chapter 4

Ashleigh wasn't exactly looking forward to moving back in with her folks. Unlike SOME parents, Ashleigh's folks were pretty much easy-going when it came to rules. And for the most part they treated her like an adult. So it wasn't as if she was going to take a trip back to the bad old days when she was a teenager, those days weren't bad at all. It's just that she felt like she didn't fit it.

The best way to describe Pat and Chuck O'Hara was to call them hippies. Fact is, when you came right down to it, Ashleigh was more like the parent and her parents were more like the kids. They pretty much did their own thing. Chuck almost always wore a pair of shorts and a tee shirt, thus showing off his pretty impressive paunch of a belly. When she was at home, Pat flounced around naked. All those year of heavy pot smoking and intense waves of the munchies had left her with such a full figure that she just didn't feel comfortable in clothes. When she ventured out in public, she'd wrap herself in a sarong that showed off her hour glass figure to the max. Needless to say, Ashleigh spent a good deal of her teen years ashamed about her parents' appearance.

Pat and Chuck's parental philosophy was pretty much, "do your own thing", which always made Ashleigh feel uncomfortable because she was a rules and regulations kind of girl. While all her friends groused about the strict curfews their parents imposed, Ashleigh would have LOVED having to be in before midnight on school nights.

Things hadn't changed all that much over the years. Pat and Chuck were never concerned about things like school, grades, career, boy friends, sex, drugs or pretty much anything else. And they still weren't. So Ashleigh knew she could come and go as she pleased without a lot of questions. She could do what she wanted and it would be OK with Pat and Chuck. She just never seemed to be able to share in the sheer joy of living that was the hallmark of the O'Hara household.

From the minute she moved in Pat knew there was something troubling Ashleigh. Even when she was a little girl, Ashleigh always had a preternatural sense of confidence about herself. She always seemed to know where she was going. But Pat could definitely feel a sense of aimlessness about Ashleigh. Worse, Ashleigh had always had a distinct sense of direction. Even if she didn't have a specific destination in mind, she always gave the impression that she was bound and determined to get SOME PLACE! That sense of direction was missing.

Chuck could tell something was wrong with his little girl the minute she sat down to dinner. Ashleigh had always been a very disciplined eater. A certain amount of protein, a certain amount of carbs, no more and no less. So when he plopped a big bowl of vegan chili in front of her and she just slurped it all down, eating a half dozen dinner rolls with lots of butter as well, Chuck knew that the Ashleigh who came home wasn't exactly the same woman he had known all her life.

What gave Pat and Chuck a glimmer of hope for their little girl was that she not only wolfed down a tremendous amount of food, she actually seemed to be enjoying it. So maybe Ashleigh HAD changed. Little did Pat and Chuck realize just how MUCH!!