Touched by an Alien

checking to see if the coast was clear and just avoided my father’s fist slamming into my face.
    “Hey!” I jumped back, right into Martini.
    “Wow, amazing,” Dad said. “I was just about to knock.” He stepped in and noticed Martini. Dad went from genial to furious in less than one second. “What is he doing here at this time of the morning?”
    I thought very fast. “He knew I didn’t know there were clothes here for me and came to give me a head’s up.”
    “In his sleepwear?” Dad’s voice was sounding more like a bear’s growl.
    “I’ll just let you two chat,” Martini said as he slipped around and out, using, I was pretty sure, a little boost of hyperspeed. He mouthed, “Sorry,” at the door, and then he ran down the hall, for sure using hyperspeed. Nice. He was out of the situation, and I was stuck alone with my father about to go all Cotton Mather on me.
    “Dad, it’s not what you think.”
    “Oh, I’m sure it’s not. I’m sure it’s worse. You know they’re aliens? From another planet? What are you thinking, Katherine?” This was bad. Dad only called me Katherine when he was beyond furious.
    “Daddy, really, you’re overreacting.” And these days I only called him Daddy when I was in total panic.
    Dad was about to explode when a throat cleared. We both looked at the door and saw Mom standing there. “Sol, I think you need to calm down.” Mom was on my side in this? I was ready to sob with relief.
    “Do you know who was in here with her, in his pajamas?” Dad sputtered.
    “I’d guess it was Jeff,” Mom said, giving me a “we’ll talk about this later” look.
    “Exactly! And as much as I’d like to believe otherwise, I’m sure he spent the night here!”
    “Only part of the night,” I admitted. “Because I’d had a nightmare, and he came in to take care of me.”
    Dad was about to rant on when Mom put her hand up. “Jeff came in because your nightmare woke him up?” I nodded. “What kind of nightmare?”
    I sat down on the sofa. “The horrible kind.” I told them both about my dream. It wasn’t any less vivid even after all the great sex and religious revelations.
    Mom was quiet when I finished, but Dad spoke. “Kitten, why didn’t you come to us?”
    I shook my head. “Dad, I couldn’t get out of bed, and I had no idea where you were. It was so awful …” I felt tears start to come, and I stopped talking. I’d cried enough last night.
    “Sol, Jeff’s an empath, a very powerful one from what Paul and Christopher told me. And he’s very interested in Kitty romantically. When she woke up from a nap in New York, she panicked, and he came running. I think it’s understandable he’d do the same thing last night.”
    “But he was still here this morning,” Dad snapped.
    Mom heaved a sigh. “Sol? Do you remember the day we met?”
    Dad got a nostalgic look on his face, but his smile was very cat-satisfied. “Yes. Exciting day.”
    “Very,” Mom said dryly. “And, if you’d care to recall, I spent the night with you. For your protection.”
    My jaw dropped. “You and Dad slept together the first day you’d known each other?” Sluttiness ran in the family. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or grossed out.
    Mom rolled her eyes. “Shockingly, yes. We had sex in order to conceive you, too. Hope you can deal with the surprise that you weren’t a virgin birth.”
    “But that was us ,” Dad protested.
    At this, Mom and I both laughed. My father was many things, but a hypocrite wasn’t one of them. He realized what he’d said and laughed, too.
    “She’s twenty-seven years old, Sol,” Mom managed to gasp through her laughter. “And, to shatter another ridiculous illusion of yours, Jeff wouldn’t be the first.”
    Dad sighed. “Yeah, I know. I had to figure at least one boyfriend in college managed to break her resolve down.”
    I managed to keep a reasonably innocent look on my face. I figured this wasn’t the time or the place to share that I’d lost my resolve earlier than college.
    Mom chose not to shatter this little fantasy of my father’s either. “Right. So enough with the huffy father routine. We have a matter of national and global security at hand, as well as at least two entities trying to kill us, or worse. We need to work as a team, not spend our energies bickering about natural human and, apparently, alien drives.”
    “And yet you’re okay with her becoming intimate with a space alien?” Dad was going to take