There's been so much teasing without any solid conflict that I'm kinda expecting:
At some point the girl's going to have some catharsis and figure out how to at least deal with her Mom until she can ditch the bitch. In my mind this is basically the climax. When that comes to a head the dad will realize how vulnerable she really was and wake up and they will both stop leaning on each other. The dad waking up will allow the daughter to see how much shit the dad's been putting up with - a very pleasant chain-reaction conclusion.
Dad can put himself back in the market(?) or just be comfortable in his own skin, daughter can live a normal life, and mystery smoker's meddlesome shenanigans will net him the recently freed puppet.
There's been too many fake-outs in this story for me to really care about the drama anymore (though I was never that hooked to begin with), so I'm pushing for a nice ending.