Carl Tatem
Daughter_s little friend

CHAPTER ONE

Alice Murphy turned on the bed, her long, satiny blonde hair cascading over the pillow, forming a soft cushion for her head that lay heavily back against it. A thin sheet covered her body from the warm Florida summer breeze that blew gently in from the open window.

She had the body of a lush Venus, its provocative curves traced in detail through the gossamer, clinging sheet. It barely hid the high-set, round, widely spaced breast whose rose-tipped nipples clearly showed through the thin fabric. The sheet tapered down over a slender, girlish waist to round, luscious hips, a flat, smooth stomach and long, full-swelling thighs; breathtaking curved calves tapered down to thin, well-formed ankles. It was a body that would attract admiring attention from the most discriminating of men – and envy from women.

The honey-blonde hair on the pillow framed a heart-shaped face that would cause any male to turn his head when she passed. Her hazel eyes were set slightly apart, and she had a dainty, almost Doris Day nose, a full, ripe mouth, and a round, dimpled chin, and a soft, slightly tanned ivory complexion. But at the moment, her lovely face was drawn in lines of worry and dejection, and calm sleep escaped her, making her toss fretfully, moaning occasionally in a soft, sighing voice.

Alice was worried because of her daughter, Sandy. It was Friday night – date night for all the girls in Sandy's high school – and her sixteen-year-old child was, like the others, out. That's all it ever seemed she was, Alice mused. Where have you been? Out. What did you do? Nothing… Alice wasn't afraid that Sandy was promiscuous or anything terrible like that; Sandy had been a virgin at the last checkup according to Doctor Webster, and she was a good girl by nature. But Alice was well aware of the traps and snares young people could fall into in this permissive age, and she had the natural fears which mothers, especially widowed mothers raising their children alone, have about the recklessness of innocent youth. And Sandy was dating Tommy Edgars, a boy older and obviously more experienced, and definitely not one to protect a girl, not if he could have his way with her. Tommy had been the basis of many a fight between her and Sandy, for Alice thought the boy was too good looking for his twenty years of age, almost overwhelmingly masculine, like a young Adonis, and there was something about him not trustworthy, though Alice couldn't put her finger on exactly what it was. Sandy, on the other hand, defended the few times he'd taken her out, saying her mother had been watching too many gangster movies on television lately. Alice could only hope and pray that her daughter's infatuation with the handsome youth would die a quick death, and she would get a puppy-love crush on some younger boy closer to her own age and class.

Not that Sandy was a child any longer. Alice had often seen Sandy naked in the shower and dressing in her bedroom next door, as well as in her skin-tight bikini and nearly transparent nylon under-things, and even a casual glance made it obvious that the girl was mature physically. And Alice had looked, in spite of an inner sense of embarrassment at such brazen examination, because she was proud of having produced such a fine offspring, and because it was her only physical, tangible proof of her and her late husband's love for each other. She was drawn with love and tenderness, and yet… there were times when she'd watched Sandy's snub-nosed, freckle-faced innocence and wondered if perhaps she was emerging into maturity a little too fast.

Just that evening, Alice had passed Sandy's open door, and seen her standing in front of the dresser, selecting a clean pair of panties from one of the drawers. Sandy was naked, still radiantly rosy from her shower and buffing with a towel, and Alice had been able to see all of her firm young body in perfect detail. She had paused, smiling wistfully, thinking that she had looked much the same when she was her daughter's tender age. Sandy's slightly darker blonde hair was long and straight, and fanned down over her shoulders and narrow back, framing a face which was much like her mother's, though slightly rounder and with her father's protruding lower lip, which gave her an almost perpetual little-girl pout. Alice could see her conical young breast beating with the rhythm of her heart, solid and upright, not as large but not as developed as her own; her flat belly and cute navel and the gentle sloping to her thighs, where a triangle of softly curling pubic hair covered her vagina; then down, to shapely tapering legs and small ankles. Then Alice had been able to see the thin cuntal valley between her daughter's slightly spread thighs, had watched with a small tingling sensation she wasn't able to understand as she followed with her eyes the still-unbroken vaginal slit with its coral smoothness and the little, limp clitoris nestled coyly in the warm, moist folds of her virginal young flesh.

