Abby entered the world two weeks late, a plump and pink version of perfection, kicking and screaming her way into humanity on the five year anniversary of Abbots passing.  It had been a long and painfully enduring labor, exhausting her to the point of near unconsciousness.  She was now a teenage mother, one half of a high school sweet heart romance.  It was of the belief system that girls who were neglected or abused, or abandoned by their fathers, looked for a father figure -- a male counterpart to give stability and unconditional love. He had been the quintessential father, there for every step, encouraging his children while offering structure and guidance, but he couldn’t fill the void in her soul from the loss she incurred with the death of Abbot.  It had been like losing her first born, the anguish of the loss lessened by time but always accessible just beneath the surface. A reference to a date, or an occasion, could reopen the wounds that lie dormant.  The happiest days were ones filled with the feelings of unending contentment, walking the high school halls with Doug's arm behind her, his hand lightly touching the back of her waist or her legs wrapped around his frame like a pretzel as she called out his name in a moment of intense pleasure.  It was a fine line between the cry of wild passion and the gut wrenching resonance of pain as she lie, legs in stirrups, expelling the deep sorrow she had carried for half a decade.

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Children are innately born with a sixth sense, but encouraged to abandon it as they grow.  It was a vision engrained into her essence; the rusted metal of the leaky kitchen sink carried with it the odor of corrosion, leaving a crimson colored stain on her mother’s hands -- the importance of washing the dishes and having clean plates upon which to serve dinner to the family was one of her daily ambitions – her discolored fingerprints stained onto the fabric of her frayed apron.  She was still youthful in her appearance but with the emergence of fine lines beginning to settle into her forehead like a roadmap to her thoughts, her dirty blonde tresses pulled back in place with bobby pins to keep the dirt and sweat from soiling her mane. Children live what they learn. If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and in those about them, but security was an often ambiguous trait in the Emerson household.