and, uhhh..."
"So we are a boarding house now?" I asked, not exactly pissed, but wondering why I wasn't informed of this transaction.
Amy Becker is the daughter of my very best friend in the world Sebastian Becker, who was our neighbor for over nine years here in Copper Canyon. He and his wife Madelaine were the first of our neighbors to befriend us when we moved to this house fourteen years ago. Sebastian and I were dot commers, and he had made a fortune in his venture. He worked from home and dabbled in day trading and the like. He and I were like peas in a pod, we rode our motorcycles together, cooked out at each others houses, shared Holidays together, hung out and watched football, baseball, whatever. His wife, Madelaine was a trophy wife, absolutely gorgeous with a drop-dead body and a naughty streak. She and my wife were close also.
Sebastian and Madelaine had two children, Sebastian Jr, who was nine when we moved in and Amy, who was five. Jr was a model son, he grew up to be the star quarterback of the football team, he got a full ride scholarship to Oklahoma State and lettered in two sports, got an amazing job in Ohio when he graduated and the last that I heard, he was to be married to the former Miss Ohio. Amy was his polar opposite. She was a skinny kid who grew to be a gangly teen. She didn't have many friends, and spent most of her waking hours hanging out with either my wife at our house or running around with her dad and me.
I was blind to any problems that may have been within the walls of our next-door neighbors abode, but my wife wasn't.
"She cheats on him constantly!" Tuesday would tell me. "She has at least two suitors at all times, it is horrible!"
I would gingerly broach the subject with Sebastian, but he was deaf and blind to any issues, he zealously worshipped the woman and thought that her bowel movements didn't carry an odor.
When Tuesday and I were blessed with our only child, Amy took to her like a fish to water, and when she was old enough, she became the family sitter, and was until she moved away at the age of fourteen.
Prior to and during this time, things within their house became obviously shaky. Madelaine began to party a lot, leaving her kids by themselves and coming home long after they readied themselves for school. She and Sebastian fought constantly, and shortly after Jr's graduation, nearly five years ago, tragedy struck.
Things had been particularly stormy in their home and Sebastian and Amy were spending a great deal of time with us. I knew that Sebastian finally had come to grips about his rocky marriage and he had asked me to help him initiate divorce proceedings. The last thing that he and I ever discussed was a weekend long motorcycle trip to Big Bend, and how much fun it would be to tie that in to the Republic of Texas Motorcyle Rally which was going on that next week.
I'll never forget it, two sixteen A.M.; Tuesday woke me up because someone was beating on our door, beating like his or her life depended on it. I raced down the stairs to find Amy, shivering and in hysterics, huddled on my front stoop in her nightclothes, her bony fourteen-year-old frame wrought with tension.
"Daddy is dead!" She screamed before collapsing into my arms.
I literally threw her to my wife and clad only in boxers, I sprinted, barefoot, towards my best friends house. The scene was horrific.
Sebastian's front door opened to a large foyer that had a study to the left and the landing to the stairs straight ahead. I stepped in and noticed Sebastian's bare feet sticking out of the door to the study and Madelaine sitting on the stairs, weeping, holding a pistol. I carefully approached her and gently took the gun from her, placing it on the credenza and looking at Sebastian. My heart sank. It is a picture that I imagined every night in my dreams for the next six months and I still have nightmares of it five years later, my best bud, lying in a spreading pool of his own blood, shot twice, once in the stomach and once in the chest.
The next few months were a media whirlwind. The news was making Sebastian out to be an ogre of a husband, and his wife who had feared for her life after years of abuse shot him. Tuesday and I knew better, and told the police that, but we had no proof. Amy was so distraught that she could not even speak to defend her father. Madelaine became rich after cashing in on his life insurance policy and moved to the Bahamas with a much younger man, leaving Amy with Sebastian's parents in Oklahoma City after Jr went off to college.
Amy stayed with us for the few days prior to her leaving the state, and it was hard to let her go. I will always remember her waving good-bye to us, and how she looked then, a skinny waif, mouth full of braces and so very sad.
My wife and Amy kept in contact for a little while after she left, and Tuesday still sends cards to her on her birthday and Holidays, but we pretty much lost contact with her after a couple of years.
"Helloooooooo Jim!" Tuesday shouted at me. "Are you in there?"
I shook my head, re-entering reality, and threw my arm around her, pulling her close to me and kissing her full, luscious lips.
"Yeah, baby," I sighed, "just thinking about Sebastian, that's all."
She grinned up at me and hugged me back.
"We both miss him, Jim. I am going to go and get the spare ready for Amy, her grandparents are dropping her off, and they should be here before five."
I closed the lid on the grill and went and made a nice, stiff Jack and Diet Coke and flipped on the tube, looking for some sort of sports to watch, instead settling for a random home improvement show. I had really been hoping for a little 'slap-tickle' with Tuesday this afternoon, I guess that deal was squashed.
A couple of hours later, I heard a car in the drive and I went to the bay window and looked out at a new Lincoln Navigator coming to a stop behind my Wrangler.
The doors opened and I instantly recognized Sebastian's mom and dad, Flo and Bill. I really don't know how to describe it, but it was like a scene from a teen movie when everything goes into slow motion when the hot girl walks into the room. I assume that this girl was Amy, but she had radically changed. The last time that we saw her, she was a skinny, gangly kid, flat chested, no bootie, and a dark rat's nest for hair. This raven-haired beauty was amazing. She stood outside of the SUV for a moment, stretching hard, she had on a pair of cut-off jeans that revealed long, shapely legs with a perfect pair of diamond shaped calves capped off by a pair of yellow flip-flops. This girl wore a form hugging T-shirt and had her long hair swept back into a ponytail.
