copyright ©2009 by A_Satori. All rights reserved.
[Author's note: My thanks to
Andrea4328
and
ny_girl14
for their editorial help on this story. It is greatly appreciated.]
************
PART 1
CHAPTER 1
I unlocked, then pulled the passenger door open only a foot or so on my nine year old pickup. I started to walk around the front as Lana jerked the door open wider and then climbed up into the cab. "Climbed" is the best way to describe it. She was petite, slim verging on skinny, clear and alluring blue eyes, brunette hair that I was sure had been dyed slightly darker recently. Her legs were smooth and slender until her ankles which were a half size too wide compared to the rest of her limb. She had the prettiest feet I had ever seen. Her breasts were small, her lips fairly thin, her face was cute, maybe even pretty when she didn't trowel on the makeup. She had an irritating eyebrow piercing, which only had the little ring in it today. Sometimes she had a short, dangling thing swaying from it. Whenever she had that little chain or something hanging down, it took all my strength of will not to rip it off her face.
I had to unlock my door. She never leaned over to open it for me. I kept unlocking her door first just to see if she'd ever do it. I pulled the door open and my gut clenched. She was wearing a black stretchy miniskirt and her black shitkicker boots. She was slouched on the seat. I got in and closed my door. I shoved the key in the ignition and turned on the engine. "Take your feet off the dashboard."
Lana made a face. "Why? This stupid truck is so old and
crappy
, who
cares
?"
My pickup had turned into a rusting beater, but the interior was still fairly nice except for the crusty carpeting and the cigarette burns showing in the cloth bench seat between my thighs. "Take your feet off the dashboard." I could hear her chewing her bubble gum.
"What difference does it make?
Gawd
."
I switched the engine off and slouched a little too. From the inside pocket of my down jacket, I pulled out my pack of Marlboros, then my Zippo from my jeans. I lit one.
"Wha' we gonna do, just
sit
here?"
I exhaled my first drag and rolled my window down a crack. It was early March. Warm weather was at least a month away. I didn't answer her. I gazed at the prison. It looked like the prisons in a dozen movies I'd seen, cyclone fencing topped with coiled razor wire, then the concrete wall topped with more wire, brick and concrete buildings on the other side of the wall. The mortar colored structures nearly melded with the sad gray overcast of the sky.
Lana exhaled audibly. She slid her boots down to the floor. "There.
Happy
now?"
I put the cig between my lips, reached under the seat and pulled out a rag. I offered it to her. "Clean it off."
"Gawd... you're such an
ass
." She yanked the mechanic's rag from my hand and gave the spot where her boots had been a quick once over. She barely touched the dashboard or glove box door, essentially just smearing the wet, dirty sole prints. I didn't really care, but I did get pissed when she tossed the rag onto my lap.
"There. Happ
ier
now?"
I took the rag off my crotch and shoved it under the seat. I sucked another drag from my cigarette.
"What
now
?"
"Seat belt."
"
Gawd
." Lana jerked the belt across her chest and then shoved the metal tongue into the buckle on the seat.
I restarted the engine and we pulled out of the visitor's parking lot of the women's state prison. It was a two hour drive home. I really needed a drink. That was one of the things Barb and I had in common, we really liked our cocktails, cocktails and fucking, usually rough fucking. She had a nice, hot body. We had been going out for about four months and for some reason, one night I asked her to marry me. She said yes immediately. We tied the knot a month later, small affair, with a big open bar. She was 32, I was 27.
Barb had gotten knocked up when she was fifteen, had Lana when she was sixteen. When I proposed I hadn't given much thought to Lana. She wasn't my kid and I had never planned to be her "stepdaddy." Before and for a while after the wedding, I thought Lana and I were at least getting along. When Barb and I had were dating, Lana and I sat together a few times and we had real conversations which made me hope we'd be friends, and failing that, we'd just be neutral and coexist. I knew she and Barb had their problems, but even though I had spent days and slept over quite a few nights at Barb's before we were married, I had no idea how bad things were between them until after the wedding when I gave up my crappy apartment and moved into Barb's nearly as crappy rental house.
