Marty was in the back of the house when the door bell rang. He was fixing the lawnmower in the garage. Some minor fix that would make the equipment probably beyond repair after he was done with it. The two little ones were playing in the backyard under no supervision of Marty.

"Honey, could you…" He yelled, he had no intention of leaving what he was doing to open the door right now.

Maggie was in the kitchen finishing up the dinner with Sarah. She glanced at Sal and mimicking her father's tone said:

"Honey, could you…?"

Sal rolled her eyes:

"I have to do everything around here!" and smiled to her mother.

She went bare feet over the house to the door. When she opens it, there he is. They look at each other for just a second. This is the first time he came to the house after two months. Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea. Maybe earlier that day she should have told him not to come. To give a last minute excuse. To get black out drunk and stay at his house. But she could not do this. She liked that he was drinking a little less. Drinking still, but nothing that would threat his health. He reaches out to her, and she realizes he had something in his hand the whole time.

"For the table." He says

She looks terrified at the flowers he is handing her. Not for the flowers itself. He always brings something, wine, flowers, cigars to smoke with Martin at the back porch… But this time is different. He did not show up with random flowers. Deep red hibiscus. He showed up with her favorite flowers. Her only, hard to find and favorite flowers. She looked at the flowers in her hand and the only thing she was able to say was:

"How did you know?"

"You have more than two dresses with this print"

She had exactly three dresses with floral print. All of them red hibiscus flowers.

"Yes…" She smelled the flowers "The one I was wearing this afternoon lost a button. If you could give that back, would be nice."

He smiled and made a mental note of looking for the button he ripped off earlier. Sal moved away from the door and made a sign for him to step in.

Maggie met them in the living room.

"Hi Rust!" She gave him a warm and welcoming hug. "Took you long enough to find the way back here"

Sarah never hugged him when he arrived there. So she kept with this tradition. Instead, she was standing there, mesmerized looking at the flowers in her hands.

"Honey," said Maggie waking Sarah from her flower induced hypnosis "Those are your favorite!"

"I know… I should get a vase"

She walked away to the kitchen. There was a vase somewhere in there, just had to remember where… Those flowers moved her in a way she never thought nothing he could do that night would. Rust's attention to details was borderline pathological, but that came with the job description. What she did not realize, was that he was reading her like this. Could she ever hide something from him? He found out her favorite flowers by her clothes. What else did he knew. Did he notice that she calculated her every move around him? And that she was happy with that? Did he notice himself changing? Did he… There it was! The vase

She puts on a little water and remembers her mother saying that you should cut the flowers stems before putting them in water. And that's what she's doing when her father hits the kitchen.

"Hey baby" He pushes her closer by the shoulder and kisses the top of her head. "Rust brought those?"

"He did" She says mechanically cutting the stems and placing the flowers individually on the vase.

"Pretty." Her father don't know are her favorites. If he knew, he has forgotten. Marty start opening the pans. "What you girls have been cooking for dinner"

"We'll be cooking you if you don't go up and take a shower! Dinner is ready already!"

"Hey!" He looks at her with a mix of surprise and amusement "Who made you the Queen here, missy?"

"No one , I was already the Queen! Now go!" She points out to the door. "Nobody told you to go fix that thing now."

"I'm going because I want to…" He says while leaving the kitchen and going upstairs.

"Yeah, you tell yourself that…" Sarah responds and Marty laughs on his way to the shower.

Maggie walks in a hurry.

"I'm gonna get your sisters a bath. Can you finish up everything and take care of Rust?"

"What?"

Rust walks in at this moment.

"Yeah, don't leave him alone. Offer him something to drink"

"I'm fine" Said Rust.

"Sit." Said Maggie "Have a beer or something" She looks at Sal "What was your father laughing about?"

"I told we would have him for dinner if he didn't went up and took a shower"

Maggie smiled.

"Let me get the brat pack outside and get them cleaned up" She leaves to get the girls

Sal puts the vase up the kitchen counter between them.

"Thanks for the flowers." She says angrily

"Didn't you like them?" Rust seems confused

"I did… But I sure as hell wasn't expecting this. That you knew my favorite flowers"

A happy sound rolls from afar. Her sisters storm in the kitchen and run around her in circles like happy dogs. Maggie walks by straight ahead and says:

"Send them to the bathroom, would you?"

Sarah puts both hands in her hips and says loudly to make herself be heard above her sisters shrieking.

"No running in the kitchen! I have knives and no fear of using them!"

