“Daddy”: the Rest of the Story

Deb slept super-soundly; Nate not so much. His mind raced, taking in the massive truck-loads of information she’d dumped on him since he’d innocently come over to give her support in her time of need. Feeling her luscious, soft, warm body made it easier to imagine living with her, though he shuddered to think what sort of catapult she’d use to hurl him away should “Daddy” re-appear in her life, available as her lover. It was more than obvious that anyone and everyone could be no more than #2 as long as she held a candle for “Daddy”.

“Good morning, Boyfriend!” she greeted him with unfamiliar cheerfulness and lack of irony upon awaking an hour or so after the sun. “You were right: sleeping helped.”

“Too bad I had so little.”

“Why?”

“Worrying.”

“I’m not gonna hurt you—you gotta believe me!”

“I believe that you won’t hit me, but… we need to be clear on something. I totally get that your Daddy is #1 in your life—I get it—no questions, no argument. I get that if/when he comes back into your life and can again be your lover, I’m out—I get it… it is what it is. All I ask is that when that day comes, that you give me a chance to get out of the way and get my stuff out of your life without hurling me out before I have time to do that. I’ll stop touching you right away and Daddy can have you, but I need time to move out, if we live together! That’s all. Can we agree to that, please?”

“You don’t understand… it’s not like that!”

“You mean to tell me that if your Daddy walked in this room right now and said he could be your lover again, you’d not dump me instantly?”

“That was nearly 30 years ago now, when Daddy and I were lovers!”

“Deb: I’m not asking much of you. I’ll move in with you or you with me or whatever we wind up doing. I’ll be monogamous with you. But none of that’s gonna happen if you can’t promise me time to leave if/when Daddy re-enters your life. Promise that you’ll agree to that now, or I’m going home, also now.”

The threat of his leaving upset her to her core. She wrapped her arms tightly around him, holding him close, “I promise that won’t happen! I promise you’ll have time to leave and move your stuff out if Daddy is ever again my lover!”

“OK. That’s all I wanted to know. That’s what kept me from sleeping last night.”

“Wanna sleep now?”

“Can’t. It’ll mess with my biorhythms, I’m hungry, and I have too many thoughts and questions running through my mind about me and you and especially the rest of your life story that I haven’t heard yet. I may need a nap later and I’ll likely be a crap lover today, though I’ll try and help get you off as I’m able.”

“Here… have a boob.”

“Damn, you’re big!”

“Bigger than ever. And you get ’em both, every day and night… when I’m not using ’em.”

Both of them felt better after he teethed and suckled her on both sides for a few minutes.

Nate managed to get Deb off as they made breakfast together, via suddenly and unexpectedly gently nibbling her right earlobe as he threw his arms around her—such could be the power of new love.

Breakfast was unremarkable, in both content and amount. There was still so much to cover running through each of their minds that even having each other’s sexy bodies often literally in their faces wasn’t enough for more than a minute or so of making out. In their own way, each of them sensed the urgency of reaching closure on major topics before weekend’s end, and that all indications were that they would be together a long time, with plenty of opportunities for sex and cuddling and other couples things—hopefully still with their own imprimatur of cool. They intentionally kept conversation minimal and light, to avoid emotional digestion problems. Listening to various Internet “radio” streams made this easier.

Her living room and especially the couch looked a lot more friendly and less sinister bathed in bright Saturday mid-morning daylight. They settled back on the couch and kissed and caressed for awhile before again cuddling up for more intense personal history relating.

“You still believe me, don’t you?”

“Yes, Deb, I still believe you, and will continue to do so unless/until I come across massive contrary direct evidence, such as your Daddy showing up and contradicting you.”

“Daddy would never do that!”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t. So what happened to him? And you?”

“He was convicted to 25 years in prison. He didn’t even appeal, and they wouldn’t let me near him! Obviously, his career was shattered, and our income dropped by more than half, since Mom’s wallpapering business was a joke. I struggled to visit him, but the prison was too far away, not near any public transit, and especially at first I was too young to drive, not to mention Bitch Mom wouldn’t have let me use her car.”

“What about your Daddy’s Taurus?”

“Bitch sold it! That should’ve been my car! Daddy told me that he was planning to get a new one about the time I turned 16, and that he and I would work together and I’d save my money for the parts and we’d fix it up and make it safe for me. Daddy always protected me like that!

