A/N: New fanfic alert. Sorry. Still making sure all my stories have representation. This work is dedicated to every author who ever had a plot bunny but didn't put pen to paper. If it makes you feel any better, this story is from April 2018. That's how long it's sat on my hard drive, going absolutely nowhere.

Inspiration Song(s): Phil Collins — Who Said I Would

APoV

I was driving Wanda towards Montesano. With only a couple months of college left and my upcoming move to Seattle, I wouldn't have too many opportunities to easily visit my father. At least this way I'd be able to get a few sensible meals into him. Dad had sounded strange over the phone the last time we spoke and I worried about him. He's not getting any younger.

The new hire I was training was working this weekend, so Mrs Clayton had allowed me some time off. Lately, I had been working as much overtime as I could, but I was beginning to think that the Claytons liked paying the newbie a much lower rate. It was just as well I was graduating this year.

Unlike my roommate, Katherine Kavanagh, who had her internship all lined up, I was painstakingly filling out as many applications as I could and sending my resumes out to many locations, although I had focused on three particular publishing houses in the Seattle area near our Pike Place apartment.

I was only hoping that Wanda could make it for the duration, at least long enough for me to generate enough income to replace her. I would miss Wanda when she finally gave up the ghost, but so far she represented my freedom as my first car.

The old Volkswagen Beetle had served me well, at least with Jose to fix it up from time to time. But we worked quid pro quo. I helped him out with his photography and he helped me out with my car. Jose Sr and Ray Steele reconnected as a result of their children attending the same College. Jose and I may have been good friends, but their fathers were great friends.

Wanda's odometer would have made it seem like a much older car, but I did what I had to do. Hard work and perseverance would pay off in the end, I was sure. But as I got closer and closer to Montesano, I had a sense of foreboding heavy in my belly. Ray wasn't very voluble on his best day but now he was damn near tight-lipped. I could sooner get blood from a turnip. He was locked up, tight as Fort Knox. I would get down to the bottom of this on this excursion.

Stopping a couple times along the way, I loaded Wanda down with groceries. Exhaustion consumed me by the time I turned into the driveway of his modest home. Perhaps modest was understating it slightly; it was a beautiful, hand-built, two-story house with a sprawling porch. It was home.

I spied an unfamiliar car in the driveway and was surprised that he had company. Had he met a woman? It would be about time. He definitely deserved it after being so badly screwed over by Carla, I thought ruefully.

My father's got a lady friend, I crowed to myself, knowing he'd probably be a little shy about it. Perhaps that's why he hadn't talked so often. Maybe he was a little bit busy, I thought.

Which is why my face fell into an expression of deep shock when I realized who was perched on the couch. It was my mother Carla, who was supposed to be somewhere in Savannah. With her fourth husband, I thought snidely.

But the Carla seated in my father's living room and the Carla I'd escaped years ago were two entirely different animals. This variant seemed a pale, shrunken ghost of herself, donning a headscarf of all things. It wasn't exactly Carla's highly developed sense of fashion. And if I wasn't mistaken, she was wearing a robe and house slippers. Did she live here now, I wondered horrified.

Not only was there a strange car, but not as I thought about it, my father's truck was missing. Where the hell was Ray? Surely this is something that should have come up during one of their regular conversations I thought. Hell, this merited an emergency broadcast.

It was uncomfortable as neither of us broke the silence instead assessing each other without speaking, taking each other's measure. Disgusted, I fumed on my way to the kitchen with my packages, intent on dumping them off, roughly stuffing everything in the refrigerator and the cupboards where they belonged.

But as I made her way upstairs, Carla spoke.

"Don't you have anything to say to me?" she demanded in her high, thin voice.

"No, not particularly," I replied. And I didn't. We hadn't spoken regularly for years. And I thought that we were quite well off that way. Though I'd been waffling between sending Carla an invite to my graduation from WSU, she had not even seen fit to show up to my high school graduation. Why would I believe she would take time out of her busy schedule to attend a college graduation? Our relationship had always been rather tenuous and I expected, and desired, for it to stay that way. Once I'd clung to the hope of sharing a close relationship with her, but that was before the wine and the men. Especially the men.

Carla was the kind of woman that needed a man to validate her, even at the expense of her own child. It just didn't seem to occur to her that children needed to be nurtured, or had any real needs at all. Wasn't it enough to be clothed and fed? They actually needed time, too? They need to be watered like little plants or something. Not so, she had thought rebelliously; she had done the best thing she could, teaching me to be self-reliant.

