My husband had been extremely wealthy, once upon a time. But that… changed, of course. When he died. I mean… he obviously couldn’t be rich if he was dead. But he left behind his fortune… his wife, me, who didn’t know what to do with herself, and her environmentalist, activist daughter. He was Catholic… just as I was Jewish.
I suppose I could count myself lucky in that I was good looking even while ascending beyond age 30. No signs of wrinkles or sags approaching my body yet.
…My daughter was fourteen. My family actually, despite all the stereotypes people may think of, disowned my parents universally for marrying me off at such a young age. It simply wasn’t done in the modern era… even if it WAS perfectly legal… I may have resented it a little. I didn’t think of it much. Of course, even while nearly twice my age at marriage, I found myself attracted to him.
Standing at nearly six and a half feet tall… he was… to say the least, huge, compared to my five foot even. His facial features weren’t exactly Henry Cavill, but they were striking… and he even kept himself fit, frequently visiting the gym while maintaining a busy schedule. Perhaps it was there that he caught the infection that killed him.
I suppose I became dependent on him… it’s been difficult in the couple of years since he passed.
My one and only daughter bounded down the stairs, causing the pictures to shake a little. At age fourteen, she had just reached five foot six herself, clearly taking after her father far more than me. Honestly, had she wanted to, Cynthia could have been a real handful. But she was an extremely good girl, really. Despite her striking good looks, she was kind of shy at school. I really didn’t want her to take after me in that way.
“Where are you going?” I asked as she opened the door. “It’s nearly eight o’ clock. I want you to get out more… but… I do want you to stay safe!”
“I don’t have a license yet, and we’re in the middle of nowhere upstate, so it’s not like I can go too far…” Cynthia remarked, oddly shifty. “I was just going to meet some friends for a bit.”
“Well…”
“I’ll be out late,” she smiled. “But you know that I won’t get into trouble…” she sported a moderate chest, the result of puberty assailing her. But it wasn’t visible with the loose T-shirt she wore. My daughter really didn’t pay much attention to her clothing, and, despite her looks, she only had a small circle of friends. Perhaps that’s why I really wasn’t too concerned.
“Ok… I’ll see you later.” And just like that, she turned and walked out the room. As shy as she was, Cynthia still had far more presence than I did. And she normally never left like that… perhaps it was to some sort of environmentalist meeting. She considered herself to be a bit of an activist. Or to a friend’s house. But normally she would tell me that ahead of time…
But I never thought that she could possibly be up to anything that I should be concerned about.
She reached down awkwardly to hug me. With a foot in-between us, I would have been pressed into her chest. As soon as her arms encircled me, I found myself standing awkwardly on my tip-toes as she lifted me up. My face found itself pressed into her long brunette hair, my eyes staring into her still, young, girlish face. There was a bit of a mischievous look about her… something that I didn’t truly recognize in her.
But I didn’t think about her recent growth spurt. For… just a month ago, she had been five foot six. And… she looked magnified, not really curvier or more mature… but just bigger. I could have noticed that… but I was blind.
“I promise I’ll be back soon.” She responded, truly and sincerely. I just sat in her embrace meekly. If she said she’d be fine, I believed it. Fifteen or not.
She turned, and begun to walk out the door. I waved goodbye, and went back to sleep myself… but it was that day that I felt… that our relationship had begun to become a little unusual. The date that she begun to feel like the parent.