Chapter Eight
Carl
Rollie looked as she was just about to crumple. Her bottom lip quivered and her eyes glistened with wetness. The poor girl had probably been driving herself crazy with all of this, and she was shaking like a leaf. I wanted to comfort her. I desperately wanted to comfort her, but I believed, without question, that she didn’t need to be comforted right now. She needed structure and she needed discipline.
It’s time.
She needs a Daddy.
The thought came to me powerfully, and I realized I was risking everything by entertaining it.
“You could have just come to me, at any time,” I said. “If you had, you would have saved yourself all of this worry and you wouldn’t have been in this situation.”
“I know,” she wailed.
“Call me Sir or call me Daddy, little girl,” I said sternly. This was it. Either she went with it or I’d just ruined any chance I had with her at all.
She breathed in sharply, and though I saw the same fear and overwhelmed emotions she’d been displaying this whole time, I also something else . . . She had hope for the first time.
“Yes, Daddy,” she said. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”
“I’m going to say a few things. I want you to tell me if I’m right. Do you understand?”
She nodded and I snapped, “Use your words and call me Daddy, little girl! You’ve spent far too long not talking when you should!”
She looked as if she’d been slapped, but she instantly straightened and actually gained confidence in her expression. I realized Carolyn was about as natural a little girl as they came. Giving me control was already beginning to strip the weight from her shoulders, weight that had to be overwhelming for her.
“I understand, Daddy,” she said.
“You’ve gotten yourself into trouble a lot, haven’t you?”
“Yes, Daddy,” she said softly.
“You always want to do the right thing, but then something goes wrong and the next thing you know, you’re trying to find a way to keep from drowning.”
She stared at me as if I’d some kind of miraculous insight, although I couldn’t imagine anyone having trouble seeing that.
She said, “Yes, D—” but then the floodgates opened and she crumpled, falling forward into my arms and weeping loudly. I held her and stroked her hair for a few minutes. After she started to quieten down, I puller her back to her feet in front of me.
“That ends, today,” I said. “Do you understand?” I kept my hands on her shoulders.
She swallowed hard and nodded and then, with a voice still tinged with the weeping, said, “Yes, Daddy.”
“Do you know why it ends, today?” I asked.
She shook her head and then said in a tear-filled voice, “You’re . . . you . . . I . . .” She bowed her head. “I’m going to have sex with you, so you don’t fire me,” she said. I could hear the humiliation in her voice.
I reached forward and cupped her face in my hand, forcing her look at me. “No,” I said. “You will never have sex with me, unless you want it, and you will never have sex with me for any reason other than because you want to do it. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Will you let me care for you?”
“What . . . What does that mean?”
“It means I’m going to protect you. If any bill collector calls you, you come to me and we’ll handle it together, until you know how to handle it yourself. It means I’ll teach you how to feel better about yourself, how to see yourself the way everyone else sees you, as a talented and beautiful girl.”
“Oh . . . oh . . .” she said. She started crying again and I gently stroked her face and then lifted her chin up, so she was looking at me again.