Susan Carter

Father knows best

CHAPTER ONE

Damn, Renee thought to herself, I don't want to do it, hut I have to. It's time the girl learned to go places by herself. I can't have her holding onto me all her life.

Her daughter Idrine, was an ageless looking youth, with long cascading black hair, dancing brown eyes, a pair of red apple cheeks, and a smile that lit up the world. Idrine was a little chubby, but that was baby fat soon to melt away. She had budding breasts smaller than hen's eggs which bounced excitingly under her blouse. Renee knew she would shortly have to buy her daughter a bra.

It wasn't as if Renee was sending Idrine to the far corners of the earth. There wasn't even a need for the girl to take a bus. It was just a walk through the park to her grandmother's. Still, Renee remembered what had happened to herself in that same park once and knew that sending Renee was an act of rebellion against her own fear.

Remembering so, she had given Idrine the riding crop.

"Listen," Renee said, "if a man tries anything, hit him with the riding crop as hard as you can and then run. He should be so surprised you'll be out of the park before he can think a dirty word."

"Oh, mother!" Idrine gave her mother an exasperated look, before admiring the sexy new figure that she'd just started growing. The mirror in the apartment foyer reflected a pert body that Idrine knew carried a strange effect on the boys at school.

Renee watched her daughter leave by peeking through the drapes. She chided herself again for being too protective, but the apprehension continued as Idrine stepped off the curb and headed for the park. It was late spring and the trees were all in full bloom as they had been when she had crossed that park, thirteen years earlier. It had been early evening when she had gone. How well Renee remembered. She had been eighteen-years-old at the time. She had been living on the other side of the park with her mother, Harriet Pembroke.

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