CHAPTER 23

It was seven am in the morning and I was outside walking in the freezing cold. Reason why? My dad had woke me up and told me we needed to talk. That was expected, but I didn't expect to have had to leave my toasty warm bed to face the glacial coldness outside so early in the morning. However, one look at my dad's stern face and I knew it would be wise for me to keep my mouth shut and obey him.

Keep shut and obey - even if he was leading me to my death. I really thought he was because he hadn't told me where we were going since we stepped out the

house trudging through the light snow on the lonesome dark streets. Not being funny or anything, but I think I had an inkling of an idea on how Isaac must have felt not having a clue where his father, Abraham was taking him to, not knowing that his intention was to kill him. I prayed that God would send me an angel to save me too.

My brain couldn't help but to remind me that an angel in another form had saved

me the night before. What my brain couldn't do though, was to come up with a logical explanation as to why Angelo had covered for me when a minute before my dad had made an appearance he looked incredibly pissed at me.

I wanted to slap him for avoiding me for the past week and then I wanted to kiss him out of gratitude and then slap him again, just for extra measure.

Exhaling loudly from frustration, my cold breath made a small, puffy cloud before dissolving into thin air. My inner-child thought it'd be fun to start releasing air so I could create more clouds, because they looked so cool. They would have been even cooler if they were big enough to drift me away to a far, far away land where 'Once upon a time' and 'and they lived happy after' existed.

I stopped when I heard low chuckles from my dad. "Aren't you a little too old for that?"

"Noooo...." I answered defensively not realising how caught up I was in my little game.

Daring a look at my him, he appeared relaxed, well more relaxed than a couple hours ago, which was progress as I had never seen my dad look so upset and angry with me and with me being a daddy's girl, that had broke my heart.

We finally stood in front of a yellow-gate entrance that led to the park. I had lived around the area for seven years and I had never set eyes on the park so I was a little surprised that my dad who had only been out for two weeks had already familiarised himself with the neighbourhood. Then again, I shouldn't have been surprised since my daily route didn't involve me going past the park.

I tried to quench the excitement building within me as I took sight of the red swings, coated with fresh white snow, but it was too much for me to handle and without hesitation I bolted towards it.

"Esther, be careful or you're gonna...fall."

"Ow, my butt hurts daddy."

In my haste to get to the swings I had managed to forget how easy it was to slip on snow without good grips on shoes, which I didn't have. And that was the reason why I sat painfully on the slushy snow rubbing my sore bum, waiting for my dad to help me up.

"I told you to be careful, look at you now," chided my dad as he jogged over to me. "Hold my hand."

Grabbing my dad's outstretched hand I was able to hoist myself up whilst my other hand continued rubbing off the pain in my backside. I wrapped my hand around my dad's neck as he led us both safely to the swings. I sat down on one of the two swing seats and he sat on the other, neither of us caring that it was lathered in snow and that when we got up it would most certainly leave a wet patch on our trousers.

As I clasped my hands around the silver chains and swayed my legs back and forth

slowly, I remembered times when I was little and my dad would take me to the park, I'd scrape my knee after falling off the monkey bars or do something to hurt myself and my dad would always be right there to pick me up and make it all better. Those days were simpler.

"I know the condom belongs to you."

These days were complicated.

I tightened my grip on the steel chains, feeling my heart do the same as I tried to come up with the best explanation.

Strangely for some reason, I had thought that my dad would actually believe Angelo, but I should have known better than that, my dad dug all the way down for the truth.

"Daddy, I can exp-"

"No need to, Esther."

My head shot up to the side, staring at my dad, surprise written all over my face at his response.

"I trust you."

"Y-you trust me?" I repeated still shocked that my dad hadn't whipped out an axe ready to attack me.

"Yes, I trust you. I trust that your mother and I, with more credit going to your mother, for obvious reasons, have instilled values to help you make the right choices in life...whatever they are. And I'll continue to pray that God will continue to guide you to make the best decisions for yourself. All I want from you Esther is that you trust me back."

"I do trust you."

"I mean like the trust you had when you were six and you came to me when I took you to that show at the circus and the performers started taking snakes out of the baskets. You got scared and you ran out of your chair and ran straight to me."

