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Roxy Lalonde is eight years old and predominantly enjoys cats. You know this for a fact, because when Jane asks for the first time if Roxy can spend the night, she also asks if the cat can come along as well—"because Roxy won't be quiet about him if she doesn't have him!"
You politely tell her no, and that if Roxy is big enough to spend the night, she's big enough to go places without her kitty. Jane reluctantly agrees that you might be right, and bless her soul, she's still at the age where your word is absolute.
Roxy shows up that evening looking as perky as ever anyway.
You have a chat with her mother as the girls set up camp in the living room, and when Ms. Lalonde leaves, you slip back into the kitchen to whip up a little something for Jane and her best friend—you're immensely pleased with yourself for having the foresight, because when night falls and Roxy looks uncomfortable even after pizza and movies and board games, you show the girls the cat-shaped cake you've been working on with your whole heart. She squeals, and Jane delightedly asks if she can help cut the cake.
It's a good night for all three of you, you think.
Roxy Lalonde is thirteen years old, and on top of cats, she also has a budding interest in physics. You ask Jane, surprised, if that's what she's studying in school right now, and she tells you that, no, Roxy just works ahead of the pack because she's so darn smart! You're inclined to believe it, no matter how dumb she acts; any thirteen-year-old girl studying high school material at the very least must be sharp as a tack.
She proves it by coming over after school one day, and plopping down all her text books and papers on the kitchen table.
"These," she tells Jane, but you're in the kitchen as well so you hear it, "are the blueprints for my transmaterializer." You can't help but chuckle at the name, and you pipe up from your place at the sink and ask what it does—why she wants it.
It's just a juvenile's wish, you suppose, when she says that she wants it so she can be here all the time.
Roxy Lalonde is fifteen years old now—alongside cats and her growing, deepening, broadening pursuit of the field of quantum mechanics, she's taken up the habit of drinking. You don't know why.
"Hi, Mr. Crocker." She slinks into the kitchen at eleven o'clock on a Saturday night, with Jane surely sound asleep in her room. The two of you are, for all intents and purposes, alone, and this is the first time it has ever bothered you.
Roxy has grown into a beautiful girl, with soft blonde hair and eyes that are pink in the right lights--she wears enough cosmetics to make up for the fact that Jane's face has never been so much as touched by lip gloss, but you suppose with that much effort comes skill because she looks more beautiful than any airbrushed model.
You tell her to sit down, what's wrong?
"Can I have a glass of wine?" she asks, and she threads her fingers into her hair and sighs. For a moment, you feel as though you're two adults sitting at this table.
But then you remember, and tell her no.
"Aw, come on. My mom lets me drink whatever, whenever. It's not a big deal so long as I'm supervised, right?"
You say that her mother might find those things appropriate, but you are not her mother, even if she is over here often enough to be your daughter.
She winces.
Roxy Lalonde is eighteen years old and second in her class, and you can't say you really know what she likes anymore. She doesn't talk to you much nowadays.
The valedictorian ended up being another friend of Jane's, Dirk Strider--Jane herself was eleventh in her class, and the final member of their four-man-band was an embarrassing number that no one really wanted to tell you. Jake boasts that at least he's still in the double digits.
They all graduated, however, and that's the only thing that matters when you invite them all to the Crocker household after the ceremony. Jake says he can't, that he has an engagement with his grandmother that simply cannot wait, but neither Roxy nor Dirk seem to have similar familial obligations.
Despite your wishes for sobriety, Roxy gets progressively more drunk as the afternoon stretches into evening. You suspect she had something hidden in her purse, but it's no longer your place to pry. She's still the life of the party, with or without alcohol, and even when Dirk leaves with the explanation that Jake's grandmother is waiting on him as well, Roxy keeps Jane up and laughing until midnight.
You know your daughter, though, so when the clock finally strikes twelve, she picks herself wearily up from her seat so she can retire. Roxy waves and says she'll be there in a mo'.
This is the first time you've been alone with her since she was fifteen, and all those uncomfortable thoughts begin to resurface--you're thankful when she speaks up, at least until you realize she has nothing good to say.
"So," she begins, raising her eyes and fixing her hazy expression on your face. "You don't have an excuse anymore."
You ask what she means, because the only excuse you can recall ever making to her is disallowing her to drink, but she bypassed that by about a thousand miles.
She places a manicured hand on yours and you awkwardly silence yourself.
"Not that, Papa Crocks."
She kisses you without shame, and every excuse you've been subconsciously preparing for this exact moment dies in the face of logic and emotion both; her lips are too warm, too soft, and taste like cotton candy vodka. You lean in for a second longer than you mean to, pull back, and her hand has moved to your face.
"I'm sorry, Roxy," you say, and this is the first time it feels as though your words have truly had weight—as a person, rather than just as a father.
She nods and carefully drops her fingers. Things are quiet for a moment, and then she talks again.
"You didn't even think about it."
But you did. Whether you wanted to or not, you did think about it. You've been thinking about it whenever Jane talks about her or her accomplishments, and you mean it when you say, "you're a wonderful young woman and I don't want to be what holds you here."
"You will anyway," she states.
She kisses you again, and this time you don't stop her.