Isn't there, she'd thought to herself as she had stood by the door, a time when a child is supposed to be a child? To be innocent and foolish, free of the curse of maturity? Has Sandy grown up too fast, especially now, without a father to help guide and counsel her with proper authority? And then she had laughed at herself. The world was simply spinning faster these days, that's all. If a sixteen-year-old girl is eating better now, and getting better education and sports than before, then who was she to hold back her development? Stop worrying…

But Alice couldn't find the energy to even smile now, as she lay in bed waiting for her daughter's return, much less laugh again. She was worrying…

And the young mother was dejected as well. She was a good woman in her own mind, a respectable widow with a child to raise, who had successfully placed sex in the back of her mind since she'd been notified that her husband had died in Vietnam. Stoically, she had faced the eight months from that fateful day when she'd received the black-bordered telegram with only the memories of Robert's wonderful lovemaking, and his delightful ways of causing her the utmost joy, vowing she might remarry as she had remained a virgin until her wedding night with Robert. Again, she tossed fretfully on the bed, kicking the sheet unconsciously until it was most of the way off of her body, the summer warmth not as hot as her own inner fires. She kept asking herself if she should go on like this, denying herself the love of a decent man – if she could continue denying herself this way. When a woman is widowed early in her married life, how much does she owe her child? Can romance live in life at thirty-seven and after?

Though it was dark outside, she was able to see dimly by the ghostly light of a street lamp in front of her modest house. She propped herself up on her elbows, trying to take deep breaths in an effort to will her body quiet and relaxed so she could sleep, and the slight breeze played over her now-exposed flesh. She could see her own full contours stretching down in front of her. She was still beautiful, she had to admit. The rounded peaks of her firm breasts stood up defiantly and she could look through the canyon between them down to the soft golden pubic triangle at the junction of her thighs that proved that she was a natural blonde. She was proud of it – and yet, she thought, it was the reason for all of her insomnia now. She lay back down, still conscious of her nakedness, and she placed her palms under her full breasts and lifted them still higher until they stood out in full bloom. She held their nipples between her thumbs and forefingers, tweaking them gently into erection. It was exciting to remember that Robert had done the same with his strong, warmly loving fingers many times in the past, and the very recollection of her husband's love aroused her. Her hands moved down from her breasts to the smoothness of her stomach, through the soft golden patch of her gently throbbing vaginal mound, and across her well-rounded thighs.

She felt like a kitten, rubbing herself and squirming her body this way, and color flushed in her cheeks, shuddering from the movements of her softly massaging hands. No… no… I mustn't, she warned herself, and with some difficulty, she forced herself to stop the warm stroking. She groaned and turned over on her stomach, pressing the sensitivity of her clitoris tightly into the mattress, attempting to relieve the fire that was beginning to rage there.

But her mind continued to dwell on her husband, recreating his naked body vividly, and she could almost relive the times when he had buried his hardness up in her belly, and their hotly writhing coupling on this very same bed.

Robert Murphy's penis was in view now… Big, and thickly swollen with his lust for her body, hard as iron and jutting from his muscular, Air Force trained body in open, abandoned display of his excitement. Alice quivered, telling herself to stop thinking such lewd, sickly erotic scenes, yet as she lay heavily on her vividly pulsating stomach, holding her breath, she continued to feel a strange series of involuntary sensations churning deep in her belly and loins as the prurient images filtered like a stag movie through her head. Her breasts ached and her tiny nipples grew redder and hardened like little diamond chips as she imagined her husband coming forward, crawling on the bed… her own nakedly trembling thighs spread in welcome acceptance to his enormous cock which seemed to lead his body toward her…