“Since I couldn’t see him in person, I tried writing. I wrote 5 letters over 5 months… never got anything back. Tried calling… no good. This was still before the Internet was big in the general public, so if the prison was online at all, it was just for management.

“Daddy was gone, and I had to live with Mom. We’d never been the best of friends, but we straight-up hated each other from the moment she walked in on me and Daddy in bed. She told everyone—law enforcement, legal, family, friends, news media, her therapist—that I was a victim and that Daddy was pure evil. Yet she knew the truth, and held it against me in private, telling me nearly every day that I was a worthless big-boobed slut who was Daddy’s spawn and would never amount to anything in life. I tried to get my Indianapolis Grandparents—Daddy’s parents, the Dunbars—to keep Daddy’s papers and other things for me, since Mom wanted all signs of Daddy gone from the house. They wouldn’t listen to me and bought the line that Mom and the therapists sold that I was a badly hurt little girl who’d been victimized by their own son, and was delusional in my need to protect Daddy and restore the family unit and my lost childhood.”

“Deb, do you feel like you lost some of your childhood?”

“Yes—to my hormones. Whose fault is that, exactly?! Daddy’s? Mom’s? Their parents? None of them had big boobs nor hit puberty early like I did. Was it the BPAs or whatever in the plastic water bottles I used to drink out of, since others of our generation have massive tits and got fat too? Hormones from drugs in the water? No one fucking knows! It is what it fucking is, and I’ve been getting shit for it my whole life!”

“Anything I can do?”

She turned to face him, “Yes: love me like I matter. Like you do… always. Like you were forcing onto me when I didn’t want you to. Even though… maybe I did. Love me sexually always and other ways often… like you do. Let go of the idea of Deb Dunbar the super-strong monster who’ll beat the crap out of you, ’cause that’s something you made up and as I keep saying, it was to keep you out of my inner life, and here you are inside it, so it’s done. My huge boobs and insatiable libido totally fucked up my childhood and thus my life, but I’m an adult now and those things are OK by society, so please enjoy ’em and the rest of me, so I can keep reaping rewards from the painful seeds sown in my youth.

“Now back to my shattered childhood, post-Daddy. The university took some of his papers, but most of what he had Mom sold or threw out.”

“What about the Macs? Did you ever get those back?”

“Yeah, three years later. Not being a tech genius like you, there wasn’t much I could do with even the IIcx in 1992, especially since Mom disconnected the modem phone line and threw a conniption whenever I tried to go online when she was home. And since she was home most of the time, that basically meant always and that I was offline. Besides, the university feed went away, so all I had was free BBSes within the local calling area, which as I recall were about two, and not what I wanted.”

“Were any of them on Fidonet?”

“Fidonet, Rovernet… I donno! If you’d been my brother, I probably would’ve hated you, as brothers and sisters often do, but I would’ve sought your assistance on this stuff… maybe paid you back with some gropey-gropey.”

“For which I would have gone to prison for too, probably.”

“Yeah. This world’s fucked up! Having read about NAMBLA, I can’t say that I’m a fan or even much of a supporter, given how easy it is for true pedophile abusers to mis-use such a movement. Yet from my personal experience, there’s gotta be room for special children and special parents who truly, genuinely love each other and want the best for each other to share their love without anyone else’s fucking limits! The bottom line is that we were offline until I was 16, and then it was Mom’s virus-ridden Windows 95 PC, which I stopped using after the second screaming match she and I had about who infected it this time.”

“Were screaming matches common between you and your mother?”

“Oh good goddess yes! Like I was saying, Mom and I hated each other from the moment she found Daddy and I had been lovers. She got rid of Daddy’s stuff, like I said, and moved back into the master bedroom, re-doing it with some hideous wallpaper which hadn’t been in fashion since the era of the robber barons. I completely stopped giving a fuck about life: hated school, grades plummeted, sabotaged all of the dozen or so extra-curricular activities Bitch Mom tried to get me into. She quickly learned that any tutors she hired had to be female heterosexuals, since I’d seduce any of them with any interest in me, to get out of actually studying.”

“I thought you liked learning things.”

