Linda realized that her parents' divorce had hurt her father more than her mother. The affair that ended their marriage had something to do with it. That her mother was now married to the object of that affair didn't help.
But her father was just sad, she thought.
Thanksgiving would be tough, but Linda had made her choice. She'd spend it with her father, even though his family was all gone and it would be just her back from her first few months in college and him knocking around the house.
Linda would look up some high-school friends if things got too lonely. Seeing her mother was out of the question, as she and her new husband were in France. They'd offered to fly Linda over as a combined Thanksgiving-and-extra-birthday gift. Linda had just turned 18 two weeks before Thanksgiving, but being on a different coast, she'd celebrated with new friends and talked to both her parents on the phone.
Her father's phone call then had been a bit too forced to be believably cheery, but she could understand that. Hell, she found dating a pain, and she wasn't 45 and newly divorced. He'd perked up when she told him she wanted to spend Thanksgiving with him. The ticket would go on the credit card she had on his account. The rest of her present was another $500 off that card to buy what she wanted.
She saw her father waiting in the spot in the terminal where he'd said he would be and waved. He smiled and waved back. At 45, he was pretty good-looking, though she assumed he dyed his hair, which was brown and thick. He had an agreeable face -- kind without looking weak. And he dwarfed her, 6'4" and 240 pounds to her 5'0" and 100. He'd joked every once in awhile about having helped make something so improbably small, and they'd all laughed. But that was when they were still a family.
Linda had her mother's blonde hair and slight frame. She hadn't inherited her mother's breasts -- 34Ds -- but had instead been somewhat disappointed during her maturation that she tended toward her father's female relatives on that count. 30B was as large as she got, and there had been an embarrassing conversation with her mother when Linda was 16 and her mother tried to gently enquire if Linda wanted breast implants.
The conversation had been strange and uncomfortable, but it had also cemented something in Linda that wanted to like her own body. And so she did, and she had found lots of boys who found neither her breasts nor her slim hips a turn-off.
Linda snapped back to the present as her father said "Hi, honey" and engulfed her in his embrace. Ridiculously, comfortably, he still smelled like Old Spice. She hugged him back. As they broke the hug, he took her larger bag away from her and slung it across his shoulder.
"Good to see you, " he said.
"Good to see you, too."
"Tired? The bags under your eyes would seem to suggest so."
She laughed. "Yeah, I mainly feel like crashing, but I wouldn't mind eating."
"It's only 3 p.m. here, honey. You can even nap and go out to eat."
She slapped her forehead with a hand in a ritualized bit of 'what an idiot I am.' "Right. That would be good."
"Late night?"
"No night. By the time I was ready to get to sleep, it was time to get ready to wake up."
"Poor baby."
They reached the car and drove home, making small talk all the way. The exterior of the house was as she remembered it -- cleaner and better kept, actually. Maybe her father had more time to devote to lawn care now that her mother was gone. Or more reason to.
The interior was pretty much the same as well, with a difference it took her awhile to figure out. All the framed family photos in which her mother had appeared had vanished. Now only pictures of Linda or of Linda and her father remained on the walls, interspersed with the same paintings of rural settings that her father had preferred and her mother had barely tolerated.
She dropped the bag she was carrying on the floor of her room. Her father placed the other on her bed. The room was as she'd left it -- same posters, same frilly pink bedspread, same books on the shelves, same clothes left in the closet. Her father had given her a quick kiss on the cheek and told her to get a couple of hours sleep before he gently closed the door behind him as he left. The same alarm clock glowed red beside her bed. No need to unpack the one she'd brought with her, Linda realized.
Linda grinned. Same personal bathroom with shower too, of course. After three months of shared bathroom accommodations, that would be nice.