A tender agony of delicious fire swirled through her vagina and womb, in spite of her inner revulsion at the lewdness and clarity of the pictures she was forming in her aroused mind. Her hands, against her will, burrowed down between her body and the bed and groped at the excitedly pulsing curls of her pubic hair. Her legs scissored open, her toes dangling down over either side of the wide bed. She could feel her own moist pussy slit beneath her pubic hair palpitating hotly now against the tips of her fingers which were drawing the narrow, hair-fringed furrow open, exposing the lips of her aching cunt to the warm air. With a groan from her widely open mouth, she slowly, teasingly, sunk one of her middle fingers deep into the thin, vertically moistened opening. She held her breath, relieved for the moment, but it was only a short moment. The fire burned more intensely, demanding more to feed its lewd hunger. She slowly, carefully worked in another finger, drawing her knees under her and then raising up in a kneeling position, with her buttocks high in the night air. The squeak of the bedsprings became more violent as she hand-fucked her fingers hungrily up into the moistness of her vagina and then withdrew them… only to slide them once again in and out in a desperate imitation of her husband Robert's penis as he had once fucked her.

The images in her mind of their nakedly locked bodies drove her on, and she rocked back on her knees against her fingers, three of them now, screwing them deeper into herself. She could see her husband's huge, thickly glistening shaft ramming its way into her clasping cunt, sinking through the soft pubic curls like a greased telephone pole. Her hands became that pole, and her gasps began to match those of hers when she had been grinding her buttocks up beneath his racing body, surging her own sweating white thighs upwards into his loins in her own desperate search for orgasm. She wanted everything she had once had; she wanted to be split again by his rampaging cock; she wanted to be fucked. Oh, God, how she wished Robert was once again with her, pumping his own cum-filled penis into the hot, searing cuntal passage up between her legs. Oh God! Her fingers weren't enough as her thoughts centered on the massive rod, which had fucked her as manfully, as beautifully in days gone past, and she had to have more – but there were only her fingers. In desperation, she reached up behind and down her moon-shaped buttocks with her other hand and searched the smooth wet crevice, then wormed a finger deep into the tiny puckered opening of her anus.

"Oooooh God!" she gasped aloud as a sharp pain lanced through her bucking flesh, then stilled for a moment, only to take up the rhythm of the bedsprings again, her upper body braced against the top of her head digging into the mattress. Her full white tits hung down, their nipples brushing sensuously against the bottom sheet as they swayed heavily and excitedly beneath her slavishly kneeling body. Electric tingles of pleasure shot through her nerves as she pictured herself, legs spread wide, twisting and writhing nakedly under the handsome, muscular body of her husband. Her face colored crimson as she felt her climax approaching – rushing at her with a great roar – and she hung for a moment, teetering on the edge of release, her whole body vibrating.

And then the white hot juices of her vaginal secretions gushed warmly around her rummaging fingers, covering her hand, and running down her smoothly tensed inner thighs and legs to soak the mattress below. She could feel it rivuleting in tiny prickly streams down, and she stayed that way, her whole body quivering helplessly on her hands and knees, for some time, her buttocks still swaying in the air. She couldn't bring herself to withdraw her fingers from her still desperately clenching vagina until the last dying throbs of her explosively delicious orgasm had stilled in her flesh. At last she slithered her fingers wetly from her satiated cunt, and she rolled limply over to her side, the ever-present feeling of guilt crawling over her as it always did after her futile bouts with her conscience. She had to learn to control herself, to stop her self-manipulations… If she had caught Sandy masturbating like this, there'd have been a terrible scene… Was she so starved for sex that she couldn't subdue her carnal desires? Was there something wrong with her?

Thank God, she was alone and nobody knew… She was ashamed of her actions enough as it was. Her spent body curled into a tight, womb-like ball, and lethargy from her release flowed over her, letting sleep glide smoothly through her tortured and confused mind…

Then she heard the front door close, the sound of feet walking across the parquet floor between the entrance hall and the kitchen.

