Chase pulls up to his drive way and just sits in his car. He sees that both of his daughters cars are in the driveway. His sons is out in the road. All of them are in the house going about their lives. They all move about their day to day lives while he remains thing stranger or invader in their day. Patting down his jacket he hears the crinkle of the paper and takes it out of his pocket and puts it in the center conceal of his SUV. Sighing before leaving his car, he check his phones for recent emails then makes his way inside. The family dog barks but then sees its him and his tail goes between his legs, his head bows slightly and his goes into the laundry room where his bed is.

From the kitchen comes to smell of a freshly cooked meal. Laurie has music playing while she cooks. Christine is at the table doing her homework while Jackie is on the computer with head phones one. Both absorbed into their worlds. Down in the basement the older two are working, he saw the emails that his eldest had sent out while he was out, while his son had not.

“Hello family.” Chase says as he continues down the hallway past the kitchen, past Cassie and Jackie into their family room where he puts on the television. This is his routine and he always puts on the news, walks down to his office, gets his computer and then will sit there doing work and have the news play. He begins opening unopened emails while he wife enters and sites on the couch behind him, his daughter then comes to lay on the adman. They continue the conversation they were having in the kitchen. Chase’s face becomes contorted. There is too much noise from the people on the television, focusing on these email, and their nonsense chatter. Chase thinks he needs to stick it out because they came in here to be with him.

“Dad how did your day go?” Christine ask.

Chase turns to face her, gives a big closed lip smile, turns back to his computer, “Keeping at it girl.”

“That’s good. Bad traffic coming back?”

“Not bad. Ya know, I have these email to return so let me just focus on this. Would you guys mind going to the kitchen.” He gives a slight wave with his hand directing back to the kitchen. His wife and Christine does as he instructs and return to the kitchen. Chase keeps his focus on the computer.

When they’re out of ear shot they pick their conversation up again. “Mom, he looks better but I don’t know if he’ll get over Cassi calling the cops on him.”

She plays with the towel folding it in different ways to do something with her hands. “We didn’t have any other choice and she believe she was doing the right thing. What else were we suppose to do?”

“Mom, I’m not saying it wasn’t. We don’t have anymore money to spend on staying in a hotel room and we have left the house before and that doesn’t seem to help.” Christine gets up and walks over to the counter. The day they called the cops comes back to her. Her father had been in a bad episode for months and they were at their wits end. Thankfully this time he was only yelling but it always escalates quickly. In the past they let it play out and would step in when the tension began to great. This was just at the beginning of his episode but the previous one he wasn’t only physical with their mom. He crossed a line with holding onto or fighting off her two sisters.

Christine couldn’t let that happen again. However she’s the oldest. Should she have made the call rather than letting her youngest sister make it? Cassi gets the blame but it’s not all on her.

“All we can do is pray and not say anything to upset him.” He mother puts the towel down and takes the laundry to her room.

Christine gets out the tea and puts water on to boil and just looks around the kitchen. Each spot holds a memory of what happened over the past year. She wished they could all be happy memories but the past couple of months have taken that over. Her father yelling at the top of his lungs that it gives her chills and makes her ill, then seeing her mother crying and sisters just looking so confused. None of them knew what the right thing to do was, or did they just ignore it? The kettle whistles letting her know the waters ready. She pours the water and heads up to her room.