Junior stood in the kitchen helping her mother clean up from dinner. A thought crossed her mind and she voiced it. "Hey, Mama? You think Daddy's ever gonna remarry?"
Alma paused in washing a plate , then resumed slowly. "No, I don't think so. I asked him once an' he said, you know, once burned."
Junior closed the cabinet she'd been putting glasses in. "That's too bad."
Alma looked at her daughter. "Why? D'you want a stepmother?" She didn't sound accusing, just incredulous.
"No, that's not what I mean." Junior faced her mother. "It's just, you've got Bill and"—she shrugged and shook her head—"I don't like to think a Daddy bein' alone."
Alma turned back to the sink a little too quickly for the motion to be entirely natural. "I don't think you need to be worryin' about that."
Junior blinked, not oblivious to her mother's slightly odd behavior and tone. She shifted her weight more to one foot. "Mama?"
"You just don't need to worry about that, Junior."
"Mama, if you mean that blonde woman he was seein', I don't think there's anything to that anymore."
"I'm not sure I know he was seeing any blonde woman." Alma shut the water off with ore vigor than was strictly necessary. "And it doesn't matter if he has been or is or is not. You don't need to worry about him being alone."
Something in her mother's voice caught Junior's attention: not quite an edge—a dulled edge maybe, or the memory, like a scar, of an edge that had once been sharp, but now was worn down. It sounded to Junior like it had been an edge of resentment. She stood there a long moment, watching her mother dry dishes, thinking: what could have hurt her mother? What might her mother have resented, but was now long enough passed for her to pretend to have forgotten? After the long moment was gone and she'd thought of no specific answer, Junior quietly asked, "What aren't you saying?"
"What are you talking about?"
"There's somethin' you're not sayin' here, somethin' you ain't happy about. I can tell, Mama." When her mother said nothing, Junior chewed her lip and, before she could think better of it, asked after the one thing she had thought of that might have bothered Alma the way she seemed bothered, even though Junior didn't see how it could be right. "Did Daddy cheat?"
"What?" Alma whirled to face her daughter. "Junior what are you—?"
"I want to know the truth. I want to know why I shouldn't worry about my Daddy being alone. Has he got some secret girlfriend? And I wanna know what happened anyway! All I've ever been told is 'oh, well, things just didn't work out.' But I remember you crying and Daddy yelling, and I knew I wasn't being told half of the truth and I know the same thing now." She took a deep breath. "I worry about Daddy and the way you're telling me not to isn't helping."
"Junior!" Junior looked away. Her mother sighed. "We didn't tell you things because you were much too young and, really, it comes down to things just didn't work out."
"Well, what about now? Why shouldn't I worry about Daddy? I'm old enough to know my father isn't a super hero, he has faults just like everybody. Did he cheat? Has he got a secret girlfriend?"
" He hasn't got a secret girlfriend. Now drop it."
Junior crossed her arms. "I notice you're not sayin' he didn't cheat."
"I said drop it."
"I want to know!"
"You don't need to know!"
"By that logic, I might as well stop going to school."
"Junior."
"Well? I just wanna know a little bit of the truth. From this conversation so far, I'm pretty well convinced that he probably did cheat. I'm not mad if he did, even if maybe I should be. I don't know. But I also can't think how that can be true. He only ever went to work or went fishing. He never had any friends, really, so he couldn't a been fooling around with some friend a his's wife. The one friend I remember him having, he an' his family are down in Texas. I don't think Daddy ever even met his wife."
Alma tossed her hair in frustration. "Maybe he didn't need nobody's wife to fool around with."
"What's that mean?"
Alma shook her head. "It doesn't matter."
"Mama."
"Listen," Alma put her hands on her daughter's shoulders and took a deep breath, "you're right. There is something I'm not saying and it's not just that I don't want to. I can't tell you."
"Why not?" Junior met her mother's eyes.
Alma bit her lip. "It's not my secret."
"What d'you—"
Alma turned back to the last of the dishes. "This conversation is over."
Junior hesitated, then said, "Fine," and marched off to her room ignoring the looks cast her way by her sister, stepfather, and young half-brother.
A/N: Woot! New story! Actually, I've been writing this for months but, since I write by hand and haven't much time to type, I just haven't posted any yet.
At this point in the story, everything is exactly as it was in the canon a few months before the end, but this little not quite fight between mother and daughter changes everything.
Let me know what you think in a review!
Happy fic-ing.