There was a slight pause… And then she heard the unmistakable sound of Sandy. Her daughter was giggling! She heard her distinctly – a tittering, girlish squeal coming through the walls. Sandy was home, and she had brought that boyfriend of hers with her! What was that Tommy Edgars doing to her to make her giggle like that?

Another peel of laughter rippled through the otherwise silent house. Alice sat up in bed stiffly, clutching the sheet to her breasts almost defensively. Whatever he was doing to her daughter out in the kitchen, she was enjoying it – perhaps too much? A tiny shock of concern passed through the lovely mother, making her spine shiver with apprehension. Could Sandy be allowing advances to be made to her? No… that was too silly to imagine. But the thought persisted, and Alice found herself imagining Sandy kissing the youth, as she had kissed Robert long, long ago before they were married. Then she recalled the other things she'd let him do to her, and suddenly she got very worried again.

Alice moved around and sat on the edge of the bed, wondering what she should do, if anything. She didn't want to make a fool of herself if nothing was wrong, and it could be perfectly innocent out there. She listened… there was quiet again, and then she heard a muffled mewling, followed by a long sigh of pleasure.

Without turning on the lamp, she groped her way through the darkness of her bedroom to the door, pressing her ear tightly against it to see if she could hear anything more. There was the unmistakable rustling of clothing and a soft kind of whimpering, but it was impossible to tell exactly from the sounds what was going on. She hesitated again, telling herself that if something were drastically wrong, Sandy would scream for help. She would certainly hear that! Her hand was frozen on the doorknob as she waited silently, unable to make up her mind what to do.

A long, low moan suddenly was discernible from the kitchen. This convinced her, and without further delay, she took her bathrobe from the chair in which she'd folded it hours earlier and slipped it around her still warmly throbbing body, belting it around her waist with its satin cord. Yes, she would just take one quick look quietly so as not to disturb them if everything was all right.

She silently turned the knob and opened the door carefully, stepping out on the carpeted hallway in her bare feet. She padded through the shadows to where she could peer into the kitchen, and then leaned against the wall so she wouldn't be seen.

She could see Sandy, her lush young body vibrant in a pair of tight blue stretch pants and thin, almost gauzelike yellow sweater. Her blonde hair hung down her front, curling around the cup of one protruding breast provocatively. She looks very sensual that was… almost brazen! Her mother realized with a shock. Then Tommy Edgars came into her view. He was tall, wide, and his muscular body was displayed openly in the skin-tight covering of a white Tee shirt. As usual, he wore jeans and loafers, the jeans shrunk to accent his lithe, almost obscenely well-developed thighs and legs. His crotch was full and the faded blue material of his pants cupped it so tightly that Sandy's wide-eyed mother could actually follow the outline of his penis against the bulge of his testicles!

Before she could react further, her shocked ears heard Sandy sigh: "Kiss me, Tommy. Ohhhh, kiss me like that again…"

Hungrily, the boy gathered the young teenager into his strong arms and embraced her. Sandy had her back to her mother at that moment, her heaving breasts buried in her young boyfriend's massive chest, their arms entwining. They kissed and nuzzled one another, squirming their eager young bodies together passionately, and Alice choked back a moan of shock, her eyes transfixed on the scene in front of her, her hands sweating uncontrollably.

She could see the sensuously quivering flesh of her daughter's smooth, taut buttocks, her shapely thighs as she arched her loins into the boy named Tommy's groin, her upper legs pressing and grinding against him seductively.

A low moan came from the girl, as Tommy mashed his lips heavily down on her mouth, both of them oblivious to the fact that her mother was watching horrified but a few feet away, seeing the madly working cheeks of their faces as they sucked and rolled their tongues freely in one another's open mouths. Then Tommy reached one hand down and softly grasped one of Sandy's excitedly throbbing buttocks, cupping it lovingly, running his fingers tantalizingly over the barely covered flesh.