“I did, when it was fun with and for Daddy. I do in adulthood, when I can pick what I want to learn, rather than follow someone else’s curriculum about what I should learn. The moment Daddy was gone, Mom found she had a full-on rebellious teenager on her hands. We fought all the time, about anything and everything. It usually only escalated to screaming matches once or twice a week, and I only remember 3 times in all those years before I moved out that any neighbors called the police.”

“Violence? Throwing things?”

“No, and only Mom in the beginning. Actually I guess my putting an end to that might be considered violent. After she hit me with a pretty heavy bowl, I snapped: I charged her and pinned her to the ground, choking her and telling her if she ever threw anything around again—whether at me or just throwing things—I would kill her and make it look like an accident. She called the police, but I put on a stellar scared, hurt little girl act, blaming Bad Mommy for hurting me and only doing what I had to do to defend myself, and no more. She went ballistic, and they again hauled her away, but not to the battered women’s shelter. She tried to send me to reform school after that, but I was able to get my Indianapolis Grandparents to intervene and put a stop to it. They still didn’t believe me about Daddy, but they could see that Mom was out of control, so they threatened to take legal action for my custody if Mom didn’t back down.”

“Did you want to live with them?”

“Thought about it. Would likely have been more peaceful than with Mom. Thing was, they’re super religious, so it would’ve meant church and no masturbating and conservative clothes and even more conformism than with Mom… and Indianapolis.”

“Yeah” he agreed, making a wrinkly-nosed face of disdain.

“Something else that happened that’ll be of interest to you is that I started eating a lot more, and got fat. I’d been plump before, or arguably voluptuous, but I got outright fat, as I’ve been ever since.”

“Stress eating?”

“A little. Mostly hungry adolescent hormonal eating, as well as trying to bust Mom’s food budget, plus trying to make myself ugly so I could save myself for Daddy—’cause I’d never heard of FAs then. Problem was, it backfired: most of it went to my boobs, and late in my 14th. year—age 13 as you know—I was already a full womanly double D cup, on a 34 inch band—bigger than Mom, which she hated. She tried to put me on diets, which of course I resisted and cheated on… which in retrospect may have been an oddly healthy choice, via avoiding too much yo-yoing.”

“Big-boob social problems?”

“Fuck yeah! Guys trying to grope me or ‘accidentally’ bump into me all the time, though only a couple succeeded in actual groping before I learned to report them to the principal and/or kick them in the nuts.”

“Anything I need to know to avoid that?”

“Think you can handle stopping if I ask you to stop more than once?”

“Duh, yeaaahh!”

“Then there’s nothing you need to know. These low-lifes didn’t see me as a person and didn’t care one flying fuck what I was or was not saying: they wanted, they grabbed—that simple. I learned how to manage them within months, and was a master of—what did you call it?… surly boobs, by the time I hit 15. Anyone could look—couldn’t stop that and didn’t really want to—but only a privileged few could touch.

“Also by the time I was 15, I pretty well concluded that Daddy wasn’t coming back, or if he did, he wouldn’t be the same, which is more or less how I still see things, and is why I don’t think you have to worry about Daddy reappearing as my lover and you getting the boot. A few boys actually had brains as well as dicks and nice bodies. I became friendly with some of them, and after they ran my Daddy-inspired safe sex gauntlet, became eligible to get with me.”

“What’s that smile about?”

“Remembering one in particular: Peter Peck, who I liked to call Peter Pecker. Really, really sweet, innocent guy… bad match for a cynical over-mature young woman like me. I was his first one. He did most of the textbook dating things, trying not to lose out on me. I almost cut him off then, until I took him to a secluded park bench where we could be alone and cuddle and talk—kinda like we’re doing now, except with clothes on, of course—and gently explained that not every woman wants typical dating stuff, nor a long term IIR. We discussed what each of us really wanted from the other, and agreed it was sex. I knew he was far too innocent and nooby to lie to me successfully, so when he said he was a virgin, it was easy to take him at face value. He bust his first nut groping my naked boobs, actually on that same park bench on a different day. I promised him we could have real intercourse and I’d show him what I knew, if he could find a safe, comfortable place for us to do it. His parents went out of town on a long weekend, and left him home alone, since he was 16 and could care for himself. He invited me over, and we did it on his bed. Poor baby started falling in love with me. I tried to let him down gently, but I too was inexperienced on ending these things. He was shattered, and as far as I know, never dated or even messed around with anyone else through the time we all graduated.

