It was about eleven-thirty when we got back from the funeral home. I wished I could have stayed there all night, but the undertaker assured me it wasn't permitted. "We close at eleven," he said, in the oily, unctuous way undertakers have of talking. Fuck you! I thought, clenching a fist, turning away. And when I turned, Tony was there, waiting for me. I looked up at his face and it made me sick.

I got out of the car in the driveway and hurried into the house while Tony parked. With any luck I could be in my room before he came inside. He was the last person in the world I wanted to spend a night with – tonight, of all nights. My mother was dead and lying in a coffin back at the mortuary, but as far as Tony seemed to be concerned, she might as well have been out late, bowling with the girls from the plant.

Tony is – was – my stepfather. Mom married him three years ago, when I was fifteen. I guess they were happy together. He worked days at the mine and she worked nights at the Westinghouse plant. Which meant that when I got home from school around four, I could count on at least eight hours in the company of my loving stepdaddy. The last year or two I'd been seriously considering night school. Only, in our town, there wasn't one.

My name is Rebecca Lee Butler. I don't like to be called "Becky" and "Becca" makes me cringe. I'm five feet three inches tall, I weigh 104 pounds, and I'm slender, as long as you don't count my tits, which are a little over-developed for my frame. Not big enough to be ungainly or silly looking, but full and thrusting, just made to nestle inside the cups of a 36-C brassiere.

And this evening, this awful, awful evening, Rebecca Lee Butler went into the house where she had lived all her life, closed the door behind her, and made ready to go to bed. Like, fast! Before Tony had time to get inside from parking the car.