"No… No, don't do that, Tommy," she heard Sandy gasp.

"Why not, baby? You know you love it."

"I… I told you before, Tommy, I'm not that kind of girl," she whimpered, shivering uncontrollably, gasping for breath.

"All girls are that kind of girl," he teased. The boy began to move his other free hand around to the front now, gently pushing up the hem of her sweater in an obvious attempt to cup one firm, throbbing young breast in a sensual, delight-producing squeeze. "All girls are," he whispered wetly into her mouth. "Unless they're in diapers. And baby, from what I've been feeling of you, you're not in diapers any longer…"

"Darling," the beautiful girl managed to hiss. "No, you promised not to do this…"

"I've got to have you, Sandy," he panted in return. "God, you drive me crazy, you know you do. Holding out all the time until I could climb the walls. Baby… I've got to fuck you!"

Fuck! The obscene word burned through Alice Murphy's tormented mind as she stared, frozen to the spot. He wanted to… to fuck her daughter! But his actions, and the lewdness of his aroused phrases didn't seem to repulse the abjectly watching older woman; rather, the sexual display was having the opposite effect on her body. She could feel a tingling warmth deep in her belly, and the soft folds of flesh around her vaginal lips began to secrete moisture again…

"No, Tommy… And I mean it if you don't!" Sandy replied frantically. "M-mother might come out and catch us!"

"To hell with your damned Puritan mother," he growled, losing still more of his control, "You told me yourself that you were sick of the way she hounded you all the time about us, treating you like some 'too good little china doll'."

"She does…" Sandy moaned, and the thought of how her mother protected her against her will seemed to soften her resolve, and she leaned heavily against the youth, allowing his groping hands free play across her tender buttocks and breasts. Alice watched, her heart pounding with anguish. Was her own daughter really thinking things like that? How could she, when it was only for her own good…

"Then c'mon, baby, and let's make tonight the night," Tommy Edgars whispered passionately. "Let's go to that big wide couch in the living room and have a peek at that hot little cunt of yours. It's time, baby… and I can't wait any longer, I swear to God I can't!"

Alice knew that the time was now – that she had to find the strength to rush in and tear them apart. She was unable to control her own rising emotions any longer. Her own nipples beneath her robe were hard once again, and she could feel tiny involuntary sensations of pleasure coursing through her breasts and loins. She was aroused by the sight of her daughter and her boyfriend dry-fucking vertically on the kitchen floor, aroused impossibly… and the realization that if she continued to watch and Tommy did win out over Sandy's violent protests, she would surely and inevitably be a witness of the lewd seduction of her only child, too excited to halt them. It was a shaming and disgraceful realization, and it made her quiver to the very marrow of her bones. She took a deep breath, but then…

"No! Please, Tommy, no!" Sandy abruptly cried. "I won't let you, and it doesn't matter what my mother thinks. It's what I want!" She struggled a moment with his hands, pulling one with hesitant force from beneath the top of her thin sweater, and wriggling from the grasp of the other. "I'd hate myself later! I know I would!"

Tommy resisted, and then angrily he pushed the girl away from him. "Jesus Christ, Sandy! You're nothing but a prick-teaser!"

Sandy, ashamed at how close she'd come in her own home, and humiliated by his stinging words, found tears welling in her eyes. "I have to be sure, Tommy, can't you understand? I'm not one of your other round-heeled girlfriends; I care who I give my virginity to. I need time… and, and I need to make certain it's love."

The handsome youth groaned, gritting his teeth from his own wildly aroused desires. He'd blown his chances for tonight, he could see that. He'd been too fast for her, too insistent, just as he'd been before with her, and it was driving him crazy. The more she held out on him, the more he wanted this sweet little cherry naked and trembling next to him, and he vowed that he would get her, and when he did, he'd turn her every way but inside out. In a false display of chagrin and defeat, he sighed, clenching his hands into fists at his sides.

