Danielle Craft may have been a generation or two removed from truly understanding the "Jan Brady" reference, but being the 'middle child' between two very popular, very pretty and very accomplished sisters suited her analogy to a tee. Her older Sister, Kirsten was just finishing up her Senior year of college with a career already lined up and an entire wing of the Craft house dedicated to her many awards and commendations. Her younger Sister, Caitlyn, had always been the spoiled one. She was also her Mother's last hope to gain all the accolades that Darlene Craft herself never accomplished, creating an environment where Caitlyn got most of the added attention once it was a fait accompli that Danielle wasn't going to be shoehorned into that typecast her Mother expected.
"They don't care about your grasp of 'geometric theorems' during the evening gown competitions," Danielle remembered her Mother telling her once when she was around 13, in an effort to try pulling her way from her studies long enough to follow in Kirsten's footsteps on the pageant circuit.
Then came the 'don't play too much softball or volleyball' speech around the same time because it just wouldn't be looked at as 'lady-like' in the eyes of a wanna-be socialite like Darlene Craft.
In truth, Danielle could have spent 24 hours a day from the genesis of her birth trying to be a beauty queen, but it wouldn't have made a difference. In the gene lottery, she'd drawn her looks from her Father's side of the family, and frankly, she'd been blessed with a healthy dose of introspection from her formative years and was utterly turned off by the superficiality of much of the world around her, especially at home. Naturally observant with a halfway decent intellectual grasp for a shy girl of 18, Danielle Craft had grown into a halfway dangerous fly on the proverbial wall.
In a lot of cases like Danielle's, the daughter tends to gravitate towards being a tom-boy or becoming much closer to her father, but she didn't even have that to fall back on. Whether Curt Craft was comfortable allowing his Wife to tend to their three kids so he could chase his career, and his own selfish diversions, or whether it was his own deep seeded disappointment that Darlene had never bore him a Son, but there was an unconscious but definite, and growing, disconnect between him and the rest of his family.
All that served as an invisible yoke around Danielle's neck, but luckily she'd been the one of the three that had the built-in backbone to handle it. Growing up in her upper middle class environment, she knew things could be much worse, but even though she never wanted for anything materially, trying to find her niche or anything to truly feel good about became a daily struggle for the 18 year old.
That's not to say that Danielle didn't have some dirt on the world.
The evidence, albeit subtle at first, was all around her. Even as a child, seeing the way the parents of her friends and neighbors interacted was different than the way her parents seemed to. Her Mother had become increasingly obsessed back then with Kirsten mainly, and all the primping and planning that went into her pageant success. It was clear as well that even though her Father was supportive of his Daughters' endeavors, he increasingly sought out ways to get as far away from the house, and all the drama within it, as possible.
As quick, and as hip, as kids are to things these days, once Danielle got old enough to see some of her friends' parents going through divorces, she started to notice many of the tell-tale signs in her own Mom and Dad as well. The extended business trips and the long nights at the office were almost cliché by then, but it seemed to work for the Crafts to live two separate lives under the shared veil of marriage.
Danielle had no qualms admitting to herself that her Father had strayed on her Mother, probably more times than she wanted to count. As absorbed as Darlene was about keeping up appearances and making constant public splashes, Danielle didn't think her Mom was of the mind to cheat, but as with most things in life, sometimes those assumptions do make an ass of you.
Such was the case that fateful afternoon when Danielle had returned home early from school with a tummy ache.
She could have probably made it through the rest of the school day if she'd tried, but Danielle knew it was the one day that week that the house would be empty so she could sneak home and just enjoy a couple hours of peace and quiet. She knew her Father wouldn't be home until late evening, her younger Sister would be in school until after 4 and this was the day her Mom as supposed to volunteer for some Godforsaken reason at that church mission across town.
Needless to say, when Danielle pulled up to the house and saw her Mother's car still in the driveway, her head began pounding more than her belly.
"DAMN," she muttered before smacking the steering wheel hard. Twice.
Knowing it would be stupid to turn around and head back to school, Danielle figured she could sneak in and disappear up to her room before Darlene Craft even knew her truant Daughter had locked herself in her room.
Before Danielle could set both feet into the house however, she froze hearing the shrill sounds coming from upstairs. It was clear even in that briefest of moments that her Mother was way past the point of distraction. Looking over her shoulder to make sure she didn't miss a stranger's car parked in the driveway, Danielle racked her suddenly overwhelmed brain, trying to discern just who it could be up there with her Mom.
"Was it someone from the neighborhood or someone she'd met online? Was it one of her Father's friends..one of Danielle's?", were all questions that squealed like angry buzzards through Danielle's head as she tried unsuccessfully placing the voice moaning at the top of the steps.
Before she even realized it, Danielle's psyche grabbed a hold of her feet and dragged the young girl back outside, and back into her car.
If her belly hadn't already been unsettled, it definitely was now as she tried fending off the echoes remaining in her head from the snippets of sound she'd overheard in the house. Driving in circles through the neighborhood as she tried to regain her bearings, Danielle finally found herself at the park a few blocks from her house, sitting there under the late Autumn Sun, watching the leaves change at a way slower pace than apparently her own life was at that moment.
Being a school day, the area was barren for the most part, giving Danielle all the seclusion she needed to smoke a few cigarettes and assess the fallout of what she'd accidentally stumbled into. Listening to some music to settle her nerves as she de-compressed in her car beneath the shade of a huge weeping willow tree, around an hour or so after Danielle pulled into the lot, she saw her Mother's car slip down the main road, with the clear profile of a man in the passenger seat.
It didn't dawn on Danielle until much later the lunacy of tailing her Mom as she drove the stranger she'd just had sex with across town. Not really able to get a good look at the guy in the passenger seat from the three or four car buffer she tried to keep behind, Danielle sensed they were weaving through neighborhoods her Mother wouldn't normally venture otherwise.
Not really knowing what she'd do with the information if she discovered the identity of the man, Danielle felt like she was out more to satisfy her own morbid curiosity. After all, her Father had been having affairs for years, but to the best of Danielle's knowledge, he hadn't dared bring any of those women into the family home like her Mother obviously just had.
The young girl's adrenaline started to race and she nearly rear-ended the car in front of her when she saw her Mom stop on a dime and let the man with her out at a bus stop on the corner.
Danielle didn't know whether to feel relief or angst when she didn't recognize the guy getting out of her Mother's car. He certainly didn't look like any friend of the family, and even though he was significantly younger than Darlene, he was older than any of the boys she knew from the neighborhood.