“So yeah… I had a little not-solo sex in high school, but it wasn’t more than 6 guys total—definitely not a student body, like Claire Cumbucket.”

Nate bust up laughing. “Lemme guess her real name… Claire Cumberland?”

“She went to your school too?!” Deb teased.

“Nah, no one at mine with that name. I was trying to reverse-engineer the way I come up with the names people should have, like Sara Syphilis. Thanks for that, by the way; if you didn’t notice, she stormed off the moment I suggested she and I get an STI test together the following Monday.”

“My pleasure. Literally, now.”

“Anything else about your high school years?”

“A shitload, but nothing else truly essential for you to understand in terms of me and my development, or Daddy, or Bitch Mom, or my body.”

“What happened next?”

“College. My grades sucked so badly that I needed to go two years to community college before transferring to Oberlin.”

“Niiice. Guess you did better those first two years of college than in high school?”

“Yeah. Still lived with Mom, which sucked, but saved me buckets of money. Neither she nor either set of grandparents thought stupid me could pull it off, which of course pissed me off and made me channel Daddy and study hard again. There was one chemistry class where I needed to get a T.A. couch-based grade enhancement, if you know what I mean, but the rest of my grades I earned legitimately, including Introduction to Physics, where I got an A.”

“Channeling your Daddy?”

“He taught me things, as I mentioned last night… more than I realized. Oh, you’ll like this: I had what I thought was a great idea to demonstrate the difference mass makes for the period of natural oscillations. My class buddy Tracy had somewhat pendulous boobs about half the size of mine at the time. I figured we’d have everyone’s attention if we got up on stage together, took off our tops and bras, leaned over so our chests were parallel with the ground, and swung our boobs at the same time. The teacher heartily approved of the physics aspect and my creative idea for demonstrating it, but pointed out that we’d be in violation of the student dress code, he’d be up for discipline, and we’d all be on the news. That was most of the important stuff from community college.

“Oberlin was the first time I’d lived away from home, and naturally I abused the privilege entirely. Ate like a hog, growing bigger boobs—36F–”

“–Wait. I thought you were in a 34 band size when you first deigned to associate with me.”

“Weight, boobs, and band sizes are not always monotonically increasing, cutie Boyfriend” she said cloyingly, grabbing his cheeks with each hand and wobbling his head slightly. “Ya like the way I dropped ‘monotonically increasing’ like it ain’t no thing?”

“You’re not stupid, Deb. If you felt like it and applied yourself, you could still today work towards being a scientist or doctor or particle physicist or whatever else you wanted. But yeah, that was wickedly right on.”

“I was eating, partying like it was 1999 because it was, and generally going wild.”

“Lots of sex?”

“Not as much as everyone always ASSumes! Daddy was gone, but I wasn’t going to shag anyone and possibly catch something nasty. I wasn’t celibate nor flying solo all the time, but I was still choosy… just that there were more choices and many more opportunities sans-parents and other blocks. Almost flunking out that semester was a wake-up call, since I knew it all went away without the good grades. Dialed it down, found a balance of fun and studying which kept me safely away from failing as well as nerdism.”

“What did you study?”

“A little of everything. I thought I might be a Poli Sci major when I filled out the transfer papers, and they accepted me on that basis, but after some student advisor sessions, I switched to Psych… then Soc, which is what I technically had as a degree when I graduated. Mr. Jevins, my career counselor, really didn’t know what to do with me, and seriously suggested that given my body, I might want to consider modeling or pole dancing to bring in some money until I figured out what I wanted to be in life. I thanked him for the compliment, but informed him that much as I hated it, I needed something more stable and lamestream. He pointed me towards customer service. I fucked up the first two jobs I had in that field, before landing where I am now. Nora and I both work as little as possible, but each of us has learned what we can and cannot do and still have a job.”

“Is that all you want out of your work life?”

“You got something better, that I can do without working any harder?”

He thought about it for the better part of a minute. “Not really… not without some effort. Other than porn.”

“Believe me I’ve considered it. Not thrilled with what I’ve read about what’s expected of models and how they’re treated at some agencies. Nah, I think I’ll keep all my sexy goodies for myself and you and keep doing the minimum to earn the maximum.”

“Anything about you and your mom, since you moved out?”

