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Stephanie. May!

Chapter 49

Ira

There are certain moments in life that make you question whether you’re secretly living in a reality show. I am having a whole day of that.

If my mother’s pandering to the hearth gods wasn’t enough, I now have a sight I would never want to see in a million years standing right in front of me.

My father. And Stephanie May.Together.

Let’s get this straightened out, shall we? Stephanie, a woman I saw a total of two times and had sex with once. Stephanie, a woman even younger than Kathleen and looks like a centerfold model when done up right. My father, the man who raised me and continues to do business with me. My father, a man even older than Silas Allen, who has silver hair and talks at length about his arthritis.

My father. My ex-date.

Together.

It’s all I can do to keep from confronting them, but my glare is enough to make my father uncomfortable, and my mother, the master of aggressing Donovan Mathison, is so visibly disgusted that I think she might get up and choke her ex-husband.

“Fuck you,” she mutters, and looks away, past me, a flash of pain contouring her fair face. It’s not enough that they’re still supposedly in love. My father’s tastes for younger women lives on even to this day, and my mother is getting a powerful reminder.

I take her hand beneath the table, and it seems to soothe her for now.

“Everyone, this is Stephanie.” My father, who is apparently the most oblivious man in the room, continues to smile while Stephanie pats him. “Stephanie, you already met Silas here. This is my ex-wife Carolyn, our Ira, and their… well, I think it’s their girlfriend, Kathleen.”

His chuckle bounces off the walls to an emptier silence. The four of us are sitting here, each stewing in his or her own misery. My mother, slighted because the man she on-again off-again loves is gallivanting about with a young hot blonde. Silas Allen, trying not to imagine me defiling his daughter every chance he gets. Kathleen, clearly uncomfortable in this situation.

Me, irate that we’re here to begin with, and now flummoxed at the presence of Stephanie May with my father.

Father pulls out a chair for Stephanie, right across from Kathleen. She sits down, grinning like she’s won the lottery. The look she serves Kathleen is laced in a phoniness that makes me even more uncomfortable, and I only thought that was possible if my mother busted out pap photos of Kathleen and me in compromising positions.

Stephanie smiles at me. It’s not polite.

Now that we’re all here, my father summons lunch, a three-course affair beginning with fruit salad and culminating with salmon steaks served on spiced rice pilaf. The chef who works here is the same one I grew up with, and the tastes of this familiar food should make me feel more at home. They don’t. I can’t take my eyes off my father and his supposed date.

Doesn’t he know? Is this some sort of gotcha? I have no idea what game my father is playing. Maybe the idea of his progeny having a serious girlfriend is making him feel old. Stephanie, though? How did they even meet?

Wait, I don’t want to know.

The food only keeps us silent for so long. Once stomachs start filling, the conversation has to start flowing. Except nobody knows what to talk about. I came here expecting the fifth degree regarding my relationship with Kathleen, but instead we’re all staring at the hot young starlet and the rich old man. All of us annoyed for different reasons.

Even the rich have the most agonizing family dinners.

“So, was I the only one who didn’t know about this?”

Silas’s voice shoots right into me, like a knife meant for my spleen, or kidney, or some other vital piece of my body meant to awaken my mortality. I know that voice. I’ve heard it a few times from other fathers over the years. Never thought I’d hear it from Silas Allen, who can look like a beast when he’s put into father-bear mode.

I don’t dare look at him. Nobody is in a hurry to answer. Not even my mother, who caused this whole mess.

“I told you, Daddy,” Kathleen begins with a sweet tone I’ve never heard her use before. “There wasn’t anything to tell, yet. As Ira said, it’s not like that.”

He glares at Kathleen, then me. “Don’t ‘Daddy’ me. You’re implying something I never want to think about.”

Yeah, that glare is reserved for me. “You’re implying she’s fucking you with no repercussions. Now I have to kill her.” I’d count on my mother jumping in front of the line of fire, but I think she’s preoccupied with a different kind of anger.

“Now, Silas,” my father says with a haughty laugh. “Let’s be realistic. They’re adults.”

His words have barely sunk into our ears when my mother makes every matter worse.