Chapter 1

“Vic, honey, could you come over here, please?” my mother’s rather strained voice asked me, reflecting her fatigue and frustration.

No, I didn’t live with Mom these days, nor Dad, for that matter. I was just fresh out of the Army, in fact, and crashing from motels to friends’ pads and couches. Originally, the plan was for Uncle Sam to pay my way through college. Maybe it was too many times watching “Good Will Hunting,” or maybe too many visits to the forward areas in Iraq or Afghanistan for my specialty or something, but a standard liberal-arts degree held less appeal by the day.

In any case, I was visiting Mom for a week prior to the wedding and probably a weekend after it. I was twenty-two years of age, did one term and certainly didn’t care to re-enlist, not after what I’d already seen and done. So, yeah, I was unemployed and homeless, but not planning to settle in Mom’s basement or any such thing if I could avoid. I’d take it over the streets, but not much else. Technically, I was still in the Army, but on terminal leave, if you know what I mean.

Mom wasn’t exactly old, but she was no spring chicken, either. She was. She was forty-seven, so some gray showed up in more than a few hairs, but she still had plenty of her natural sandy color left. She had the same hazel eyes as ever, always a bit exasperated at the antics of her pride and joys, but anxious to avoid confrontations over “petty stuff,” as she called it. There was the classic maternal guilt trip now and then, but that came with the territory and she didn’t abuse the privilege any worse than your average mom.

“Alright, Mom, what’s the matter?” I followed her voice to her den, where she was at her desktop and had a very confused look on her face.

“I think that I might have deleted some photo files by accident, but I don’t know how to retrieve them, or even if I can,” she showed me on the PC.

“Oh, that, yes, no files like that are entirely lost while in the recycle bin. Here, let me get them out of that,” I not only retrieved the files, but also showed Mom how to recover them in the process of doing so.

“My hero!” Mom beamed, “I’d ask Mike, but you know how he is.”

Oh, yes ... Mike ... my stepfather! I didn’t mention him yet, did I? What a fucking character! Now, some folks might just get mad at him for being the “homewrecker” who ended Mom’s union with Dad, but I knew better than that. Mom and Dad were both pretty sad and things between them were strained for some time when they split up the year that I graduated high school and then enlisted in the Army. Mike no more broke up our home and family than Wendy did months later. If there was anything between them at the time, it was unlikely that they acted on it until the divorce was final.

Yeah ... Wendy, Dad’s first post-divorce girlfriend, who lasted a good, solid six months before she proved to be too much of a drama queen for him. If Mom’s issues were dealbreakers for Dad at last after so many years of marriage, Wendy had enough red flags to cause a riot full of bulls in Spain. She was pretty, sexy, certainly younger than Mom by far, but she also expected Dad to pamper and reassure her far more than he was ready to do for any woman.

Dad just wasn’t cut out for paying that kind of emotional toll. She needed a man at least a decade younger, keener on being her walking tampon or simp or whatever. Dad was a true Boston Brahmin and didn’t have time for such tomfoolery. Patty, a real Irish Catholic girl, was fine for a while, but then she wanted him to convert and get a church annulment from his marriage to Mom so that she could marry him with the blessing of the effin’ Vatican or whatever. Dad flatly refused to deny that his marriage to Mom had been lawful and valid, though.

“It was a fuckin’ marriage, Patty. It was real. Just because it failed didn’t make it a sham. I won’t deny the love that Nicole and I had for each other just because we couldn’t make it across the finish line. We loved each other, we cheated on each other, we hurt each other in other ways, and we grew apart, but we also raised twins together. We built a home and family together. We had a life. We had a marriage, okay?” Dad asserted.

Two hours later, Patty had blocked Dad on all social media and wouldn’t return his phone calls or texts. Yep, she ghosted as well as dumped him. It was a shocking new experience for a dinosaur like Dad, not used to such things in the wild world of the internet. It hurt him a bit and his pride, but he moved on in time and found Cheyenne, his blushing bride, the lady of the hour when it came to these imminent nuptials. Yes, this was Dad’s wedding ... and yet Cheyenne had been gracious enough to invite Mom to attend.

