Bay City Runaway

Chapter 18

"Ok. I gotta do this now. When does he get off from work?"

Frank Welch, her dad, was an architect for a local firm. Laura checked her watch. "It's 12:45 now. He gets home around 5:15."

"Okay, okay, okay."

Suddenly I was very nervous. My bowels started to loosen. "Um. Will you excuse me?"

"Don't leave. I like you here."

"Yeah, well you're not going to like what's about to happen. I have to go to the bathroom."

She giggled, "Yeah, ok. Take care of business."

I felt that seeing Laura's father was something I needed to do alone, but I was never really a man-to-man kind of guy other than when I bought my truck, and even then, my dad was there the whole time. My mother raised me to be a feminist, but Laura's dad was not a feminist. He was a traditional, Oklahoma man. I wasn't even sure that coming to him after we had already pledged to marry was going to be enough. I worried that he would feel disrespected, but there was nothing to be done about it. If he did not bless this union, we were going to do it, but I could, at the very least, face him and ask for his blessing on something which I had just done. And I felt that this must happen before we told anybody else.

Laura and I lazed around for the rest of the afternoon, blowing off our classes. We shared a box of macaroni and cheese and drank some Little Hug Barrels. My dad had cut me off financially except school expenses, so I was living on whatever I earned at Arby's. We watched The Andy Griffith show and whistled along with the theme song, all the time thinking about what I would say to her dad.

I checked my watch. It was time. "Ok, I'm gonna do this, babe," I said. "Any last-minute advice?"

"Look him in the eye and call him by his first name."

I'd had many interactions with Frank Welch over the years I'd known Laura; most of them polite and genial. I knew he was an architect. I knew that he'd fought in Vietnam. He was strict about curfew, and there were several times when Laura had been grounded for coming home, too late. I had probably been on his bad side since the pool party. The event, however, that was occupying my mind was the night when he kicked me out of his house.

It was the summer before Laura would leave for college for the first time, and I was over at her house late one night. We were watching one of Laura's favorite movies: To Kill a Mockingbird, which we agreed was a great summer movie even though the climax of the film was set on Halloween night. We'd seen it every summer since before our sophomore year in high school, one of our traditions, and so we weren't paying very close attention.

We were lying on the floor, making out. I had my hand under her shorts when I heard a voice say, "Laura, can I speak to you for a moment?"

I quickly pulled my hand away and looked back to see Frank Welch standing in the hall at the edge of the living room. Laura quickly got to her feet and went to see him. He spoke softly in a very low tone, then walked back down the hall.

She came back and said, "My dad would like you to leave."

I had felt like such an asshole in that moment. This was his only child and his daughter, and here I was, violating her in the middle of his living room floor watching a beloved classic.

And now, as I drove to that same house to be in that same living room less than six years later, I could still hear that low voice filled with the protective instincts of a father as clearly as if it had been the night before.

As I approached the house, I could see his white BMW 7 Series in the drive. Panic struck me suddenly, and I nearly stopped the car to turn around, but then I thought of Laura and what she might think if I chickened out.