Slow Walk to Hell

Chapter 1 FRIDAY NIGHT It was around 7 P.M. on a Friday evening and I was standing by the punch bowl in a drafty school gym, trying not to appear completely bored as I helped chaperone my daughter's formal middle school dance. I'd like to say that I volunteered for the duty out of a sense of parental obligation, but I hadn't. I'm Martin Collins, chief of police for Warrentown, Virginia, a small town seventy miles west of Washington, D.C., and babysitting three hundred adolescents came with the territory.Understandably my thirteen-year-old daughter Emily wasn't exactly thrilled by my presence. She made me promise not to embarrass her in any way. By "embarrass," she meant I wasn't supposed to take photographs, talk to her or her friends, or come anywhere near her.I tried to placate her by telling her I wasn't going to wear a uniform. "So you can chill. Your friends probably won't even notice me."She gave me her patented "get real" look. "I think it's best if you pretend not to know me, Dad.""Might be a little difficult," I said dryly. "I'm driving you to the dance. Remember?"She stuck out her jaw at my logic. "You know what I mean.""Honey, I'd like to at least take a few photos for your grandmother -- ""Dad!"She looked thoroughly horrified.I gave up. After three books and a half dozen episodes ofDr. Phil,I still wasn't any closer to understanding the female teenage mind. My wife Nicole could have enlightened me, but she passed away from cancer when Emily was nine. My transition into the role of being a single parent hasn't been exactly smooth, but despite any mistakes I've made, Emily has turned out pretty well. She gets good grades, is popular at school, and usually does what I ask without copping an attitude."Fine," I told her. "I won't come within ten feet of you."Actually, I thought it would be easy to keep up my end of the bargain, but it wasn't. At the moment, I was watching Emily slow-dance with a strapping blond kid who was already sprouting facial hair. Every so often he would casually slide a hand down her back and it was all I could do not to throw him through a wall.I fought the impulse by draining a glass of punch, wishing it was a beer.The song mercifully ended and the orange-haired DJ switched to a peppy Britney Spears tune. Emily and the boy reluctantly parted, but kept on dancing. I didn't like the predatory smile he was giving her and tried to intimidate him with a scowl. No dice. Raging hormone never looked my way.I sighed. Maybe Emily was right. Maybe I shouldn't have come. Seeing her now, looking so beautiful in her long yellow dress, dancing with a boy, reminded me of how fast she was maturing. In the past year, she'd grown four inches and her figure was filling out. She wasn't my little girl any longer.The thought of Emily growing up was difficult to accept, and not simply because she was my daughter and I loved her. Rather, it was because she looked so much like her mother. If you saw a photo of Nicole at thirteen, you'd swear that she and Emily were twins. They both had flowing auburn hair, wide cheekbones, and brilliant blue eyes that lit up when they laughed.I felt a familiar tightness in my chest as I contemplated the wedding band I still wore. Nicole and I were married twenty years and when she died, part of me did, too. Since then, I've dreaded the day Emily would leave home to create her own life. Irrational as it might seem, I knew I would feel a sense of loss comparable to Nicole's passing.I also wasn't looking forward to being alone.As I watched the smiling young faces around me, I became irritated at how pathetic my life had become. If I was alone, I had only myself to blame. For a guy in his midforties, I was pretty well preserved. At six feet, I carried a trim 180 pounds, and my close-cropped blond hair had only a few flecks of gray. Over the years, I had opportDavis, Patrick A. is the author of 'Slow Walk to Hell' with ISBN 9780743474306 and ISBN 0743474309.