took a bite, and hummed.
Slany smiled, turned her back on the microwave, and glanced out her kitchen window, watching as her father pulled up at the curb several yards away, then made his way up her driveway. He was just fifty-three, but his jaunty step had long deserted him, in its wake the slightly stooped frame of a much older man whose spirit had long died.
She cleared her throat. "We've got company."
Peyton followed Slany's glance out the window and grinned. "Like you said, you've got more than enough for two."
"You don't mind?"
"Your pops? You know me and Mr. Breeze are ace boon coons."
Slany smiled, loved her friend's earthiness and patience. There were times she hadn't had as much, and not because her father had been particularly meddling or overprotective during her childhood—rather, he hadn't been.
When her mother was killed in a car accident almost twenty years ago, her father the same age then as Slany was now, Reginald Breeze had taken a six-month leave of absence from his and his wife's successful realty business, taking advantage of the generous premium Alma Breeze's death had afforded. He donated his car to charity and took to getting around everywhere by foot or bike, when he did bother to leave the mausoleum he had let his house become.
More crucial to the Breeze children than their father's physical retreat from the world was his emotional retreat from them.
17
Gracie C. McKeever
Barely thirteen and a carefree tomboy to the bone, Slany had to grow up fast and hard, taking up the substantial slack her father's withdrawal had created to be there for her just-out-of-training-pants little brother and sister, Kieran and Megan. Pretty much raised three children, not just two.
Slany had been luckier than her sibs, enjoying a relatively blissful decade-plus in a two-parent, loving household before the downfall. By the time Kieran and Megan had reached her age, their father was a ghost of his former dynamic self, no longer the formidable man Slany had reached her early teens looking up to.
Slany shook her head at her train of thoughts.
She couldn't change what had happened to her mother, or the unfortunate aftermath of her father's emotional collapse. She was just surprised that after so many years of surviving and thriving in a mixed marriage, during a time when such couplings hadn't been particularly in vogue or acceptable, even in New York, her father had finally succumbed to pressure.
Perhaps, like her, he had just been plain tired. Tired of being alone and putting up a sturdy front for the sake of those he loved.
Slany took a deep bracing breath, glued on a bright smile, and prepared for another session of being the strong and dependable daughter as she went to the back door to let her father in.
18
Terms of Surrender
Chapter 3
The dog would be a problem when the time came to take her, and that was a shame.
He liked dogs, liked animals a hundred times more than he liked people. Animals were honest, real and unveiled, their only motivations driven by the most basic instincts—procreation, survival, self-defense, and preservation.
There was no avarice or meanness in animals, no desire to humiliate, no need to belittle another in order to inflate one's own worth. Teasing and bullying did not exist in the animal kingdom the way these pastimes existed in the human species. Therefore, no need for revenge.
When a lioness chased down and ripped open the throat of a deer or gazelle, it wasn't for sport, or out of spite and revenge, but for the simple need to feed herself and her cubs.
Animals did not put on airs to impress, would not go under the knife to look younger, or inject themselves with Botox to smooth out wrinkles. Animals were attracted by pheromones, motivated by their need to reproduce and spread their seed, not by pleasure as much as necessity, not by how many orgasms their mate could evoke as much as that mate's ability to produce healthy offspring and continue the species.
He
Slany smiled, turned her back on the microwave, and glanced out her kitchen window, watching as her father pulled up at the curb several yards away, then made his way up her driveway. He was just fifty-three, but his jaunty step had long deserted him, in its wake the slightly stooped frame of a much older man whose spirit had long died.
She cleared her throat. "We've got company."
Peyton followed Slany's glance out the window and grinned. "Like you said, you've got more than enough for two."
"You don't mind?"
"Your pops? You know me and Mr. Breeze are ace boon coons."
Slany smiled, loved her friend's earthiness and patience. There were times she hadn't had as much, and not because her father had been particularly meddling or overprotective during her childhood—rather, he hadn't been.
When her mother was killed in a car accident almost twenty years ago, her father the same age then as Slany was now, Reginald Breeze had taken a six-month leave of absence from his and his wife's successful realty business, taking advantage of the generous premium Alma Breeze's death had afforded. He donated his car to charity and took to getting around everywhere by foot or bike, when he did bother to leave the mausoleum he had let his house become.
More crucial to the Breeze children than their father's physical retreat from the world was his emotional retreat from them.
17
Gracie C. McKeever
Barely thirteen and a carefree tomboy to the bone, Slany had to grow up fast and hard, taking up the substantial slack her father's withdrawal had created to be there for her just-out-of-training-pants little brother and sister, Kieran and Megan. Pretty much raised three children, not just two.
Slany had been luckier than her sibs, enjoying a relatively blissful decade-plus in a two-parent, loving household before the downfall. By the time Kieran and Megan had reached her age, their father was a ghost of his former dynamic self, no longer the formidable man Slany had reached her early teens looking up to.
Slany shook her head at her train of thoughts.
She couldn't change what had happened to her mother, or the unfortunate aftermath of her father's emotional collapse. She was just surprised that after so many years of surviving and thriving in a mixed marriage, during a time when such couplings hadn't been particularly in vogue or acceptable, even in New York, her father had finally succumbed to pressure.
Perhaps, like her, he had just been plain tired. Tired of being alone and putting up a sturdy front for the sake of those he loved.
Slany took a deep bracing breath, glued on a bright smile, and prepared for another session of being the strong and dependable daughter as she went to the back door to let her father in.
18
Terms of Surrender
Chapter 3
The dog would be a problem when the time came to take her, and that was a shame.
He liked dogs, liked animals a hundred times more than he liked people. Animals were honest, real and unveiled, their only motivations driven by the most basic instincts—procreation, survival, self-defense, and preservation.
There was no avarice or meanness in animals, no desire to humiliate, no need to belittle another in order to inflate one's own worth. Teasing and bullying did not exist in the animal kingdom the way these pastimes existed in the human species. Therefore, no need for revenge.
When a lioness chased down and ripped open the throat of a deer or gazelle, it wasn't for sport, or out of spite and revenge, but for the simple need to feed herself and her cubs.
Animals did not put on airs to impress, would not go under the knife to look younger, or inject themselves with Botox to smooth out wrinkles. Animals were attracted by pheromones, motivated by their need to reproduce and spread their seed, not by pleasure as much as necessity, not by how many orgasms their mate could evoke as much as that mate's ability to produce healthy offspring and continue the species.
He
Similar Books
The Islanders
Katherine Applegate
South
Ernest Shackleton
A Hoe Lot of Trouble
Heather Webber
Paradise Lost (Modern Library Classics)
John Milton, William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, Stephen M. Fallon
Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II
Marc Weidenbaum
Supernatural
Colin Wilson
Mazie Baby
Julie Frayn
Never Too Late
Patricia Watters
Links
Nuruddin Farah
Bringing Adam Home
Les Standiford