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Maybe if the hallway wasn’t so big, the situation wouldn’t have been so spooky. But well, here they were. Chess would’ve preferred to live in a home that was smaller and more manageable, but this was Tazeem’s dream. Back when he was poor and had only imagination and self-drive to motivate him, he’d promised himself that if he ever had money and a family, he’d get a mansion with all the trims (swimming pool, oversized backyard, basketball court, etc).
Chess didn’t have it in her to kill his dream. So in the end, she agreed to this monster of a mansion in exchange for a small, cozy condo in Spain when they were ready to retire.
Unfortunately, having an oversized house had put other ideas into Tazeem’s head. Now that they had a lot more space, he opined that they needed more people to fill up that space. And by more people, he meant more babies.
And to that suggestion, Chess had only one response.
No. Nope. Hell no. Absolutely not.
Maybe if they had even one girl to even out all the testosterone in the house Chess would’ve considered it. But Tazeem kept giving her boys. After Jay, they’d gone on to have Christopher and Keith, all of whom Chess loved with all her being. She would throw herself in front of a bus in a heartbeat for any of her boys. But the fact was… they werea lot. When Tazeem was thrown into the mix, it was like having four needy, noisy bobcats just nipping at her feet all day long.
No more kids for her.
Still searching for the other occupants of her home, Chess walked the long length of the hallway, stopping by the game room, living room, and dining room to see if they were in there. They were not. In the kitchen, she found their housekeeper, Tweenie.
The middle-aged, chubby, dark-skinned woman was vigorously chopping up a leg of lamb.
“Tweenie,” Chess called out while glancing at her watch to confirm that it was eleven a.m. “Isn’t it a little early to be making dinner?”
“This isn’t for dinner.” Tweenie didn’t even look up as she fiercely cut into the meat. “It’s for lunch.”
Chess frowned. “I thought we had leftovers.”
“Chelsea, you know your boys got hollows where their legs are supposed to be.” Tweenie scooped up all the cut meat and dumped it into a glass bowl. “Jay and Frankie ate all the leftover chicken for breakfast.”
Chess’s jaw dropped. “But those were two chickens.”
“Yes,” Tweenie answered with a short laugh. “They had one each.”
“Jesus!” Chess shook her head in disbelief. “They’re going to eat me into bankruptcy.”
Even though she’d been warned about teen boys’ appetites, Chess could never quite get used to it. Jay was already bad enough, but whenever Frankie visited, the two acted like starved anacondas. Anything in their path would get gobbled up.
Despite everything that had happened with Derrick, Chess and Kendall remained good friends to this day. Kendall had, thankfully, beat her cancer and even gone back to teaching. She and Frankie lived just a couple of minutes away from the Khans.
Frankie and Jay were now seventeen-year-old seniors, but they were still joined at the hip. They were always either at Chess’s house or Kendall’s house doing something together.
“Where are they anyway?” Chess asked.
“They went upstairs about thirty minutes ago, but I don’t know…” Tweenie tilted her head and glanced at the roof as if trying to hear the boys moving around upstairs. “It’s too quiet, right?”
“It is.” Chess suggested, “Maybe they went out with their father.”
“No.” Tweenie pointed out the window. “His car is still there.”
Yup! Tazeem’s Tesla was still parked out in the driveway as was Jay’s Passat and Frankie’s Sonata. Evidently, everyone was home.
That only made Chess more nervous.
“It shouldn’t be this quiet,” Tweenie voiced Chess’s unspoken worry. The older woman’s eyes widened. “Do you think they’re trying one of their experiments again?”
“Oh god!” Chess gasped. “I hope not.”
The boys’ last experiment had led to a concussion, a broken leg, and having to replace a whole load of torn sheets.
Chess’s eight-year-old son, Chris, had decided that he wanted to see if he could climb down the side of the house using sheets like they did in the movies. Jay told him that was dangerous and refused to let him do it. But then, in a predictably dumb and very Jay-esque move, Jay decided that the experiment was still necessary for the progress of humankind. Since he was the oldest, he graciously offered himself as the test subject.
Suffice it to say, the experiment didn’t go well.