They became even louder and took a couple of rounds around the kitchen table and left to their mother. When the door slammed they were free to talk. Sarah went to the refrigerator and took two beers. When she placed his in front of him she saw that he was no longer there. His body was, but his mind… Seem to have long gone. She didn't need much time to wonder what happened. Sofia… After she grew to know him a little more, that was the first time she was around him and the girls at the same time. It didn't occur to her what would be the effect on him.

He had a daughter. Had… And the phantom of her was what Sarah saw dancing in his eyes every now and then. She took one big sip of her beer and rushed to be in front of him.

"Hey man…" She placed a hand on his cheek and slowly brought him to face her. "Hey… I'm here, ok? I'm here"

His eyes were watery and red. He slowly placed one hand on the back of her neck.

"You're here…" He repeated.

"Yes. Yes, I'm here."

He puts the other hand on her back and pulls her closer. She understands him. He feels empty for a moment. He saw the "what if" future. How maybe Sofia would turn out. Sofia and a friend. Running around, being loud, being kids… And not in a tiny coffin being consumed by the time, and alive only in his and maybe her mother's memory.

He pressed his lips violently against hers.

"I'm sorry…" He says briefly

"Don't be." She finds his lips again.

He felt the nothing. The emptiness. The nameless pain that is to have and have lost a child. He needed to feel something, something to fill the void. Something good and tender to reminder him that the world was not just sorrow. And that something was Sal. She senses that, she feels when he needs this. He needs something to grab and prevent him from slipping into this darkness inside of him. From the past two months she is being his life boat. She stops him from sinking. And he hurts her in the process, she seems not to care.

He forces his tongue inside her mouth and she just gracefully accepts it. He kisses her with urgency. He wants to breathe the air in her lungs; he wants to feel trough her skin. She's a fountain of joy and pleasure and he just needs to have it. Not in sips, but everything at once. And she allows it. She gently caress his hair and neck while he eagerly feels her whole self at once. She's also paying attention to sounds around her. So she hears a door opening. Marty is done with the showers. She slowly pulls him away, but he holds on to her as a dying man holds to his last breath.

"Marty will be here in any minute now… We have to…"

"I know…" He slowly lets her go. She sees in his eyes that he is better than he was minutes ago. But not quite.

"Can we see each other later tonight?"

"Yes." He says with some relief in his voice "We can make this"

She smile and walks away from him. He runs his hands on his hair. They place themselves one on each side of the kitchen counter when Marty arrives.

"Hey man. Wanna move this beer to the back porch?"

"Yeah …" Rust says standing up from his bench.

"Honey," Marty says "Pass me a bottle, would you?"

Sarah looks at him and takes two long sips of her own bottle and smacks her lips at the end of it. "Nope" she says.

"Getting really tired this your mother's side attitude" As he goes get his beer in the refrigerator.

"Ha! My mother's side…" Sarah laughs "That's a good one."

Dinner was going fine. Marty and Maggie sat in opposite sides of the table lengthwise. Leaving the girls at one side of the table, and Rust and Sal side by side. They're chatting normally. Even Marty admits Rusts looks a little more people like then the last time he sat on the same place having dinner.

"You know what Maggie?" Marty says between sips of wine "I believe, Rust finally found a woman crazy enough for him"

Sarah just keeps having her meal without flinching to the sound of this and take a napkin to her lips. When she looks at it, it has little spots of blood. Her father's line surprised her so much she bit her tongue.

"Really?" Says Maggie "When are we going to meet her, Rust?"

From under the table, Sarah hooks her foot on Rust's ankles.

"I don't know what the he…" He looks across the table to the girls "What crazy thing your husband is saying"

"Just look at him, Maggie" Marty continues "Doesn't he seems different?"

Maggie looks at him, smiling maternally. She looks deep in his eyes.

"He does…" She says "He feels lighter."

"I'm telling you! He even has a cell phone. And sometimes I see him writing messages to someone"

"Really?!" Says Maggie surprised.

"C'mon dad…" Sal takes a sip of her wine. "Everybody has a cell phone this days. You have one, I have one…"

"Yeah sugar…" Marty reaches his hand on the table and place it on his daughter's hand "But we are normal people. Mr. Sunshine, by your side, probably think cell phones are just one more step into our eternal search for redeem… Or something like this!"

"I don't know…" Sal drinks more "I just don't see the connection"

"But Maggie is right." Marty continues "When are we going to meet her? Or she isn't the kind of girl you introduce to friends?"

Maggie and Sal both give him the same disapproval look.

"I think one had too much wine…" Maggie says

"Agreed." Sarah rises her glass as a toast to that. Rust drinks to it, rising his glass with one hand as the other rests in Sal's thigh under the table.

