Author's note: As I'm about to become very busy soon (starting tomorrow!), updates may be more infrequent. I will definitely finish this story, rest assured. Plot's finally all planned out. Reviews help.
As always, thank you for reading!
"Daddy!" Shilo griped in annoyance, as she saw what his advice had caused. Her laundry was PINK. Searching for the culprit, she found a dress that had formerly been a blinding, canary red. Damn it! She put it all back in the hamper and resolved to take a bus to the consignment store. She tread down the stairs and searched for her father, found him gazing at the fireplace that wasn't even real. "My laundry came out funny. It's pink."
He chuckled. "You have to separate out the whites. Didn't I tell you?"
"How was I supposed to know?" she said.
"It was a good attempt, sweetie."
Just then, the shrill oven alarm went off; Shilo excused herself, dashed bare-foot to the kitchen, and retrieved their dinner with an oven mitt. The lasagna, at least, had come out perfectly, the cheese melted on top, and it smelled absolutely delicious. Her stomach rumbled, eager to get the party started. "Ooh, yummy," she congratulated herself, and couldn't resist taking a fork to it, filling her mouth with molten, saucy goodness. Music rumbled in from the open window. She put her hands on the sill and leaned forward on her tiptoes, watching a scene play out on the big screen, before the starlit night. GeneCo had found a new musical star to enhance their advertisements and promote their image as a household brand.
Nothing like Mag—no one would ever be like Mag—but the sound was cheaply beautiful, cutting the frequent and obnoxious commercials in twain. A deep voice spilled from the pneumatic woman with lustrous red hair, her open mouth a shade redder and a touch glossier.
Shilo, as a courtesy, asked her dad if she could have a glass of wine. He twitched and said he'd allow it, but just the one glass. A smile shared; they clinked glasses.
"Shilo, this is very good," Nathan said after the first bite.
"You sound surprised," Shilo said.
"Well, I am. Did this come from a box?" he asked, pretending to look around the room for evidence. Shilo giggled, the response she was meant to give to a joke. But it felt genuine. She frowned, confused at how it all felt scripted, and it all felt right.
Tonight was different.
They ate. He asked about her day. He delicately asked how her healing was. She shrugged and said it hurt, more than the twinge they'd promised.
"Perhaps I could take a look at it later?" he said.
"That'd be great. Thanks." Who are you and what have you done with my dad, she wanted to ask. She kept it to herself and let herself be grateful.
Her fork skittered and squealed on the mostly cleared plate. She gathered up the remnants: sauce, cheese, bits of spinach. She licked it off the hot tines, and stopped when made aware that her dad was watching her. She was used to taking dinner in her room and hadn't had to refine her dinner manners overmuch. "Sorry," she offered awkwardly.
"No, it's fine," he said tightly. He looked to be struggling not to smirk.
She held her arm rigidly, slipped, and the fork scraped on the ceramic. "That was an accident!" she protested through the laughter.
Cleared their plates, left them to soak and be sudsy in the sink. She sat up on the counter and removed the screen from the open window. Their air filters would take care of the pollutants, and her cooking overpowered the slight chemical smell.
"That's some vocalist," Nathan commented.
"Yeah. Um." She hesitated, not wanting to spoil the evening. "Dad, Mag told me that, uh, that Mom used to sing. I heard a little." He gazed at her, eyes softening, a pleasant, nostalgic gaze. "It was beautiful."
"Your mother was an artist, Shi. She wrote a song for our wedding day."
Shilo felt her eyes mist over with tears. She bent her head and let her mother's hair sweep forward. "Do you have it?"
"Somewhere. I could get it for you. It's in my bedroom."
"You mean, I could get it for you," she said, not understanding.
"Remember that I wanted to tell you something, honey?"
She nodded. Of course she remembered. "What was it? I'm all ears, Daddy."
"Well…" It started small. His socked feet stretching, then the muscles in his calf, and then he was straightening one leg, then the other, and he placed his feet on the ground, made a pained sound, his hands gripping the armrests, and he managed to stand. Shilo gasped. Terror and awe at once hit her in an overwhelming rush. He collapsed back in the chair, a defeated groan of pain.
"You can—you can walk," she said.
"Yes, that outcome seems possible, doesn't it. But I need your help."
Her forehead creased; she frowned and folded her arms in. "No."
"What?" he said, taken aback.
"Did I fucking stutter?"
"Language," he reminded her gently, in lieu of the slap she could tell he sorely wanted to deliver; some part of him, maybe not the father, maybe the demonic something else, made his right hand twitch and contort and frighten her.