I really hoped that Dad would be at least as happy as Mom now, if not happier, but time would tell with this new stepmother. At least by now I had some experience in being a stepson, thanks to Mom’s remarriage. I was also stunned at how quickly Mom got hitched after the divorce, but evidently, Mike was a good enough salesman to convince her to ditch the alimony in favor of a new husband.

To say that Dad was relieved was understating things, even if the two grand per month wasn’t the grand larceny that you see in some cases. Dad’s divorce lawyers were good enough sharks to shave off probably half or more of what he might have paid. Mom’s divorce attorney was, well, Mike. This was a fact that didn’t endear him to Dad, or me, or anyone else in the family. While he got a formal invite, I wasn’t too sure that he would actually attend the wedding.

That was another reason to doubt that he had an affair with Mom, though she had been unfaithful as had Dad in the past. Lawyers have pretty strict rules about not screwing your clients, after all. Something about legal ethics, which sounds to me like an oxymoron such as “honest crook,” but I suspect that this is the kind of rule that most lawyers uphold. They’re weirdly honorable about that kind of thing, much like mafiosi about their own code of honor.

Sorry to digress ... where was I again? Oh, yes, Mike. As you can see, the man was a sharp and keen lawyer aka bloodsucker, but he was no effin’ good at computers at all. How he got by in this day and age, in an office job, without being more tech savvy, is beyond me. Maybe it was just his age, being even older than Mom at fifty-two years. Maybe it was learned helplessness as a form of petty revenge against the younger and more computer literate people in society. He was good at manipulating people into doing things for him, I knew that much from the limited time that we spent together while I was on leave in the past.

“Ah, yes, Mike, how could I forget?” I rolled my own eyes, getting a rather sharp look of dismay from Mom.

“Victor Hugo Grant! I brought you up better than that. A wife complaining about her husband, that’s a wifely prerogative, even in front of others, something that your father never grasped or accepted. She should always keep it to a minimum, though. Major beefs, not the petty strife. A stepson complaining about his stepfather, however, that shows disrespect.

“I know that Mike isn’t your favorite person in the world, but try to respect him for my sake, if not his own, please. Sorry to preach. It’s just important that you remember this when it comes to your place in the family. It’s not to sit in judgment of your elders,” Mom abruptly broke off her little rant to get up and kiss me on the cheek.

“But you criticize my love life,” I noted, not being quite ready to let that issue go because it irked me (and I’m a stubborn prick ... thank my genes!).

“Or lack thereof, something that I hope to see mended by this wedding. Good, respectable girls will be there, not the sort who throw themselves at the troops in such a brazen manner. Oh, they’ll still swoon at the idea of a veteran or military husband, but will keep their dignity and pride on some level, which is healthy in a wife. Or girlfriend, for that matter.

“Anyway, no more of those petty quarrels between us, please. I know that my opinions are rather unsolicited and annoying at times, as is my advice, but let’s try to remember that we’re a family and we love each other. It’s clear that you have some harsh ideas about my own choices that I’ve made over the years, so I guess that we’re even.

“I wonder if you’re so jaded because of my divorce from your father. That would be very sad indeed. We didn’t lose faith in marriage and family, so why should you?” Mom commented as she set up a light lunch for both of us ... and my twin sister Victoria (yes, they did that to us! Curse you, Blake Edwards!).

“Hey, what did I miss? More drama?” Vicky, as we called her, asked us.

“Nothing new. Mom doesn’t approve of my life choices and the feeling is mutual,” I observed calmly enough with a kiss to her cheek now.

Vicky sighed and then insisted on kissing both of us on the lips.

“Cheek kissing is for germaphobes and other weirdos. You can kiss your parents and siblings on the mouth. There’s nothing wrong with it, as long as you don’t use tongue like this!” my twin demonstrated what “not to do” by doing it ... Frenching her own brother.

“Oh, sis, really? I would remind you that I AM a germaphobe, in case you missed it, twin sister of mine,” I retorted while we sat down to eat our chef salad.

