6:46 phone call.

6:46 phone call.

Vanessa cringed.

“Hel-hello?”

“Vanessa Evangeline Schumpert.”

“Hello Dad.” She said weakly. wearily.

“Would you like to explain why I would hear that you were cussing at your mother and then have the gall to hang up on her without apologizing?”

“Well…yes, you see...”

“I am waiting, young lady.”

And there you had that too. Vanessa thought, her father the doctor but apparently always wanted to be the policeman. Of course her brothers probably had made him that way.

“I can, I will, explain, but I will have to do it in person!”

She waited a beat then, “I am coming over.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Should be there in half an hour.”

“I will see you then, but Vanessa;”

She had hung up, too soon. Dammit it to all that was holy and unholy, she had just hung up on her Dad as well. What on earth was going on? She had never, never hung up on her father.

The phone rang again, but she took the coward’s way out. She was sure voicemail would get it and it would be a howler of a message. Instead she ran into her bedroom shedding her dress, grabbing her denim jeans, sweat shirt and sports bra. She dragged the clothing on as she stopped to consider whether she should take flats over sneakers but decided that her father might end up running her like he had with her brothers so she grabbed a pair of Sketcher sneakers and headed for the door. Now wallet over purse, car keys over taxi and lip gloss over lip stick. She pulled back her hair and knotted it with a scrunchie.