When Clyde Parker, the wayward son and the rotten-apple of the Parker family-tree, storms his way back into Avery Fields, he sets out a flurry of butterfly effect in Dawn Marshal's life.
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"I didn't realize the whole Buckingham palace was coming down to the west." She gritted her teeth clutching the TV remote between her fingers.
Her mother gave her the look, dusting the shelves that were as shiny as an infant's bottom. "Your father is coming home after two years. He deserves better than to see the dusty shelves and your spotty clothes."
"What part of ',' he-left-you-for-his-whorish-secretary' do you not get, mother dearest?!" she glanced at her mother with her livid glare to see her mother's face scrunched up like pastries, "I just don't want you to hold any false hope."
Her mother smiled, nodding. For as long as she could remember Mrs. Marshal had been hiding her husband's infidelity behind fake smiles.
"He is coming home" her mother parted her lips as if to say, '-and that's all that matters.' But a part of her knew that's not what mattered. What mattered was the fact that her husband had left, that he didn't care enough to stay.
When one of your parents turns their back on you without batting an eyelash it is something you have to live with for the rest of your life. Dawn's worst fear came to be of being abandoned by everyone she cared for, just like her father did.
"This is not his home!" Dawn stamped her foot as the wooden board creaked beneath her steps and stormed out of the kitchen, scuttling up the stairs.
When she heard the doorbell ring, she groaned burying her face in her pillow. Her father was the last person she needed to see. No amount of redemption or penance could undo him walking out on them.
There was no salvation for her broken family.
Then she heard her mother holler out to her, in a voice that said 'Honey, why don't you come down and join us." But she knew it roughly translated to, "YOUNG LADY, IF YOU DON'T COME DOWN THIS INSTANT YOU ARE GROUNDED TILL YOUR EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY!"
Another reluctant groan escaped her lips and as if on autopilot, she rolled out of her fort of pillows and dawdled down the stairs.
"There's my little girl!" Mr. Marshal patted his daughter's head, ruffling her hair, "Look at you so grown up and turning into a graceful young lady."
She hated this. Her father talked to her like she wasn't his daughter but a business deal he could crack through flattery. "Well, considering the last time you saw it was my fifteenth birthday and I had bad acne and braces—"
"Daniel dear, why don't you take a seat?" Mrs. Marshal interrupted, her icy glare meeting her daughter's equally heated gaze.
Dawn's eyes settled on her father. Mr. Marshal was in this ridiculously pink floral patterned half-sleeved shirt and a pair of 'I-am-playing-lover-boy' jeans. Always clad in his business suits and formal pants, she had never seen her father like this, not even on family-vacations. Not dressed like Miranda's sugar-daddy.
