I'll admit to being a little surprised by her attitude — but it also comforted me somewhat, too.

When I thought about it later, I realized that she was right about the chance of that, or something similar, happening again. Even if she made a point of telling them to lock the bathroom door, they likely weren't going to remember to do it each and every time. And I cared about all three of them too much to want to hurt them by banishing them from sitting with me just because of my hangups and foibles. After a fair amount of thought and soul-searching, I finally decided to take Teresa's advice as best I could: chalk it up to experience, and not let it worry me. Even so, I still felt a little guilty about how I'd reacted to the sight of Donna's nude form, regardless of how nice it had been.

Over the course of the next few days, the incident eventually left my mind — leaving me free to enjoy the time I spent with the girls in various combinations. When Karen expressed an interest in softball, I went into the back yard to play "catch" with her for a while, and help her learn to hit a little better; I went to one of Donna's field hockey games and cheered her efforts. Wendy wanted to know if I'd go to the park and play Frisbee with her, and I was glad to do so.

A few more weeks went by, and I was staying home with the girls one Saturday while Teresa got in some overtime at work. I was there less to supervise than to simply be there if anything serious happened, or one of them needed something Parental; all three of them had already accepted me as an authority figure in their lives, despite my minimal exercise of such. Wendy and Karen had gone off to visit friends while Donna stayed in her room to work on some project or other. I was watching sports on TV, and when a commercial came on, I went to make a bathroom break. The door was locked, so I knew that it must be Donna inside, and I simply stood across the hall and waited for her to finish. When the door opened, she was standing there wearing only a very brief pair of panties and nothing else. I looked at her face, and saw that she knew full well what she was doing as she just stood there, all but verbally inviting me to look at her — something that I couldn't HELP but do.