Speak of the devil: Prue yanks open the front door before I can reach out for the knob. She glares at us in her ruffled nightgown, one hand on the door, the other on her hip. Her foot taps impatiently as she stares Luke down.
“Young man, you had better hightail it home now. It is extremely late and some of us need to work for a living. Not all of us go ‘round, snappin’ pictures and callin’ it a profession. Some of us have to actually get up at the crack of dawn to start the bread risin.’” This is a complete and utter fabrication, seeing as how Prue doesn’t serve breakfast and therefore has no need to start her bread dough rising anywhere near the crack of dawn, but I’m certainly not going to point this out. She looks like a disgruntled mama bear in pigtails.
“And thank goodness you do!” Luke smiles from ear to ear. “I’d be skin and bones if it weren’t for you, Prue. Now when you going to give up this hard working lifestyle and come and marry me and cook for one?”
Prue smacks him smartly, but the corners of her mouth are quivering in an attempt not to smile. I stare closer at her; is she blushing? Prue, blushing? What a day.
As I open my mouth to wish Luke a pleasant evening, the headlights of a car pulling up practically to my front steps (fabulous, I think, there go my pansies) almost blind me. The engine of the intruding vehicle idles while I hear the sound of one, than a second, door being opened and slammed shut. I can see the illuminated shapes of what appear to be two men, seemingly arm in arm, coming towards us, but I cannot make out who they are.
“What in the world?” I murmur.
“It’s the police,” Luke answers, and then under his breath, “It looks like your father got himself a ride home.”
********************
I almost find myself wishing that my date (if that’s what Luke is) could be exceedingly less chivalrous and just leave me to my state of mortification. Mortified is the only emotion you can feel when your own father, drunk of course, is escorted home by a cranky policeman. You don’t really need company to watch you process your mortification and go through the final stages of embarrassment, excuses, faked casual laughter, and forced inane chatter. And that is what I am putting Luke through at the moment, quite possibly all at once.
“Well, the police here certainly do take their streets seriously, don’t they?” I chatter on, forcing my voice to sound light, as we lower my father’s inebriated self to the couch. He is conscience, but barely so, he stinks to high heaven, and he is humming a song under his breath. The cop had threatened us nicely and made sure we heard – several times – that he won’t show such kindness and unparalleled generosity on his part if there was ever to be a next time he discovered Noah Gray drunk in public. I assured him – several times – there wouldn’t be a next time.
“Here you are, sir,” Luke props up my father’s head on the only throw pillow we have; a round chenille one that I bought at the same yard sale I found my favorite monogrammed washcloth.
As a thank you, Dad hiccups.
I’d like to give him a good smack and realize that since I don’t have a mother to turn into the way daughters the world over always realize they do, I am instead turning into Prue. Such a lovely thought to cap off my utterly lovely evening.
I look at Luke and wish desperately that he would leave. It is too much to have him here, feeling sorry for me as he must, and probably wondering frantically how he will ever get rid of me now. Strange, odd Sonnet Gray, with her pesky time traveling habit, her dead mother, her ghost of a sister, and now her thoroughly pickled father. What must he think of me? I’m more exhausted and drained than I thought because as I steal a glance at Luke he is looking at me in a way that does not look like pity. It is a soft glance, a warming of his eyes really, a flash of a smile, and it almost feels as though my very bones are turning to liquid. I shake off the notion and in order to bring myself back