Smoke, Furry, and Surprise Entry

        Marty leaned back against the leather headrest, staring at the vacant house in front of his car. As he touched his briefcase, he heard the clinking of the broken porcelain inside.

        Three meetings which advanced his legal department in no direction whatsoever had started his morning off badly. Tracking down a rogue client with an unhelpful and uncooperative mother had caused him to miss his only break for lunch.
         
        He grimaced, thinking of the surprise on the woman’s face as he returned to his office and found her in a rather compromising position. Crouched down on the floor over the remnants of his coffee mug, she offered a bleak apology, blotting up the mess across his calendar and his lengthy notes.
         
        He had lost it; throwing out the temp, he told her to make short of her substitution, in not such polite terms. As he had slammed the door, his eyes fell to the handle with the large chunk still intact. Scrawled in childish letters was the word, ‘Dad’. It never meant much, just kept around so the girls could see if they visited, but it lay in fragments and he felt the same: crushed.

         Before Marty set an entire foot inside the house, he smelled the smoke. Instinct and the fire detector’s squeal sent him running towards the noise. The stove light leaked over an open door, a tray of black disks, and Kasey’s startled figure.

        Her face was messy with tears and mascara, her hair a furry nest, and her lanky arms reached out so desperately to him, “Derek broke up with me.”

        Marty’s arms were quick to secure her, suddenly confiding, “Someone broke my mug today.”

        “Do you need a cookie, too, Dad?” she smiled and he laughed in her ear.