Dad always did have a soft spot for helpless strays; stray dogs, stray cats...and stray women.
I remember the day he brought Amber home to 'stay with us a while.' The lithe woman with a pretty face and long lush hair couldn't pay my father for the repairs he'd made to her car. She'd been evicted from a cheap hotel so she came to stay with us. She entered our little stucco house on a cooling summer night with a backpack and a baby tucked away in a baby seat.
Jessica Day Osborne entered my life as a wide eyed wiggling bundle in a pink fleece onesie when I was six years old. A few months later, dad and Amber got married in Las Vegas and we all became a family.
I remember Jessica toddling around, always happy and laughing and later, when she was older, I'd catch her poking around my room looking for what, I don't know. Being a rough boy, Jessica fascinated me with her cute innocence. To me, she was my precious kitten. She was too innocent to sense the tension building between my father and his second wife.
Amber had become restless. Saddled with two kids and my father's demands that she be a respectable housewife were more than she bargained for. I think she was eager to get back to her stripper alley cat life as dad tried to set her right.
The day my stepmother Amber drunkenly popped the curb as she came to pick me up from school is still etched in my mind. She wreaked of alcohol. She yelled at me to get in the car. Feeling protective, like a big brother should, I opened the back door and removed five-year-old Jessie from the car seat and told her that we'd walk home. She kept yelling at me to get my 'stupid little ass in the car' and I kept saying 'go home, you're drunk'. And when the pick-up monitor began to approach the drama unfolding in front of school, Amber angrily squealed off. Jessie said she was hungry so I took her to McDonalds and spent the last of my allowance on a cheeseburger. She ravenously bit into the burger. I asked her if she'd eaten all day. She shook her head no, eating so fast I thought she would choke. When dad got home from work, I told him about a drunk Amber not feeding Jessie. It was their last big fight. After Amber signed the divorce papers, she packed her belongings and drove off with Jessie to Florida and moved in with her mom. Months later, when Amber took off on the back of a Harley with some biker, her mother got custody of Jess. I wanted Jessica back but dad said its best that girls be raised by a female. And when I begged him to go and get her, he snapped at me, "she ain't blood, boy. We ain't got no rights to her." That was the end of that.
When Jessica's grandmother's health failed, Jess went to live with an aunt who lived a few miles away from Amber's mom. Occasionally, dad and I travelled from Arizona to Florida to visit Jess. We'd collect her and take her to Disney World and other amusement parks for a few days. But when she became fifteen, she had her own life to lead with little time for us. Saturdays at the mall with girlfriends became her world. The visits stopped but we continued to exchange Christmas cards and continued to keep in touch.
I ended up going to community college where I majored in aviation flight technology, and landed a job in Vero Beach, Florida installing navigation and radio equipment into small aircrafts. Jess and I now live less than one hundred miles from each other. She's going to college and works part time as a lifeguard at a waterpark and part time at a student job. And though we lived close to each other, we never visited each other. So, it came as a surprise when she contacted me on social media and invited me to a party she was throwing. She practically begged me to come. And though I said 'yes', she contacted me twice afterwards to make sure I was coming. I could never tell her no.
With a six pack of beer in my hand, I knocked on her apartment door. Jess answered.
With a bright, white toothy smile and her big sparkling sky blue eyes, she exclaimed, "Luke!"
"Hi, Jessie."
She threw her arms around me and I returned her hug before standing back at arm's length to take a look at her. Like her mother, who was a beautiful woman with long legs and high cheek bones, Jessica had grown into a very attractive young woman. She wasn't willowy slim like her mom. She was shorter, curvy and busty. She had shapely legs, honey blonde hair and looked pretty in a blue mini-dress that fluttered mid-thigh. I was a bit surprised she looked so wholesome like a fresh faced cheerleader without an ounce of skank.
All I could say was, "Wow, look at you. You've grown!"
"I'm an adult now," she replied with a bubbly smile. "Come in, come in!"
I entered her apartment to see two surfer looking blond haired guys sitting on her couch playing Fallout 4 while another one, sitting in an oversized chair, was scrolling and texting on his phone. Another stocky guy, in jeans and a t-shirt, emerged from her bathroom. The music was playing, candles were lit and bowls of chips sat out untouched, but other than the six of us, there was no one else in the apartment.
"Gosh it's good to see you," she said, leading the way to her little galley kitchen. "You can put your beer in the fridge."
The stocky guy joined us in the kitchen to open the fridge and take out a beer.
Jessie said, "Luke, this is Trevor. Trevor, Luke."
We exchanged a quick 'hey' before Jessie left us alone. I placed my six pack in the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle before closing the door. Trevor popped open his beer and handed me the opener.
"Thanks man," I said, popping open the beer. "So how do you know Jessie?"
"I'm her brother."
"Me too. Well, step-brother."
"Yeah me too. Her mom was my dad's second wife."
"Mine too. God, Amber was a piece of work. Wonder what ever happened to her."
"You didn't hear?"
"What?"
"Amber is serving time."
"What'd she do?" I asked, not a bit surprised.
"What didn't she do. Her shit head boyfriend robbed a gas station in Georgia while she was waiting in the car smoking meth. There was a high-speed chase with cops and they crashed into a minivan full of kids. She was convicted of robbery and drug possession. She had prior convictions of drug possession, burglary and writing bad checks, so she's serving time. Hag got five to seven."
"Wow."
"She deserves it. She was a total bitch to me and my dad."