The dinner finishes, the girls go watch some TV, while Maggie and Sal clean up the dishes. Marty pours Rust and himself a scotch and they both sit on the bench of the back porch. They're talking about the most recent case.

The door from the house to the backyard opens, and Sarah steps outside and sits between both men.

"You guys can keep talking. I have no interest in whatever murderer you guys are after" She says as she reaches her hand to her father. He looks at her face, and she smiles "Pretty please?"

He reaches in his front pocket and gives her a cigarette. He lights it.

"Your mother would kill both of us if she saw that."

She draws in the smoke and lets it out of her mouth and nose

"Oh yes… I don't really care…" She said in a voice almost as sexy and satisfied as Rust had heard many times already in the past couple of months. "I am what you made me" She says.

"No way, Sarah." He says "You gonna face your mother alone in that one. I will even act surprised as if I didn't knew."

She open her mouth chocked and acted offended.

"You wouldn't stand up for me? Your first daughter?"

"No ma'am."

"You're worthless…" She finally said.

They both laugh. Rust watches the dynamic of them. Nothing he hasn't seen before, but never ceases to amaze him. They acted out like friends. His hypothesis was that, when Maggie got pregnant of Sarah. They were both young. Maggie, up to this day was the most responsible one, and when the girls arrived she knew how to act as a mother. Marty, on the other hand, had no idea. He made all the mistakes raising this one. When the second girl arrived, he was already trained on how to raise a girl. But this one was already a girl raised for a guy who had no idea how to do that.

She had the same taste in music, the same stubbornness and will as her father. But physically, she was her mother with a blond straight hair. They had the same constitution, small but strong. And their eyes… They both had that violent look in their eyes. They seem to be looking through your skull and directly into your thoughts. He felt that sometimes with her. That she wasn't looking jus at him, but she was reading his mind. And he was afraid of letting her do this. She would find no good in there. She would find how messed up he was. And he would be once again left with no hope.

Bu at the same time, letting her in bit by bit, was being good to him. He was even letting it show to people he wasn't supposed to. He felt a little whole with her. He felt some kind of peace. Some kind of happiness. Some kind of lo…

"Sal!" Maggie called from the inside of the house

"Oh shit…" Sarah placed her almost finished cigarette between Rut's fingers. And looked at him with that bright eyes.

Maggie opened the door.

"Could you put your sisters to sleep? They said they want you…"

"Aww… That's cute!" Sarah said "I'll be right there."

When Maggie close the door, Sarah goes

"Give me a mint, please please please!"

Her father places three mints in her palms. She chews them quickly and loud.

"Thank you!" She says with the widest grin she can.

She goes to the door and bangs it open.

"Here comes the tickle monster!"

The shrieking and screams fill the house. Both girls run upstairs as Sal runs inside the house after them. Both men watch the scene with a loving glare.

"You know…" Marty takes some of his scotch and point out to the house "That is one living proof of how fool I am."

"Your family?" Rust asks, knowing exactly what he meant

"Yeah… Them all…" Marty takes the bottle to his mouth once again "But specially Sal"

Without thinking, Rust lifts up the cigarette Sal placed between his fingers and takes a drag. He can very faintly feel her lips on it. Marty continues.

"When Maggie got pregnant the first time, and we found out it was a girl, I went crazy, man!" His eyes focused on some point at the lawn, and he was rambling like Rust wasn't there. Maybe Sarah was right, maybe he did had too much wine. He went on:

"I was going to be a first time father, and was going to be a girl. What if I messed up? You know what I mean? Girls are scary!" He took another sip of the glass as trying to shake away some bad memory.

"But then… That girl came along… And the doctor placed that little pink tiny thing in my arms. And she just stopped crying, and I didn't drop her, and she grabbed my finger really tight… And that was it!" He seemed magically out of trance "I don't know, I just… Fell in love with her"

Both men sat at the bench in the backyard, both men looked at the stars and both men, not knowingly, had their mind full of the same girl…

Sal lay awake in her bedroom. The dinner today was better than she expected. But she thought she could squeeze some time with Rust yet today. He was in pretty bad shape earlier. He felt better after, but she was still worried. He was already gone when the girls finally slept. She sent a message telling him they could talk if he wanted to, but had no answer.

Just as she thought that, the phone vibrates. It's past 1 am and everybody is asleep in the house. The message on the phone reads "2 houses down". She looks out the window and there it is, the red truck.

She considers sending a message saying "NO". But then again… He might be needing help. She arranges the pillows in her bed. She always locked the door of her room, but it wouldn't hurt to make it look like she was still there. She replied "wait" and a few minutes after she was out the front door.