Free The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy by David Handler Page A

tree, then with a contented groan he climbed inside his own sack. “Man gets to be my age he wants rounded edges, not sharp corners. He wants peace.”
    “This is your idea of peace?”
    “She fights with everyone now,” he offered, as explanation. “She’s grown sour and bitter. She’s a frustrated woman, Ruth. The younger women in the movement, they don’t even want to bother with her. Hard to blame them. Who wants to be screamed at day in and day out? So they’ve cast her aside. And she feels left out. Misses the limelight big-time.”
    “Well, she’s back in it now, big-time.”
    “And loving every minute of it,” he grumbled. “You ask me, that’s what this whole mess is about—Ruth getting her name back in the news.”
    “You don’t think she’s fighting for her daughter?”
    He let out a derisive snort. “Fighting for her? She can’t stand her! Christ, she’s an awful mother to those children. Never stops haranguing them, screaming at them—”
    “Did she really hit them, Thor? Did she physically abuse them?”
    Thor hesitated before he answered. “Not in my presence. Never.”
    “Did you ever see any evidence of physical abuse? Welts, bruises?”
    “Clethra says she beat both of them,” he answered carefully. “And I believe her. After all, the woman did try to kill me. Missed my left lung by a quarter inch with that knife. And that’s no lie.”
    I sat up, peering at him across the fire. “Who’s talking about lies?”
    “Nobody,” he said curtly.
    He was silent after that, his chest rising and falling. Soon, he was snoring softly. I had to keep reminding myself he was seventy-one, and trying awfully hard not to be. I stretched out on my back and listened to the night. I gazed up at the stars, smelling the fresh air, feeling his bracelet on my wrist and Lulu on my hip. Feeling the pull of the open road, stronger than I’d felt it in years. I lay there, wondering what my old friend was getting me into. And how far I was going to let him take me. Eventually, I slept.

Three
    H APPILY, I WAS ABLE to turn my head again after thirty minutes in a steaming hot tub and a torturous neck rub from Merilee. The shooting pains in my lower back were another matter. Those showed no interest whatsoever in leaving.
    “Face it, mister,” Merilee concluded. “You’re getting too old to sleep on the ground.”
    “Am not,” I grunted as I hobbled about the bathroom, stropping Grandfather’s razor and using it. “There was a tree root under me half the night, that’s all. And it was decidedly chilly out.”
    “I see.” Her green eyes twinkled at me.
    “In fact, I’ve been thinking I ought to do a lot more camping out—like in the old days.”
    “Which old days would those be, darling?”
    “A long time ago. Before we met.”
    “Was that when you wanted to move to Oregon and raise peaches?”
    “I was plenty happy then,” I growled, somewhat defensively.
    She glanced at me sharply. “Meaning what? You’re not plenty happy now?”
    I left that one alone. Limped into the bedroom to dress—the sixteen-ounce gray cheviot wool suit, a black cashmere turtleneck underneath it against the cold, drizzly morning. Tracy was gurgling happily in her bassinet. Lulu had staked out the bed, her kid sister be damned, and dozed there, grateful to be back in the world of flannel sheets and down pillows. Merilee had brought my coffee up on a tray, along with a sheaf of papers.
    “You, sir,” she reported, “have had three faxes already.”
    I hated that damned fax machine. It was always beeping and spinning, spinning and beeping. The paper was unpleasantly slick and smelly. To me it was the mimeograph machine revisited, except you couldn’t get stoned from the fumes. “Who from?” I asked.
    “Clethra’s editor. She has questions. She has ideas. She has, apparently, nothing else to do.”
    “Which editor is it this time?”
    “She’s so excited about you being involved that she almost wet her