“She and I speak as little as possible. Most of my stuff that’s not with me is at my Indianapolis Grandparents’, which as you know from the reason I called you over last night, is now just my Indianapolis Grandmother’s. We may need to go over there soon, to ensure it’s all OK or bring some of it here or whatever.”

“What about my stuff? Where are we even living?”

“Can’t deal with that now. I get that you’ve got physical possessions, and likely many of them. My intent is for both of us to have what we need, and as much of what we each want as we can fit in reasonably. Hey: if you’re such a hot-shit tech security guy, why do you live in such a small apartment?”

“Not much sense paying for anything bigger when I’m not there much.”

“Don’t you go home at night?!”

“When I have a reason to, sure! And here are two excellent reasons, right here!” he grinned as he groped each of her breasts, to her smiling, head-rolling approval.

“Thanks for the life story explanation” Nate restarted their conversation once their brief passion session wound down. “I feel like I understand you a little better now.”

“Am I still a monster who’s going to hurt you, in your mind?”

“Not likely. Given your grasp of physics, you do understand that you have more strength than most people my size and specifically me, don’t you?”

“Can’t I just be a sexy softy?”

“You can behave like one, or the strong woman you are—your choice. Since I’ve known you, you’ve done both, as is your right and privilege.”

“You make me sound like fuckin’ Godzilla.”

“All I’m trying to say is that problems occur when you think you’re weak and then over-exert to put people in their place, because you’re not weak and you apply more physical force than perhaps you intend… unless bruising people is your goal.”

She got up suddenly and walked to her bedroom, throwing herself face-down on the bed.

He waited a few minutes, looking around the room at her belongings, then decided he’d better go find out what was up.

When he arrived in her bedroom, he found her crying silently. “I’m sorry, Deb. Just trying to be honest and let you know how I perceive you.”

Her crying intensified and grew audible. “All I am is a big-boobed fat girl—woman, I guess. I don’t work out, I never asked to be a muscle woman—why the fear and hate?!”

He sat down on the bed and gently stroked her hair and the back of her shoulders. “I don’t hate you, and I only fear you to the degree that you’ve hurt me physically in the past. You do work out, but maybe you don’t know it: you work out every moment you move your massive body. It’s natural, it’s physics, it’s unavoidable. I’d never be arrogant enough to speak for your Daddy, but I’d guess that he’d be proud of your strength—one of several superpowers you have, along with your sexiness—and counsel you to use it wisely. Not sure if this will help or make things worse, but you’re probably not as strong as Aubrey, who’s big and firm, not big and soft. She’s definitely big-boned, and I’m pretty sure big muscled too. If you needed to fight her, it would be a close match, but only because you’d be motivated to use the extra strength we all have—even me—in moments of crisis. She’s stronger, you’re sexier, by 10s of kilometers!”

She pulled him down on the bed into a kissing-cuddling session. One of them—unclear who—kicked off a rolling-around-as-a-unit session, setting off prodigious giggling. At one point, she rolled wholly atop him, sandwiching him between her front and the bed at his back.

“Is this OK?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you afraid of me right now?”

“No. You’re being gentle and loving, so even though you’re powerful and could hurt me if you chose, you’re choosing instead to be loving, and giving me the gift of most of your weight upon me.”

“I’m not crushing you?”

“No. Pinning me, yes: I’m not going anywhere unless you let me, or I use every bit of my strength to try and get away, which I feel no desire to do, since I like being bathed in your warm, plush softness.”

Deb wasn’t big enough to surround him (other than her boobs doing well surrounding his head) yet she quite enjoyed her superior position, especially knowing that he literally could not leave her without a Herculean effort with her atop him.

“Anything else I should know about your life history, Plush Goddess?” he asked once their gentle, loving kissing wound down, still happily pinned beneath her on the bed.

“I’m sure there is, but I can’t think of anything right now.”

“Have you ever tried since the beginning to meet with your Daddy, or track him down?”

“No. Apparently they moved him to a different prison at least once, per his parents—and no, I don’t know why.”

“I don’t understand why you haven’t been all over trying to stay in touch with him all these years, given what he still means to you.”

“Daddy was correct, as usual: it can never be the same. The beautiful thing we had was shattered by Satan’s Bitch Mom. He’s not the same… I’m not the same. It’s all different, forever.”

“Would you rather not know what happened to him?”

“Yes.”

