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“Look who’s all smug and secure now that she’s made up with her boyfriend,” Jolene said.
“My boyfriend is more of a giant fourteen-year-old,” I muttered. “Just as emotionally immature but somehow more dangerous.”
“Oh, honey, they’re all that way, too,” Carol Ann assured me again.
It was far from the small family shower I had planned, but Jolene was positively glowing with every exchange. We cooed and awed appropriately over every little outfit, crib sheet, and stuffed animal. Hell, I got a little emotional over Jolene’s shiny new wipes warmer.
By the end of the evening, my relatives were convinced that they remembered Jolene from family reunions when she a little girl. She was invited to join several Mommy and Me groups and a sewing circle. Mama considered her baby-shower-related social debts settled.
The boys were allowed back into the house after the ladies left, trailing cigar smoke and chip crumbs in their wake. Considering what Gabriel and I had been up to, I fully expected to burst into embarrassed flames at being in the same room with both him and my father. Let’s just say that we’d spent several evenings experimenting, and we’d figured out that I could read Gabriel’s mind if I was drinking his blood during exactly the “right moment” during sex. Unfortunately, his thoughts tended toward the possessive grunty male part of his personality. We were still working on deeper, more meaningful communication, hence the spontaneous combustion of parental shame.
I focused on helping Mama with the dirty-dish patrol. The heavily pregnant Jolene, despite having eaten her weight in sausage balls during the shower, tucked into a heaping bowl of ice cream and Canadian bacon. Daddy, Andrea, and Zeb made a furtive grab at whatever food Jolene hadn’t claimed.
When Daddy finally took a break from grilling Dick and Gabriel about their nineteenth-century childhoods, Gabriel took Dick into the parlor and handed him a little leather portfolio containing the deed to the Cheney family manse. Considering that they’d spent the evening gambling, I took this as a bad sign. But it seemed to be something that Gabriel had been thinking about for a long time.
“I want you to have it back,” he told Dick. “There’s no way I can ever really repay you for being the kind of friend Jane needed, but I can give you this.”
“I can’t,” Dick protested. “You know what that bet cost us. To take it back now would just make it all pointless.”
“Not to be rude, but it was all pointless,” I noted from across the room. Four eyes narrowed at me. “What? I said not to be rude. That’s like saying ‘God bless them’ right after you say bad things about someone. It means it doesn’t count!”
“What are they talking about?” Daddy whispered, clearly fascinated.
“Did Dick win at cards tonight?” I asked Daddy. Daddy nodded. “Well, he tended to play drunk when he and Gabriel were human, so he usually lost. Dick lost his family’s house to Gabriel. The pair of them are so stubborn that it’s taken them this long to get over it.”
“Wow!” Daddy couldn’t have been happier than a desperate housewife watching her favorite “stories.”
Gabriel cleared his throat. I had the good sense to seem sheepish and mouth, “Love you.”
“After all you’ve done for Jane, it’s the least I can do,” Gabriel said, pressing the portfolio into Dick’s hand.
“I don’t know what to say, son. I’m sorry we let it get this far. I’ve missed having you around the last hundred or so years,” Dick said, looking the most human he had since I’d met him. He looked younger somehow, more vulnerable. He took the portfolio but then looked up, his eyes pleading. “Can I still irritate the hell out of you?”
“I don’t know what I would do if you didn’t,” Gabriel said honestly. “I think you would sicken and die.”
They shook hands and gave each other manly punches on the arm. Dick announced to Andrea that they were moving up in the world, to a deluxe antebellum home that she could redecorate to her heart’s content. Then he lovingly fed her a deviled egg. Andrea blushed, especially when Dick tried to kiss her afterward. Deviled eggs are not a sexy food.
“Does this mean that we’re going to be double-dating now?” I asked. Andrea rolled her eyes.
Gabriel’s grin was wicked. “Yes, because I think it’s only fair that since Dick got my girlfriend into a bar fight, I should be able to take his girlfriend out on the town and put her in danger while he watches. Maybe we can go to a biker convention.”
Dick growled. “Hey, Jane fared better in that fight than I did.”
“I thought you weren’t involved in the fight with Walter,” Gabriel said, his brow furrowed.
“Not that one, the other one, with Todd. The one … you don’t know about.” Dick grimaced. “Crap.”
“You got her into another bar fight?” Gabriel exclaimed. “You were supposed to be looking out for her, not putting her in harm’s way! That’s it. Dick, Jane, from now on, all of your play dates are supervised. Andrea, sweetheart, I’m taking you sky-diving. It’s only fair.”
Daddy laughed and headed into the kitchen for another round of beers. Andrea climbed into Dick’s lap and suggested alternative activities, such as bull riding, swimming the Ohio River during peak barge traffic, motocross racing without helmets, and letting me cook for her. Dick’s scowl grew deeper with each suggestion. Having finished the world’s most disgusting sundae, Jolene was propped up against Zeb’s side, both of their hands gravitating to her enormous belly. Jettie was distracted from inventorying Jolene’s loot with a fond pat on the cheek from Mr. Wainwright.
I had a family. A family that loved me, without judgment, without reserve. And my parents had somehow fallen right into this motley crew and were enjoying themselves. Sure, there were blood relatives out there who couldn’t stand the sight of me, but I could fall back on these people. They would fight for me, kiss my booboos, take me out for tequila shooters when life got me down. I didn’t need more than that. All was right with my world.>“I decided it was best not to invite your grandma,” Mama said, carefully adjusting the folds of a chair cover. “And honey, if anybody has a problem with you being here, they can get the hell out of my house.”
I blinked back the mysterious moisture gathering at the corners of my eyes. “Thanks, Mama.”
“Who’s ready for some Texas Hold ’Em?” Daddy boomed as he came downstairs in his silly translucent green dealer’s visor. It went well with his lucky rainbow suspenders.
Dick was going to eat my father alive.