"Yeah, you're right, Sandy," he muttered. "I just get carried away, touching you, that's all."

"I want you to touch me, Tommy, but…" She bit her lips, stifling the urge to confess what his fingers and lips did to her, afraid that if she did, he might try again. She wasn't sure that if he did, she'd be able to stop him… or herself. "You… better say goodnight, Tommy. It's kind of late."

"Yeah, sure."

She smiled at him, her nerves still keyed to a fine edge from her lack of satisfaction, but she was trying not to show him just how much he had really affected her. She pulled him to her and he kissed her. They held each other for a long moment, and then she followed him to the front door.

Her mother slipped silently back to her room and into bed, still trembling violently from what she had seen and heard. She tossed and turned knowing that it would be better to face Sandy in the morning after both their ragged nerves were soothed by sleep, and they could talk a little more rationally. Talk they must, she could see that clearly… but would it do any good? Wasn't it painfully evident that her daughter resented her? Alice suddenly realized that she didn't understand Sandy as she had thought she had, and that there was a communication gap between them that perhaps was too wide to ever be able to bridge.

She sobbed to herself, hearing the front door close and her daughter slowly walk to her bedroom. Tommy Edgars was gone, at least for tonight, and the house settled into black silence once again. But the muscular, handsome boy wasn't gone from the tortured mother's thoughts, and even after she finally drifted into an uneasy slumber, she dreamed of him. His almost animalistic body so graceful and masculine beneath his clothing… the way he had crushed Sandy to him and had almost taken her like a savage in some prehistoric jungle… Alice Murphy whimpered in her sleep, starting to perspire wetly all over her lovely naked body…

Alice awoke shortly past eight the following morning. The brilliant Florida sun streamed in through the large open window, and the same breeze of the night before rustled the leaves of a rose bush sprouting beneath it. She rubbed the thick cotton of sleep from her eyes, reluctantly facing the new day, remembering as her mind focused clearly the events of the previous night. Her own wanton exhibition while envisioning her dead husband making love to her… the lewd and obscene sight of Sandy and that horrid boy, Tommy Edgars, in the kitchen… she shuddered, and quickly slipped out of bed, padding across to the sliding doors of her closet. Naked before the rack of clothes, she remembered again with scarlet shame her searching hand moving up into the velvet softness of her pubic triangle, and the intense delight of her fingers rubbing the swelling pink flesh of her vaginal lips, sliding in and out frenziedly as she brought herself to almost screaming orgasm. Then, shaking her head and shoulders as if struck by a sudden chill, she dressed quickly in a simple beige sheath and left the room to enter the kitchen.

Sandy wasn't up yet; she liked to sleep late on Saturdays, and after last night, Alice could certainly understand why. The normally vivacious widow made herself some coffee and toasted a couple of slices of whole-wheat diet bread, then sat at the dinette and moodily contemplated her life, her only company the throaty whirring of the refrigerator beside her.

After witnessing the near lovemaking between her daughter and Tommy, she knew that she was going to have to act. But how? she asked herself disconsolately. How could she get through the resentment and defensiveness Sandy had admitted was between them? She wasn't even sure she could find the reserves to treat the subject with rational calmness herself, much less instill it in her child.

Alice was pondering these questions when Sandy entered the kitchen, tousle-headed, yawning, but dressed. She wore a tangerine-colored miniskirt, pleated and high-riding like the kind worn when playing tennis, which accentuated the tanned leanness of her long, firm legs, and a thin jersey that her bra-encumbered breasts molded curvaceously. She went over to her mother and gave Alice a slight, automatic peck of a kiss on her cheek.

"Morning, Mom. Any coffee?"

"In the percolator," Alice replied dully. "I made it fresh."