For the first four or five months, if I wasn't too drunk, and occasionally even when I was, I would try to mediate their arguments. Sometimes taking one side, sometimes the other, depending on who I thought was more right or at least logical. Mostly though, I took neither side, tried to calm them down, then told them what I thought was right, just, or equitable. No matter how I handled it, their usual response was
they'd both get pissed off at me. I gave up on trying to be the voice of reason. After that I usually just left the living room and went to the kitchen or out to the garage, or just left the house. Of course that pissed off Barb. She'd get angry at me later and ask why I wasn't there to give her support. Yet whenever I made any suggestion about parenting, even when there wasn't an argument in progress, she'd point out that there was only one parent in the house and it was her.
One time when Barb and I were in a sober period, we drove into the city on a Saturday for lunch. We actually had a wonderful time together, at the restaurant and taking a stroll along the lakefront. We talked about a million things that day, and we did speak calmly about parenting and Lana. She mentioned that the arguing with Lana had never been as heated and emotional nor as frequent before. She said it had started getting much worse about a year or so ago. That evening while I was checking the oil in the truck, I realized a year or so ago was about the time Barb and I had gotten married. I started wondering if Barb was blaming me for Lana acting like a little bitch.
There was one real knockdown drag out between them last year. Lana had invented an online persona on one of those social/friend/chat internet sites. Barb had walked into her room and happened to see the six hot photos on Lana's personal page. From their shouting, I knew none showed her face, either her brunette hair hid it, or the pose did.
When their fight moved down the hall to the kitchen, I stepped into Lana's room. The pics page was still on her monitor. In half the photos she looked her age at the time, seventeen, in the other pics she appeared to be two or three years younger. She wasn't totally naked, so no nude shot of her pussy, the same for her small tits which were covered by a camisole or a strategically placed arm.
Three featured her cantilevered, thonged apple ass. The other interesting surprise in her room was that her bed was made, no clothes or crap on the floor, it was clean and orderly but not retentively so.
Barb had screamed for nearly an hour calling Lana a slut, a whore, an ungrateful little bitch, et cetera, et cetera. Barb made her delete the internet page and grounded her for a month. As with all her groundings though, it was forgotten after a few days, when Barb and Lana would get along, or at least have the appearance of doing so. It was always like that. They'd have explosive, screaming arguments, and then be tentative friends for a few days until the tension and animosity started growing again.
On a Friday night, eighteen months into our marriage, Barb and I went out for dinner and drinks, which usually meant drinks first and maybe free peanuts at the bar. I had a blowout with my foreman that day, so I really got smashed. I was so loaded I had no idea nor recollection of how drunk Barb was, or of leaving the bar. I guess some bar "friends" helped her get me into the car. She drove. Ten minutes from the house, she had an accident. I was either passed out or asleep when it happened. I didn't have my seat belt on. I got a 3 inch laceration running from between my eyes angling towards my temple. I still don't know what I whacked my face into. It required 32 stitches.
Barb didn't have a scratch on her, but the sixteen year old boy riding his bike hurrying home from some party, who she had broadsided, was DOA at the hospital. A couple months later she got a decent plea bargain, 3 to 5 for depraved reckless endangerment. It could have been manslaughter which would have at least tripled her sentence. The county was overwhelmed with criminal cases and they had just convicted a guy for drunken driving - manslaughter a month before her accident. A lot of press on that one. I guess the state prosecutor figured there wouldn't be much news coverage on the same crime. She was incarcerated
on October 15th.
Before her sentencing, she asked me, begged me to be Lana's guardian. I finally relented, mainly because I was half in the bag when she brought it up, and 3 years seemed like three months to me at the time. We were both sure she'd be paroled after 3 years. Of course that wasn't based on any facts. It just seemed right and fair that she would be out at her first parole hearing. I mean, it never came out at the court proceedings or sentencing, but the kid had been drinking too, the autopsy showed his alcohol level just barely under the legal adult limit. Maybe that fact helped her lawyer get the plea deal. I don't know. Anyway, I signed the papers. The lawyer took all her savings, plus whatever she and I had socked away in that year and a half of marriage, which wasn't much. The family of the kid had a civil suit against Barb too. I'm still not sure how financially liable I would be on that. I really didn't want to know.
"Turn down the heat. It's
hot
