At home we found Mike sitting on the couch watching tv, and when we returned cheerful and laughing, it seemed to disconcert him. He arose, saying he had work to do in his office, and Ashley followed him shortly. As we had discussed while eating, leaving him alone was out of the question until the two of us could sit down with him and work out some solution.

Ashley came running back upstairs thirty minutes later, quite agitated. She said Mike was just sitting in front of his computer, and it didn’t even seem to register to him that she was there. I offered to try to speak with him, but Ashley said it wouldn’t do any good, and when I insisted, she got angry. I tried to placate her by saying I had no intention of making the situation worse; all I wanted at that hour was to get him into bed, and we would deal with whatever fallout came of it in the morning.

I walked downstairs, and Ashley had described Mike accurately- he was sitting morosely in front of his computer. A card came was displayed on the monitor, but Mike wasn’t playing- just staring straight ahead. He refused to come up to bed, despite my pleas, and after fifteen minutes I gave up. As I was preparing to leave, Ryan called on the business line. Ashley had run away again.

That awoke Mike from his stupor, and we ran upstairs. We phoned the sheriff’s department to report the runaway and spoke to a deputy. Halfway through our report, she put us on hold for a few minutes, then came back on the line to say there were deputies in our neighborhood responding to a complaint of a neighbor. She asked for Ashley’s description and put us on hold again. Presently she returned; the neighbor had reported a teenage girl matching her age and looks knocking on his door asking to use the phone. This girl had told the neighbor that her father tried to rape her.

Mike and I stared at each, aghast. Mike might be guilty of a whole host of imperfections and bad judgments, but there was no way he would rape his daughter. Besides, I had seen Ashley just moments before she ran off, and there was nothing to suggest in her appearance or demeanor any sort of attack. This, I felt sure, was classic Ashley- an attempt to use any means available to win her way into a stranger’s home so she could call friends to rescue her.

As we waited for the deputies to arrive, Mike went outside on the driveway to meet them, and I phoned Marilyn to inform her of the runaway. She was instantly alert and started to ask me about my day with Ashley when the deputies arrived. Instead, she asked to speak to one of them, and I put a woman deputy on the phone, explaining that Ashley’s mentor was on the other end, and I halfway expected Ashley to try to make her way to Marilyn’s house.

The other deputy took the runaway report, looking skeptically at Mike. Ashley’s history was getting very familiar to me and easy to explain. I told my part of the story- going to Aftercare, out to eat and returning home. No, I assured the man, there was no way Mike had tried to rape Ashley. I had seen her with my own eyes directly before she ran, hadn’t I? I’d know, wouldn’t I?

The lady on the phone kept nodding and writing stuff down, and something in her attitude filled me with dread. I don’t know if I was having a premonition of things to come, but I definitely felt that there were things going on beneath the surface I wasn’t aware of. Given the tone of my Del Taco conversation with Ashley, I again thought of what she’d wanted to say to me at the end but didn’t.

The deputy passed the phone back to me, and she and her partner left to look for Ashley. I finished my talk with Marilyn. She began by asking me about the day and what had transpired to cause Ashley to leave. I told her about going to Aftercare and our discussion at Del Taco. She listened carefully as I spoke of Ashley’s fears of over-attachment from Mike, the various behaviors she’d seen in him that made her wary and her fears for his safety.

Extraordinarily, Marilyn explained she learned about most of these problems weeks ago. Ashley had come to her in tears, worried about the family situation and what she was calling her father’s obsession over her. Marilyn had explained to Ashley that I was the only person close enough in the family who could help her, and she had to overcome her mistrust of me in order to elicit my aid. My discovery that Mike was manipulating me and controlling the family’s emotional climate was only a first step along the path of reconciliation with Ashley, and standing alongside to protect her was the final goal.

I discussed the runaway and rape charge, and again, Marilyn said she expected it. Yes, it was another attempt to look at herself as a victim and use it to the best of her advantage, but it was also much more than that. Having some experience with abuse in her own childhood and her sisters’ families, she was familiar with dysfunctional families. She was hesitant to classify Mike as sexually abusive, but she certainly felt his conduct bordered on it. Isolating Ashley, discussing her sexuality with her, agitating Ashley with intimate details about our marriage and refusing to accept the best for her (keeping her out of residential treatment and home with him) were all symptoms of an unhealthy relationship. And I had unknowingly played right into Mike’s hands by bowing out of my obligation for her. I couldn’t comprehend how this had happened in my own home, under my nose without my knowing. And the answer that came back to haunt me was that I had to share some blame because even now I didn’t want to believe.