Chapter 35

“So, does this make Stick my brother as well?” I asked Gavin as we wrapped things up at the Purdy house and Caroline joined us for our next venture.

“No, it doesn’t. He’s half-brother to Claudia, Caroline, and their other sister, Candice on their mother’s side, just as you’re their half-brother on your father’s. Yes, there’s another sister. It seems that Stick’s parents were in what’s called a ‘lavender marriage,’ meaning that his father was also fond of cock. That apple didn’t fall far from the tree at all. They were actually more intimate than Stick and his wife, though.

“It’s just that Raymond and Mildred Adams tended to share lovers. They had a saying. ‘The couple that strays together, stays together.’ This arrangement was broken, however, by her affair with Clifford. He had no interest in Raymond at all and repeatedly rebuffed their attempts to entice him into that kind of threesome. Raymond gave up and began taking on lovers of his own, many of them in far riskier situations, leading to HIV and later AIDS. He died of pneumonia on March 23,1990, at just forty years of age.

“Because intimacy had ceased between Mildred and Raymond at just the right time, due to their growing distance and increased quarrels, she never contracted HIV and she is still alive, of course. Once he was diagnosed, though, she cut your father off and focused what little time she had left with Raymond as his caregiver. After he died, she waited a few weeks and became every bit as promiscuous as ever. She didn’t resume her affair with your father, however, as he was furious with her for dumping him.

“Raymond surely knew that the girls weren’t his, but as he always wanted daughters and he didn’t want them destitute, he claimed all three of them. Clifford was relieved about that fact, given the scandal involved, and he never bothered to acknowledge them until the near end of his life. Anyway, that’s why you have three sisters,” Gavin elaborated.

“Why did Stick join the Klan, though? He seems to have gained some prominence in it, too,” I pointed out.

“Well, first of all, he was significantly older than his sisters, and you could ask him, but the truth of the matter is that he was lured into it by Oliver. Once in it, he was elevated by Billy Foreman to an extent, largely due to a sheer lack of competition. Billy saw Stick as sort of the ‘youth leader’ of the local Klan, to whatever extent one existed, even if he was also known to be gay. It was an open secret in the local Klavern, of course, Oliver and Stick, and tolerated only because they stuck to each other instead of buggering any lads,” Gavin explained that mystery as well.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Stick shrugged now, “the Klan didn’t have a lot of options. People just weren’t joining them. That Clinton guy gets in, though, it’s likely to change.”

“Not on my watch!” I declared for my part.

“Nor mine!” Uncle Curtis insisted.

“Stick was also given his name, not just because he’s so skinny, but because he was the reason for the Adams marriage. A shotgun wedding, old-school, or rather a ‘stick wedding,’ hence the name, yet they made it work until Daddy showed up. If only Daddy hadn’t been such a prick about it all,” Caroline insisted.

“Amen to that, sis!” Claudia agreed firmly.

“Well, just so that you know, you have cousins now. Deanna and Erin are your first cousins, in fact. They’re also practically my sisters and we all intend to be adopted by Uncle Curtis after he marries Aunt Molly. So, you’re my sisters, yes, but so are they. That makes them your sisters, too, right? And I have a third sister from your group, Candice, you said? Well, I’ll have to get her pregnant, too, no doubt of that,” I declared as we approached Stick’s home now.

“The door’s locked, but there’s always a key left near that plant there,” Stick told us, grabbing the house key in its expected place.

“For when you want to sneak in and out, right?” I chuckled as I slapped his ass.

“Um ... yes,” Stick admitted.

Much to our complete shock, we walked in on Krista Adams, Stick’s long-neglected wife, in the arms of a much older and heavier man. Even more to my astonishment, Aunt Molly seized the machete from Chesty, and apologized to her quickly. Then my aunt hacked the man to death with it as well as her dagger. Pretty quickly, Uncle Curtis caught on and joined her, making short work of the bastard. Krista shrieked, pissed, and ran out of the room in terror. We were all quite stunned until Aunt Molly showed me the man’s driver’s license.

It was Calvin “Cal” Hopkins himself ... Aunt Molly’s rapist, Randy’s buddy, and Erin’s biological father. I nodded, severed the man’s head with the machete, and handed it to Lenny for him to mount it somewhere. I also wrote down the word “violator” on a piece of notepad paper that I found on the Adams study desk for him to attach to said head. That was thankfully a word that existed with the same precise meaning in Latin and English alike.

Raymond Adams had apparently been headmaster of a fairly respected private school in St. Albans, which must have required something of a commute. Stick, by contrast, had been a drifter and grifter, among other things, always restlessly chasing pyramid and Ponzi schemes rather than steady work. His main focus had been the Klan and his love affair with Oliver, anyway.

When we tired of waiting for Krista to get her courage back, I sent Chesty and Sarah in to seize her. They gladly dragged her, kicking and screaming, out of the shower, roughly dried her off, and then tossed her at my feet. Everyone in my rather large group, which crowded the hallway of her rather large, two-story house, passed her down their ranks now and slapped her, per my orders. She was a nice, healthy shade of pink by the time that we got her downstairs into the kitchen and I bent her over the island.