“And a weirdo, but you’re MY germaphobe and weirdo, so it’s cool!” Vicky stuck her tongue out at me now.

“Anyway, on the good news front, Vic was very helpful with the deleted photo files. Retrieving them, that is. He’s very smart with that computer stuff, your brother, you know. Well, smarter than old fossils like Mike and me, anyway. I wouldn’t be shocked if he got a computer or tech job of some kind in the near future,” Mom declared.

“Yeah, well, assuming that MIT accepts me. Or De Vry or something like that. And the GI Bill covers my tuition there, of course, without a bunch of student loans. I’m not going to some Ivy League place. It’s not for me. My major has to be for something that I can use. And I have to be able to afford to live while going to school.

“And I don’t count ramen noodles as living, you know. I’ve heard too many horror stories by some friends lacking major protein because they have to live off glorified noodle soup, minus the chicken. Even the Army treats you better than most colleges do! Don’t even get me started on their cafeterias. Any decent mess cook would be ashamed to work there,” I grunted.

“That’s why I live with Mom. She knows how to cook and is teaching me in prep for culinary school. I’m gonna be a chef, bro. Then I’ll make enough to pay off my student loans from Yale or at least make a dent in them. Unless I can get an MRS degree with the right accreditor,” Vicky joked about getting married to a sugar daddy.

“See now, that’s a great argument for bringing back home ec with a vengeance. And not just for girls, either. At the risk of sounding woke, that is. It’s a marketable skill, cooking, if you know how to exploit it,” I agreed, even as Vicky did her best to make Mom and me both laugh with funny faces.

It worked, of course. The ice was broken, the tension between Mom and me relieved for a moment, if nothing else. It had lingered in the air longer than either of us wished, anyway. Trust my silly, goofy twin sister to make both of us crack a smile and even laugh for a moment or two. Weird as she was in her own way, Vicky hated animosity and conflict and often used humor to thaw out a chilly atmosphere. It was a clever end run around our stubborn pride, if nothing else worked.

“So, Mom, do you ever regret having your tubes tied after us?” I teased her.

“Not particularly, no. You two were quite the handful as it was. I love you, don’t get me wrong, but between Vicky throwing a hissy fit when we wanted to send you to Groton and forcing us to keep you in the same school ... and you being nasty to Mike from day one ... You’re definitely a true son of E. William Grant. Vicky is, well, Vicky ... I don’t know where she gets her flower power, but she’s a hippie chick born far too late or something.

“Did you really leave for the Army because of him? I mean, you enlisted pretty damn fast after graduation, didn’t even look at the colleges that your father and I ... and yes, Mike, suggested. Is Mike really that much of a dealbreaker for you? You know, we didn’t plan for Groton to get rid of you. It would have been a hardship. We just wanted you to have a bright future and a great college. That’s the point of prep school,” Mom sighed a bit there.

“Mom, are you saying that you’ve missed me?” I teased Mom a little.

“I think so, but her aim is likely to improve at this range,” I heard Mike behind me.

“Haha, dear, very cute! Maybe someday this silly, macho feud between you and my son will end and I can get more peace and harmony at home. You know, it’s the men who typically want some peace and tranquility at home at any price, even to the point of being manifestly unfair at times. Anyway, have some chef salad. I’d brag on it, but I made it, so you can give me as your wife the benefit of the doubt until you taste it,” Mom skirted the issue of tooting her own horn.

“Don’t mind if I do. Honestly, Nicki, you’re a damn good cook, you know that. You don’t have to fish for compliments, you know,” Mike groused slightly about Mom’s constant need for some validation.

“You don’t have to, either, in a courtroom ... or a bedroom, but you still crave the adulation and you know it. Oops, I think that we’ve made things awkward with my twins here, speaking of sex. Look, kids, sex isn’t a bad thing. Even casual hook-ups can be good now and then, but only to let off some steam between serious relationships. They’re like snacks. Relationship sex, though, is much better. That’s the wholesome, satisfying meal,” Mom asserted.