"Oh my gosh dad please don't remind me of that. That was traumatic," I said trying to erase that memory, the memory that instigated my everlasting fear of snakes.

My dad only laughed back. "Remember your boyfriend from kindergarten...what was his name again, John? Jordan?"

"Yeah, Jordan," I giggled at the memory, "and if I remember correctly you got really angry and you made me point him out so you could report him to my teacher that he was sexually harassing me."

"But he was," my dad retorted, no doubt feeling justified for the lengths he'd gone to 'protect' me.

I had been about five and after coming home from school, I had giddily gone up to my dad, just bursting to give him the good news of my new found romance and of how Jordan had kissed me on the cheek. In my innocent five year old mind, I just could not understand why my dad got so furious over my spectacular news. Luckily, when my my dad came to pick me up from school, my mother had come along and she'd made him see sense that there was no need to report my 'boyfriend' to my teacher. Unfortunately the next day, my dad ordered me to break up with Jordan. And that was the first and last relationship I had had.

"We were five, daddy!"

"Whatever. Point is I want you to trust me like you did back then. I want you to

always feel comfortable to speak to your dad, whatever the situation."

"Okay daddy," I lied.

I had learnt from my mistake and I wasn't going to let history repeat itself.

"You're lying."

Annoyed at his lie-detector skills, I asked, "How come you always know when I'm lying?"

"Father's instinct."

Scrunching my nose, confused, I said, "It's mother's instinct, there's no such thing as father's instinct."

"Now there is, because your dad is just that awesome," he said before sighing in a way I knew he was going to precede what he just said with something serious. "When I saw it, that's when it really hit me that you're eighteen and not ten anymore. I am sorry for yelling at you, it's just that I got angry at myself, as I realised how much time I've missed with you, that I'm not going to get back. I see now that it's time for me to accept the past and move on with the time I got with you now, but I already feel like you're moving too fast and you're ready to

let go of your dad. I'm not ready to let you go, Esther."

"Daddy, I'm right here," I said before remembering something I had meant to ask

him for awhile. "Why did you not tell me in your last letter that you were coming out?"

"There was a fifty percent chance that the judge would grant my release and I did not want to get your hopes up in case they did not. Thank God they did."

Having no need for extra questions, a comfortable silence spread between my dad and I as we silently watched the morning sky begin to gracefully lighten up with

its different tones of orange, purple and blue.

"Happy New Year, Esther."

"Happy New Year, daddy."

It only occurred to me then, that it was the first day of the new year but it didn't really feel like it. Shortly after midnight we had thankfully left the Henriquez's New Years Party as I was in no mood to party after the night I'd had. Also, despite Angelo's heroic efforts towards me, he continued to avoid me but for the two milliseconds that he did glance at me he still looked pissed and that was not the attention I had hoped to garner from him. What a waste of a two hundred dollar dress.

Naturally, I was curious to find out what he and and my dad had discussed so I

casually asked my dad trying not to seem eager or nosey, although I think I failed on both parts. I even referred to Angelo as 'Mr.Henriquez', so as not to raise suspicions and an interrogation of my 'relationship' with him.

Laughing to himself quietly, I watched as the first few snowdrops landed on my dad's nose. "You can call him by his first name, you know."

"I know, but I prefer not to."

"So what did you two talk about?" I pressed again.

"Men stuff."

Men stuff? That had me even more curious.

"Like what, 'men stuff'?"

"Grown up, men stuff,"he laughed, adding, "he's a funny guy."

My dad saying he was funny only meant one thing - Buttbag had busted out some of his perverted sexual jokes.

I didn't question my dad any further as I didn't want to be corrupted with the crude details of their conversation. A few moments passed and the snowfall was getting heavier and heavier.

"Daddy, it's cold, I wanna go home," I said whining like a two year old child, feeling the numbing cold on my butt.

I was shivering and in risk of getting pneumonia I got off the swing ready to head home. Before I heard his reply, I was walking ahead in a brisk pace desperate to be back in the snugness of my bed.

"Esther, stop walking so fast or you're going to slip...again."

Of course, me being me, I slipped...again.