Free The Between by Tananarive Due

couldn’t bring himself to sour the deal on the house after it had won Dede’s heart. And it was glorious; thirty yards long, eight feet deep at its deepest end, with elaborate, Roman-style steps leading to the shallow end. Black tile spelled out in four-foot letters the name D-E-E at the pool’s bottom, the previous owner’s tribute to his wife; Hilton was amused by the similarity to Dede’s name, and he usually told visitors that workmen had misspelled Dede when the pool was built. The coincidence was nearly uncanny.
    The few times Hilton had been coaxed into the pool, he felt a gripping lethargy when he held his breath and plunged below the surface. His limbs grew heavy, frozen, and he invariably ended up choking on the chlorinated water. As though something intended to keep him there. Dede told him it was psychological, but Hilton was convinced it was more than that. Like that day on the beach, with the undertow. It was best to keep his distance from the pool.
    “Hey,” Hilton said, taking the chair beside Kaya’s.
    She didn’t look up or stop writing. “Hey.”
    He struggled a moment with words, then exhaled. “So your mom told me about your little adventure at school today.”
    Kaya rolled her eyes theatrically. “Great. She’s already called everybody else in the world and told them.”
    “I’m not everybody else in the world, you know. I’m your dad. No secrets, remember?”
    She looked at him as though she couldn’t imagine a more foolish statement from an adult’s lips. “You’re a guy, Dad. Guys don’t like to hear about this stuff.”
    He was silent a moment, acknowledging her point. The less he had to know about menstruation, whether Dede’s or Kaya’s or anyone else’s, the better. “Right. But you didn’t mind me being a guy when we built that treehouse, or when we used to go to ball games. Remember? The only Dolphin Jamil knew about was that damn Flipper. So it was just you and me. No secrets.”
    “Yeah,yeah . . .”
    They hadn’t attended any ball games lately, and the days of treehouse-building were long past, Hilton thought. He’d been fifteen when he lost his virginity, only two years older than Kaya. Soon she’d be showing up at the door with hormone-crazed young punks with their arms around her waist and their minds inside her pants, just the way he’d been when he charmed his girlfriends’ parents with his smile and erudite conversation. Hilton and Dede had believed in frank sex education from the time their children were old enough to ask questions, but this would be new territory. Yes, the time for secrets had begun now. Secrets were the first wall between parents and children. Children, in the end, were only adults in disguise.
    “You feeling okay?” Hilton asked.
    “My stomach hurts some. I hope I won’t have PMS like Mom,” she said, and they both laughed.“Don’t tell her I said that.”
    “I won’t, princess,” he said. “Listen, Kaya, I know you’ve got a busy schedule with drama workshop and the mall and your friends, but why don’t we do something this weekend?”
    Again, that look like he was crazy. “Like what?”
    “Well, we could go to a movie. We could go horseback riding . . .” Kaya sighed, so he went on quickly: “Or not. You pick something. Just a couple of hours.”
    “You’re not going to talk to me about sex, are you?”
    “Not the whole time, no.”
    “Dad . . .” she said, turning her attention back to her homework.
    He reached over to take her pen to prevent her from writing. “No, I’m being for real, Kaya. Let’s do something Saturday. We’ll do any movie you want.”
    Kaya looked at him questioningly a moment, but he knew she understood. Yeah, I love you too, Dad, she said with her soft brown eyes. I didn’t mean to grow up so fast, it just happened like that. Now leave me alone so I can do my work. “Okay,” she said.
     
    Sorry, the dispatcher apologized for the third time, Sergeant Curt Gillis hadn’t been