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prettier, me or your mother?"

"That's a really stupid question."

"Oh, is that so? Why is it stupid? Because you

can't appreciate any other woman? Is that the reason?" "No!" I screamed at her. "1 can't!"

She looked shocked. I hadn't meant to say that

like that and she could never understand what it was I

was saying anyway. How could she understand why I

couldn't appreciate any other woman the way she

expected I should?

"You are sick," she said, wagging her head and stepping back. "I'm getting out of here soon, getting away from all of you. You'll see. You'll all see and you can have Daddy to yourselves." She turned and

marched back to the house.

Good riddance. I thought. The sooner you

leave, the better it will be. I had no doubt she would

leave and soon, but not before she was to wreak some

more havoc on what her father had hoped would be a

happy home, a new start.

It came first with the news that she had

managed to get failing grades in every subject in

which she had enrolled at the community college. My

assistance in math hadn't helped her with the class

because she didn't understand or try to understand any

of the homework I had done. Her teacher knew pretty

quickly that she was having someone else do the

work, and like every other time she was exposed as a

liar or a deceiver, she simply shrugged it off or made

it look and sound like nothing of any importance. Dave got the news first from one of her

teachers at the college who came to his pharmacy for

medication, and then he learned about her failures

from the official college mailing that he read. His

confrontation with Betsy over it came to a head in a