"Why should I help you?"
"Because I am your father, Shilo!" he said. Disbelief. Could not comprehend how or why she was being this obstinate, this unreasonable.
"God, Dad! Do you even know how terrible it is that you're asking, what you're asking of me?" She glared at him, a fire in her eyes. "So, what, I help you regain your strength and you use it against me? Make me your captive?" She took on a mocking, sarcastic tone, one that was meant to be an imitation of his own. He sighed at her ridiculous little mood, the way she acted out. "Oh, Shilo, what nonsense! Shilo, don't defy me! Shilo, don't deny me! You're only a child."
He let her rant, and when she finally stopped, he spoke. "It isn't going to be that way. I promise."
"There's no sense believing you, of all people. The one reason I've felt okay having you here is because you can't come after me," she told him. Nathan's nutation did nothing to reassure her; he only did it to placate. To get her to shut up. To get what he ultimately wanted it.
"Shilo… What can I say? What can I do?" he said wearily. He looked vulnerable. Old. Heart-broken. He looked the way she felt on the inside, and he needed her. He actually did. It plucked at the delicate strings attached to her heart.
"After this," she stammered, could not find the words. She got off of the counter. "Answer all my questions?"
"Of course. Daughter, if you helped me with this, we could spend time together. Time I should have spent with you, all those years. The time I spent away from you—"
"I get it; it was a mistake," she cut him off. "What else do I get?"
Hurt by her words, her apparent lack of care, he said, "Whatever you ask of me."
Her mouth trembled. "Will you leave?"
"My house?"
"Dad, it stopped being your house when you stopped paying the bills. Or you can stay here, and I'll leave, but…" A heavy breath. "One of us has to go. Forever. I know it's over-the-top dramatic. I know I should want to stay with you. Like the people on TV, sort of similar to us." But it was not quite the same.
"That's for the best," he reluctantly agreed. "You're… a young woman. Capable, beautiful. Kind. You're more like your mother than you know, Shilo."
She, in turn, felt hurt and shocked that he didn't fight for her. Whatever happened to being his world? "Yeah, it's best," she echoed over his words. They overlapped. "I want to know how I'm like her. You could tell me. Dad, I'm tired. I'm going to go."
Shilo stopped, went back and softly kissed him on the forehead. She fluttered away without seeing the smile she'd placed on his lips.
At his invitation, she hopped up on the cold examination table—coffee table, he reminded himself. They were not in any office. "Should I put my feet in the stirrups?" she joked; it fell flat.
"Very cute," her doctor told her, and told her to get down and sit in the chair beside him. She did so. Nathan lifted up his daughter's shirt, barely enough to get the ribs visible.
"Dad, don't be so shy," she chided, and held it up for him, higher.
He touched the scar, patted around it, clinically, feeling for the vacancy of a piece removed. "Does this hurt?" he asked.
She shook her head no.
"This?" He felt a little higher, pressed a little harder. She giggled. "Ticklish, Shilo?"
"You know I am. You know everything about me," she said, warm from his touch, emotionally warm because this, here, was a familiarity from childhood. He'd conditioned her to love him most exactly at this point. Asking her questions. Collect symptoms, information. Call and response. Was it his imagination, or was she more than warm? Was she flirting?
He stepped back from the situation. Her shirt was held aloft, baring her torso from waist to the band of her bra. She was very thin, underweight really, and she was not just pale, but sallow. Aside from her belly button, and the cavity created by a sunken ribcage, that fast healing incision was the only break in her perfection. He'd created that, by some happy accident. He'd made an angel, and she alone loved him.
His hand molded to her side like clay. The monster wanted more than a side. And she belonged to him. She'd be grateful, or she should be—and Nathan shook away in utter terror, stopped his hand from creeping up her side by twisting back, then pushing her away.
"Dad? Dad, what's wrong?" She smoothed his hair, peered into his eyes, concerned dark eyes like his dead wife's, sex noises like his dead wife's, and he knew from undressing, dressing her when she swooned that her body had the same coloration, the same lovely twists and curves. He had to get her out of here. Away from the monster inside him.
It was true. She could not trust him.
"Nothing, precious," he said through gritted teeth. "You're fine. I don't know why you're feeling pain—I don't." He rubbed her arm. "Why don't you go up to bed?" His fallback notion when he didn't know what else to do with his daughter.
"Okay." She looked at him strangely, and he was being strange. He held an uncomfortable, false smile until she left him there. He breathed heavily and could not bring himself under control and back to normal.