Sandy paused, sensing the cool, vague distance behind her mother's tone, and she pursed her lips, a frown replacing the last of the sleepiness in her sparkling eyes. "Gee, is something the matter?" she asked with concern. "You look awfully pale this morning. Are you feeling sick or something?"

"No," Alice said. She blinked a couple of times, then looked up into her daughter's face. "No, I'm all right."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Well, if you say so." The lovely young teenager shrugged, and poured herself a cup of steaming coffee from the chrome percolator on the drain board. She brought it to the table and sat down, and for a long moment it was utterly still in the kitchen, though tension crackled in the air. It made her uneasy, and finally she burst out: "There is something wrong, Mother. Don't try and kid me. Tell me, will you?"

Alice looked across at her daughter and slowly ran the tip of her tongue around her lips to moisten them, steeling herself for what she had to say. She said, "Sandy… last night…"

"Yes?" Sandy interrupted sharply. Oh God, is she going to bitch at me first thing this morning? "Is it that I came in so late? I couldn't help it, Mom. You know we all went out for something to eat after the dance; I told you we would before I left!"

"No… It's not about when you came in."

"Well then, what?"

The concerned mother took a deep breath and blurted out, "I heard you come in, Sandy. You woke me up, and… and I heard some noises, so I came out to see… and there you were, with Tommy Edgars."

Sandy stiffened, and a veil seemed to drop over her eyes, her face setting stonily, belligerently. "You saw us together?" she whispered in a deep tone. "You were here when…?"

"Yes, and I saw everything. Everything, Sandy, and I heard everything, too."

"You spied on us!"

"I did no such thing!" Alice retorted, shaken. "But it was a lucky thing I did happen to want to see you were all right, because… because…" Her throat suddenly parched so dry that she was unable to force the words through it.

"Go on, Mom, say it!" Sandy flared back hotly. "Go on, say that you saw us kissing. Isn't that true? He was kissing me, hard, and what's more, I liked it. I liked it a lot!" Her embarrassment was acute, but her young pride turned it to indignation rather than shame, and her cheeks burned with anger, her eyes flashing darkly across the table to her mother. "Can't you stand the idea of a boy's lips on your sweet little daughter's? Is that it?"

"Sandy, it's not only the kissing, but he was fondling you! He had his hands on your breasts, child, and on your… on your…" Again she choked on the words.

"On my ass, Mom," Sandy answered crudely. "But since you were so damned interested in what was going on, then you also know that's as far as he got!"

"And his foul language," Alice moaned, now shattered by the violence of her daughter's unleashed emotions. "His profanity…"

"He calls it as he sees it," Sandy rebuked. "Tommy doesn't believe in the hypocrisy of your world, Mom; that's what our generation wants to end. But what difference does it make what he said to me? I'm still a virgin, remember? Don't worry about that, or do you want that dirty old Dr. Webster to go poking around inside my pussy with his crawly old fingers again to prove it?"

"Sandy, calm down! Honey, I only want what's best for you. If your father were here, he'd be able to…"

"But he's not here!" Sandy cried derisively. "Dad's dead! Killed in a war that should never even have been started! Can't you get it through your head that he's gone?"

"Sandy!" Alice's face blanched a sickly color of bleached flour, and her hand flew to her open mouth in horrified shock.

"At least I'm the healthy one around here!" Sandy suddenly stood up, almost knocking over her coffee cup with her surging movement. "You want what's best for me? Leave me alone, Mom, that's the best thing you can do for me! Go find yourself a man and leave me alone with mine!" And with those final, bitter words, young Sandy Murphy turned and ran out of the kitchen, impervious to the cries of her mother behind her. A moment later, the rear door slammed with a note of finality, and Alice was left alone.

She sat stunned for a long time, staring at the doorway through which her young, headstrong daughter had just fled. Oh God, what was she going to do? If only Robert was here… With a low moan of despair, the beautiful but shattered mother put her head down on her crossed arms and began to weep brokenly.