Chapter 30: Being Worlds Apart

The Living Room, 144 W. Guthrie Road, The Quinn Residence, W. Main Highway, Temperance, South Dakota....

Jarrett Quinn sat in his usual chair as he impatiently awaited the arrival of his only daughter while staring at the program in black and white on his television set. He had still been wearing the same pair of blue boxer shorts and the dirty white men's tank top he'd been in when Layla first walked out the door to work on her school project with her little friends. True to form, Layla ventured through the front door and seemed to be quite exhausted after taking two buses to get home before sundown. She had nothing much to say to her father, whom had appeared to be lingering just to see her home before he decided to head out for the night and possibly for the rest of the weekend. The project had taken longer than she thought due to their earlier food coma and having to stop to clean up, but they managed to get it done in time for her to catch her buses.

Jarrett seemed to be in his own world for a moment or two before switching off the television and venturing toward the kitchen where he opted to search for another can of beer. When he didn't find one, he turned his attention toward looking in on his daughter whom had been quite exhausted and passed out on her bed. Jarrett shook his head and closed her bedroom door behind him as he ventured toward his own bedroom, which he only frequented when he had company of sorts or bothered to get dressed to go out. He had appeared to have already made up his mind as he stepped into his bedroom and closed the door behind him.

Brutus' ears perked when he heard the man shuffling about in the older man's room as he flopped back down in his spot on the floor beside his master's arm chair. Layla had been so far asleep that she didn't even hear it nor her father's movement across the house as he got dressed.

Layla had been so worn out that she hardly even knew she was dreaming when it was all said and done. Her father slipped out as he often did without a word and closed the house up behind him leaving Brutus to stand guard as it were. The hours passed and Layla found herself awakening in the middle of the night for a unavoidable need to relieve her aching bladder. She had not been too fond of the coldness nor the dark as she moved about the house and toward the nearby bathroom.

It didn't' take her long to figure out that her father had been long gone, she dreaded to think about what he'd been up to while he was away, but the weekend was what it always was ever since she'd gotten old enough to understand him and take care of the house herself. For much of her upbringing, her father was more or less a stranger to her given his tendency to wander after his wife had left him and later been found dead following her affair with various strange men.

Layla sighed as she moved across the bathroom floor noting the coldness of the tile and how she dreaded having to make the trekk all the way across it again. Thinking back to before her mother had run off, her father was quite a warm and responsible person. He doted on her night and day and never once had she seen him do anything unsavory in all her life. He was always the helpful sort and seemed to have a good deal of plans for the future until his wife had left him.

Annoyed at the memories, Layla tried not to think of the blonde woman whom had cooked her meals, clothed, and changed her before her eventual transformation into a thrill seeking selfish woman whom had abandoned her family for the great outdoors. While she could sympathize with wanting to leave Temperance, she couldn't abide by her mother outright abandoning them for thrill seeking.

Layla rolled her eyes as she finished up and made her way over toward the sink after flushing. The sound had been louder than expected given the relative quiet in the house and surrounding woods. She took one last look at herself in the mirror as she headed back toward bed not at all looking forward to working her shift at Earl's Diner after what happened via the junkie that attacked her.

Over the course of a few days it seemed the shock of what happened had worn off and she was feeling the overwhelming effects of PTSD in the wake of having a knife put to her throat via the crazed drug addict and the thought of returning to the scene of the crime after endless hours of nightmares replaying the event over and over again had been daunting to say the least. Most nights she attempted to focus her weary mind on the other events that took place that night, which included Brick stepping in to save her from possible certain death and the subsequent kiss that her friends had been so kind in teasing her about.

The brutish, older man seemed to be the only bright aspect of her tormented memories of that event and even more so when she'd find herself alone in her bedroom at night far from much of civilized society and with old Brutus for company.

Layla made it back to her bed flopping onto the mattress as she caught a glimpse of the on coming sunrise. She began to drift off again after a bit of lingering amid the awakened as the cool of the coming morning air filled her bedroom and her weary mind seemed to be lost once more in the looped dreams of the odd incident that had seemingly forever changed her life only instead of focusing on the drug addicted attacker, she'd once more been content to spend her slumber with Brick Kenneally who's grey eyes seemed to captivate her in a way that she had never admitted to even to herself in the early hours of the day.

It wasn't long before even her concerns about her father had faded and she had given herself over to the dreams that seemed to be more pleasant to her than all the moment she'd experienced during her waking hours.