"...and then the rain washed away all the paint, leaving Doggy Dearest trembling, scared of what the farmer would say when he came back home from the live stock show to find his home, the barn, and the storage shed all without their color."
Lilly read a couple of more words, but the comfortable, nearing creepy silence reentered the room. She looked from the page on up to her daddy, who's lap ceased to emit any kind of warmth for the last three hours.
Lilly folded the book on her dad's stiffening leg, which had fallen earlier off the foot stool, and as Lilly returned it to its previous resting position, the bones in his leg seemed to crack, and after a crack there usually was some crumbling. That's what Lilly had read once, anyway.
But Lilly noticed a difference in her daddy's silence, it was an unpleasant one unlike the others. Usually, just after Lilly would pull the syringe from Daddy's arm, he'd put the sunglasses on, the ones that made him look like Daddy's favorite blues guitarist "Broken Home" Lemens, take one last look at his sweet little girl, and be whisked away into his happy place in some dazzling manner that only he could experience. Now, however, the comfortable, nearing creepy silence had come back. The only other time Lilly ever confronted it was when Mommy went on her permanent vacation. That's what Daddy called it anyway.
Daddy's sunglasses looked like they were ready to fall right off. Lilly's fingers crawled up daddy's cool, smooth cheek. She pinched the pair from the grips. Carefully, she pulled the sunglasses back. Momentarily, she stopped when they fell, bumping her legs, rolling out of a splat noise on to the floor.
Lilly wasn't sure when to scream, but eventually she did.
No comments:
Post a Comment