Please, Daddy, I need you, incest, family taboo, dad and daughter, I have always been amazed by how life can be like a rollercoaster. Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out and life is good, something hits you from behind and takes you out at the knees. Only a year or so ago, my life seemed absolutely perfect. I was enjoying an amazing career as Director of Marketing for a Fortune 500 company, with the love and support of the most wonderful family a guy could hope for. I felt on top of the world, then we learned the shocking news: my loving wife of twenty-five years had cancer.
Connie and I met in college, and by our third date, I think we both knew we were made for one another. She was beautiful, which certainly didn’t hurt, yet she was also as sweet and smart as a guy could dare ask for. In spite of all her amazing attributes, she was just a regular girl without a hint of pretension, and unlike anyone else I had ever known.
We were married just about a year after graduation, and both embarked on our professional careers. We decided not to immediately start a family so we could devote our attention to our jobs and to one another without distraction. We waited about five years before we decided to try for a child.
I was on the fast-track in my career, so when we found out Connie was pregnant; we agreed that she would stay home with the baby while I worked. Times might have been tough, but we both liked the idea of her staying home rather than paying for a babysitter to partially raise our only child.
Connie was a wonderful mom, just as I expected. She relished her role as primary caregiver, and didn’t seem to miss her life as an aspiring corporate tycoon. She and Kelsey seemed to share a special bond that I admit made me a tad jealous, yet when I arrived home at night, Connie made sure I had some alone time with my baby so I would not miss out on anything. We seemed to become the perfect team, intuitively understanding each other’s needs.
When Kelsey went off to school, Connie became a bit bored staying at home without much to do. For the first couple of years, she puttered around the lawn most days, tending the gardens and making our yard the showplace of the neighborhood, yet I could tell she was somewhat unfulfilled.
Since she had some free time during the day, I encouraged her to find something to which she could lend her talents. Having always been a lover of plants and flowers, she enrolled in a floral design program offered at the local community college. She loved it and seemed to have a real knack for it, bringing home the beautiful bouquets she created after each session.
Within weeks after the class ended, she began working on me to finance a flower shop of her own. I was making decent money at that time, but not so much that we could stand to risk a large sum. Although it was a scary venture to contemplate given our finances, she quickly wore me down and almost before I knew what happened, the ink was drying on a lease for Connie’s shop, which she named Everything’s Coming Up Roses.
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