The blatant hypocrisy of that statement was unacceptable to me. She and I were just simply on different wavelengths. But she actually thought once I was a grown woman I would be a bit more understanding and accepting of her. Perhaps if I took off my rose-colored glasses or at least dated around a bit and got some experience, we'd have far more in common. She would be willing to do almost anything to knock me off what she called my high horse. This situation really threw me for a loop.

"Come sit," Carla requested, but it was couched as a demand. I reluctantly came down the stairs and perched on the chair as far away from Carla as I could get and still be in the same room. Finally, I slapped the big fat elephant in the room on the ass asking, "So you live here now? When did that happen?"

"I've been here for a few weeks," Carla replied. The weakness of her voice surprised me, she'd always tried to maintain a little sweet kittenish voice, all the better to entice and tempt man with. As it was, she sounded like someone with strained vocal cords or a chainsmoker. And she had lost weight, a great deal of weight. Carla normally possessed a very trim, yet curvy figure, but she was positively gaunt. This must be what people meant when they said someone was just a mere shadow of themselves.

Apparently, Carla had fallen on hard times and bounced her happy ass all the way to Washington. Hip-hip hurrah!

Perhaps I wouldn't have to wait until Ray returned to solve this mystery, but I had a feeling that this is one story I could have lived without for the rest of my life. Carla was like a harbinger of doom, an albatross. I wondered if some man was the reason for it, possibly that final husband, speaking of which. Where was he and why wasn't she somewhere else, far away from Ray's house, sucking up to him ?

We sat there, planted in our respective corners, and it seemed as if Carla was determined to get her point across. For the first time in years, I felt like a stranger in my father's house. Though I was heavily tempted to just get in Wanda and drive back to my apartment at the University, I persevered. Surely at some point, Carla would be leaving and all would return to normal.

Just to think I had been so excited at the idea that my father had found a woman, but truthfully Carla was the last fucking woman that would have done Ray any Earthly good. I had to be careful what I wished for from now on.

We didn't have much to say, so I got up and started to cook some meals to be frozen and reheated later. It was a good thing I had gone grocery shopping, as the cupboards and the refrigerator were bare. Though I made a big deal of taking care of my father, usually he could do certain things himself, but it doesn't look like he'd even shopped. And the trash seemed to weigh heavily in favor of takeout containers. It was as if I had stepped into the Looking Glass or some type of alternative universe.

Cutting up some fruit and vegetables and storing them in different containers, I made some tea and put some water in the pitcher to cool. There was nothing like cool water after a hard day's work. Something refreshing: I'd even bought Dad's favorite beer from the local store. I was finally able to legally make the purchase I'd made several times before, as they knew I was unlikely to drink and since it was for him they just packed it up and I stuck it in the back of the refrigerator.

When I exited the kitchen I found Carla sitting in the same position. She didn't seem to have shifted at all. She was like that bump on a log. This time when Carla attempted to speak to me, I simply passed by, ignored her, went upstairs, closing the door behind me, throwing myself across the bed, covering my eyes with my arm. I'll think of it tomorrow.

I woke up quite late. It was very dark and I looked out of the window, down at the driveway and I realized it had been the sound of Ray's truck idling home that disturbed me. He'd gotten home rather late, I reflected. He should have been home from work hours ago, I mused, but I'm sure Carla awaiting him gave him more than one reason to hesitate.

Since I was still dressed, I padded downstairs in my house slippers to witness a truly terrifying sight. Ray practically stumbled in through the door. For a moment I thought, could he be drunk? Had Carla finally done the impossible and driven my father to drink? But as I looked at his red-rimmed eyes, I detected that it was not intoxication, but extreme exhaustion that lined his features.

Even when he had lots of customers for his carpentry business, he never worked this hard or this long. Normally if he got that busy he would hire a couple apprentices to cover the shortfall. He appeared haggard and harried.

He barely even noticed I was there, not making eye contact,

Dad made to walk right by me as if I wasn't there, but as he stumbled right into me, he looked up, focusing for one moment saying "Annie is that you?"

I was utterly flabbergasted. What could have happened in the past couple of months? Why was it such a great secret? What was going on? Multiple thoughts converged in my mind, but rushed voiceless to my lips.

After watching Dad practically stumble up the stairs, I noticed that Carla had pulled out some type of pallet and was sleeping on the couch. Why didn't she simply go upstairs and sleep in her bedroom? Then I had another alarming realization. What if Carla couldn't make it up the stairs? Was she sick? Although it was a bit morbid, Carla had often joked that Montesano was the kind of place that people came to die.