Read Online The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy by David Handler - Free Book Online Page A

let her back into the Jag so she could guard me as well as get as much wet sand as possible all over the floor.
    “People will want the dirty details, Clethra,” I warned her. “That’s why the publisher is paying you this much money. Are you prepared to give them what they want?”
    “Sure, I don’t care,” she said lightly. “I’m not, like, ashamed to talk about it. I just don’t understand why people keep wanting to make it out to be something sleazy.”
    “We’re a sleazy people. Something to do with our Puritan heritage, near as I can figure.”
    “But Thor and me aren’t sleazy. Our love is timeless and life—”
    “Life-affirming. I know, I know. Do you have anything you want to tell the young women out there who’ll be buying your book?”
    She pondered this a long moment, frowning. “Like what?”
    “Something you’ve learned from this experience, possibly.”
    “Okay, sure,” she said eagerly. “Here it is: Just because your mama says it’s so don’t mean it is. Like, if you love somebody, you love him, okay? I mean, you have control over your own body and your own life. And so what if she says it’s wrong? I mean, Romeo and Juliet’s families thought what they were doing was totally wrong, didn’t they? And it wasn’t. It was totally excellent. Because they were in love. Girls just get so fucked up about what our moms or our friends think about the guy we’re seeing. Y’know, like if he’s too ‘old’ or too ‘different’ or—”
    “Or your stepfather?”
    “Well, yeah,” she agreed readily.
    I tugged at my ear. “So you see you and Thor as a Romeo and Juliet kind of thing?”
    “Well, yeah. A little.” She peered at me searchingly. “I mean, don’t you?”
    “And what about the women’s movement?”
    She made a face like I’d just asked her to eat raw liver. “Mom’s thing? What about it?”
    “Any thoughts?”
    “Not really. Whatever you want to say is fine. Thor said you’re real liberated and shit.”
    “Thor said that?”
    “Uh-huh. Can we go now? He’ll be wondering where I am.”
    “He misses you that much?”
    “Well, sure. Plus he always likes to get him some in the afternoon.” Her eyes flashed at me wickedly. “If you know what I mean.”
    “Yes, I’m afraid I do,” I said, starting up the Jag. Lulu, she just covered her head with her paws and moaned.
    We left for Crescent Moon Pond before dusk, backpacking deep into the woods to get there. We came upon old stone walls erected before the Civil War by the hardscrabble Yankees who had tried to farm this stony soil before fleeing to the gentler pastures west of the Ohio. We climbed over huge trees downed by the great hurricane of ’38 that still lay there, rotting on the forest floor, newer trees growing right up out of them. It was nearly dark when we finally arrived, and so quiet we could hear the fluttering of bat wings overhead. Lulu stayed very close to me.
    Crescent Moon Pond wasn’t much. Maybe a half mile across, with a severe crook in the middle and a few rickety shacks, deserted now that summer was gone. The place has powerful memories for me. One of those shacks belonged to Cam Noyes. I helped him write a book. Maybe you read it. Or about it.
    I made a fire and got dinner started. We’d brought a quart of Merilee’s chili and a loaf of sourdough. I started the chili heating and put water on for coffee. Thor, he was more interested in the pond.
    “Just how cold is that water?” he wondered, rubbing his hands together with anticipation.
    “Plenty cold. Forties, I imagine.”
    “Good!” he exclaimed.
    “Good?”
    He tore off his clothes and went running in, naked, roaring lustily. He dove for the bottom. And he didn’t come back up. By that I mean, like, never. The man was down there so long I was getting ready to go in after him. Until suddenly he shot to the surface way out in the middle, sputtering and gasping. He treaded water there for a moment, catching his breath, and