“Even if he’s dead?”

“I don’t know. Why are you asking me these things?!”

“Just wondered if you wanted your Boyfriend’s skills to help you try and track down your Daddy and find out how he is, maybe get back in touch with him. We both know he loves you for all time, as you do him. Just an offer, if you ever want to go there.”

She thought about it for about 5 minutes, then begged him to help her.

“Do you really think you can find Daddy?” she asked as they sat together at her 6-year-old iMac.

“Won’t know until we try.”

Deb looked on in wonder as her new boyfriend Nate dug around in parts of the Internet she’d never seen. She gasped and laughed heartily and gutturally seeing Nate portray himself as a correctional officer named Herb Portman in an IRC chat, falling harder in love with her sweet, smart bad boy.

It took nearly two hours, but he/they eventually found that Bertram Dunbar had been released from Derbyshire Prison six months prior.

“Daddy’s out, but where is he?”

“That’s the problem. The good news is that he’s alive, or at least he was as of 6 months ago, and out of prison. The bad news is that since he’s out of the penal system, there may not be a solid record of his whereabouts.”

“A dead end.”

“Not necessarily yet” he grinned. He brought up several disparate law enforcement websites.

“Why is my Mac loading web pages so slowly all of a sudden?”

“I’m using TOR, so we can’t easily be traced.”

“Did you just break in to their employee database?”

“I suppose one could call it that. Though with a password of ‘toughoncrime123’, I consider it more of an open invitation.”

“What good does this do us?”

“Seeing the formatting of their ID numbers, for when I make one up on the phone call I’m about to make. And being sure there isn’t a real Herb Portman currently working for them, in case they follow up.”

There was no existing Herb Portman, though soon as the Caller ID-spoofed outbound call was answered there would be one, of sorts. Adrenalin coursed through Deb’s veins as she witnessed her tending-dark gray hat tech genius boyfriend at work.

“Good afternoon! Herb Portman, Ivydale Department of Corrections…. 14 dash A1715…. Yeah, I’m not surprised. We’ve been having system issues all week…. Alt ID? Oh right—OK, hold on.”

He frantically searched on the employee database, finally finding the format.

“Buried at the bottom of my desk drawer, wouldn’t ya know it?…. Alright: P as in Paul, one-five-three, QQ, as in quagmire quagmire, which pretty well describes our IT department.”

Deb could hear the person at the other end laughing out loud, she laughed so hard.

“Yeah, the requisition for a new system’s been in for something like three years now…. I hear ya! So… as part of the gleeful fun that makes my job so interesting, I can’t access the records for the release of a Dr. Bertram Dunbar…. Nah, the PhD kind, not the ones who can make us better…. March 6th. of this year is what I have, but not where…. Bolly Rehab—perfect! Thanks so much, Sadie, for keeping the sometimes-creaky wheels of justice turning!…. Bye now!”

“I don’t know whether to hug you like a hero or be afraid of you like a criminal” she confided to him, once the call ended.

“Why?”

“Over the past two hours you’ve hacked into at least one private law enforcement database, impersonated a corrections officer twice, and made me jealous of how easily you lied through your teeth to get what we need, like you do this every day.”

He struggled and mostly failed to suppress a big grin. “Nope, only some evenings and weekends. Just a hobby of mine.”

“What’s that about not having strength? Or power, I guess?”

“Power comes in different forms” he grinned.

The up-light from the screen in the otherwise darkened room made him look sinister. To Deb, he’d never looked better.

“But at the same time, you found out where Daddy is!”

“Not quite. I found out to where he was released at the end of his sentence. Now we have to mine Bolly Rehab, which unlike the prison system, may not be available to us on a Saturday.”

It didn’t take long for Nate to reach a dead end: Bolly Rehab closed down three months prior, due to budget cuts. He found several news articles about it, which they read together.

“All clients were released on their own recognizance?!”

“Looks that way.”

“So what does that mean about Daddy?”

“He’s a free man as of 3 months ago, and we have no further way to trace him. Think he’d come looking for you?”

“I… I don’t know. That was decades ago now, and like I said, he totally gave up at the time.” She turned and stared at the iMac’s screen, for some reason speaking to it, “Oh Daddy… please be OK!”

He once again put his arm around her, silently letting her know that he’d be the least worst substitute for her Daddy that he could be.