Chapter 3

“This breakfast is pretty damn good ... who do I have to thank for that?” I looked at my twins, niece, and nephew now.

“All of us, but the twins really took charge of it,” Eric informed me, his eyes definitely noticing those girls.

I took note of that fact, in case once he got a little older he wanted to be kissing cousins or something. He seemed a good kid and might make a great boyfriend for my daughters. Yes, I thought in plural terms. It was quite evident that they were a team. It somehow just sounded wrong for them NOT to share a lover, as if unnatural or forced. My nephew was nervous around girls, but I could relate to that from when I was a teenage boy. Maybe a pair of ginger twins would be the best thing to ever happen to him, but not yet. Let him mature a little more first.

“Well, then, my compliments to the chefs, especially my ginger princesses here,” I declared, even as I hugged and kissed the twins.

“Thank you, Daddy!” Carrie shouted, even as she surprised me with a kiss on the lips.

That was probably meant chastely, I thought to myself, just as I did when Charlotte imitated her sister. It was just a father-daughter kiss, that’s all. I had barely discovered that I had these two young ladies as my own flesh and blood. Taking them as lovers honestly didn’t cross my mind. The whole novelty of fatherhood was still fresh with me, after all.

“We love you, Daddy!” Charlotte added, both of them affirming it with their nods.

“I love you, too, girls. It’s nice to finally meet you and I hope to be the best father possible in the four years I have left before you turn into grown-up ladies. Too bad we can’t stop the clock and give you fourteen more years before you’re big girls!” I embraced them a little longer, only to notice that they sniffed my neck.

What was that for, I wondered in my mind. I shook my head as I finished my breakfast with a little Irish Cream in my coffee. I wasn’t the only one to indulge in the Bailey’s, either. Megan did so between getting syrup out of Sansa’s hair and wiping bacon grease off Eric’s hands. She gave me this knowing look that said, “yep, this is a part of parenting that you mostly escaped.” Honestly, though, right then, I wished that I had the chance to clean up little messes for my brats.

Megan sensed this, as did Bella, Sally, Kelly, Mary, and even the guys to an extent. There was just something bittersweet about finally meeting my daughters, only to have missed key years of their lives. Most of their childhood ... already gone, and I wasn’t there for any of it. Megan played the good big sister and ruffled my hair a little, hugging me very close as I choked back unshed tears that part of me still screamed that I dared not shed. That part of me was Dad ... the part that shouted that tears were undignified, effeminate, and childish. Men should never cry ... never cry.

Yeah, Dad was a real nasty piece of work sometimes. In some ways, he could be shockingly progressive for a Baptist songleader, even working together with a local black congregation on joint-musical projects and everything. On the other hand, he did push that gay music minister out of the way, didn’t he? His principles could be very convenient to his own ambitions at times, particularly when there was a salary involved. The music ministry post was a fully paid one at that church, full as it was of rich or reasonably prosperous, if rural, white folks.

Karl Geist was like that, very ambitious to a fault, even leaving the Catholic Church for the Baptist at least partly because there were so few opportunities as a layman in the former. He certainly took the musical training that he got in the Catholic choir program and put it to good use for his own ends, that was true enough. He was an engaging, sociable guy most of the time, but he was often a bit of a hard-ass about some things, despite his own peccadilloes. He banged a number of his choir ladies and one pianist, but God forbid his wife had a lesbian affair with the neighbor!

Dad also drank like a fish, though he never admitted that in church. Most Baptists were dry as bones, after all, and Pastor Nate Kilroy often pointed to his own shot-up hand as a warning about booze. The man had destroyed the tissue and bones in his left hand and it would never function normally again, all because he handled his shotgun and a jug of homemade wine at once as a sixteen year old boy. Dad, being of good Bavarian stock, still loved his beer and schnapps, after all.

Well, enough about that, right? I tore my thoughts out of the past and back to the present, to my life with this great expanding family. I had two lovely daughters, a voluptuous fiancee, a loving sister (very loving in fact!), a niece, a nephew, and splendid in-laws, each of them ex-neighbors. I should be happy about how my life turned out, especially amidst such a deadly pandemic that I had thus far survived. At least I didn’t die in an arsonist’s fire like my parents and theirs, either.

Just then, I got a notification of a friend request from, of all people, Lauren Logan. She must have noticed the change of relationship status on my Facebook page that declared me engaged to Bella McDougal. This was quickly followed by friend requests from Kim Gilquist, whoever that was, and then Darlene Marvin-Jones. The hyphenated name really stuck out at me, too. Was she married or suddenly an Anglophile?

The ones from Lisa Grimaldi and her sister Michelle were also quite jarring, given that the former did the stunt in the bathroom and the latter with the locker. Out of sheer, morbid curiosity, I accepted all of these requests, hoping that I wouldn’t regret them in time. My messenger lit up in a hurry, too, with congratulatory messages about my engagement to Bella, of all things.

“Wow ... you’re a popular guy, aren’t you?” Sally teased me as she noticed that some of my work colleagues also sent congratulations to my wall.

“How do you feel about that?” I taunted her back, even as Kelly whispered something very risque in my left ear.