Page 4 of The Triple Threat

“You’ll see,” Lynn-Ann, her identical twin sister added.

“Shit.” When they were both together there was no getting away from them. They were like a pair of Black Widow spiders waiting to pounce. “Coming.”

I strode across the hall to the den where they usually set up camp for the day, wondering what crap they were going to get me to do for them now; move some furniture around maybe, do some gardening for them, or more than likely run into town and get them something or other that would be highly embarrassing. Last week’s errand had been for hemorrhoid cream, for their eyes and not their asses, apparently.

I loved my pop’s eldest sisters I truly did, but they were each as crazy as bed bugs. The fact they were identical twins only added to the craziness, they even dressed exactly the same—more often than not like they lived in the 1940’s. You see their favorite film was The Notebook and they just loved how Ali dressed. What they failed to understand was that they were almost sixty-five and Rachel McAdams had only been twenty-five when she played the part. They couldn’t quite pull it off. That being said, they didn’t give a shit and it wasn’t unusual to see them at church wearing pillbox hats, faux leopard print swing coats and satin gloves.

The rumor in the family was that they weren’t actually my grandpa’s kids, but that Grandma had them out of wedlock when she was only sixteen years of age, which was why there was a twelve-year gap between them and my uncle Miller. Then came my pop followed three years later by my Aunt Sherilyn. Pop said no one ever dared ask Grandma though and that Grandpa doted on them much more than the rest of his kids, so they never ever found out if it was true or not. They sure were different to the rest of the Delaney clan though, so I thought it was probably gospel. The crazy old sweets now lived with me and Pop.

A few years back they lost all the money that Grandpa had left them to a fucking crooked real estate guy. He’d persuaded them to invest in some big housing complex that didn’t actually exist. They were devastated mentally and financially, so Uncle Miller offered to take them in. I think he felt it was his duty as the next oldest child, plus he had a huge six- bedroom house on a horse ranch over in New Mexico which he ran with my cousins, Turner, Mackenzie and Anderson. Thing was, my pop had always been the twins’ favorite, so when Mom passed away of a heart attack at just thirty-nine, the sisters procrastinated no further about New Mexico. They told Pop they were moving in to look after us. Truth be told I think Uncle Miller and his wife, my aunt Debra, heaved a sigh of relief, but at least they had them to stay for three weeks every summer. As for Aunt Sherilyn, well she and Uncle Brad moved to Australia a little over three years ago with their twelve and ten-year-old girls Aurelia and Aurora. That meant for forty-nine weeks of the year Pop and I were the ones who had to cope with the crazy, which was why I wasn’t particularly surprised to see Pop in the den holding his arms out to his sides and being measured by Lynn-Ann.

“What’s going on?” I asked, forcing a smile and acting like I didn’t know that we were being measured for Christmas sweaters, just like they did every year exactly a month before Thanksgiving.

“It’s a surprise,” Janice-Ann chimed. “We can’t tell, can we, Lynn-Ann?”

“No, we can’t, you’ll have to wait and see.”

I looked over at Pop as he smiled down at his sisters as if they’d hung him the damn moon. He really did indulge them too much at times.

“You’re going to love it.” Janice-Ann clapped her hands together.

I doubted it very much. Each year was worse than the last and seeing as last year’s sweater had displayed a naked Santa except for his hat, dread rushed up to me and slapped me across the face. Pop and I had laughed at the time, but when Santa’s penis was all we could see when we looked at each other, it kind of spoiled our appetite for pigs in blankets when dinner was served.

“Arms out.”

I held my arms to the sides and smiled at my aunt as she began to measure and then write down the numbers down in a notepad.

“When you going to get yourself a nice young girl, honey?” Lynn-Ann asked as she held the tape against Pop’s arm.

“You talking to me or Pop, Auntie L?’

She giggled and smacked at my pop’s arm indicating for him to lower it. “You Hunter, we all know he’s never going to get another girl to take his heart like your momma did.”

“There was that nice girl, Kitty,” Auntie J offered. “You were real smitten with her.”

Pop sighed. “I was fifteen and she moved to Florida with her folks. Broke my heart though, gotta be said.”

“That’s not the point,” Auntie J replied as she wrote down one of my measurements. “The point is all the girls you’ve met recently are far from nice.”

“Hey, what about Wendy?” Pop looked affronted. “She made you a chocolate cake.”

“Hmm which tasted like she’d scraped it from the cow shed,” Lynn-Ann muttered.

“I didn’t like hearing her making all that noise either. We couldn’t get to sleep could we, Lynnie?”

“No, Janice, we could not.” She poked Pop in the chest. “I have no notion of what you were doing to that girl, Jefferson, but whatever it was she felt God could help her in some way.”

Pop’s face drained of color as he looked down at his sister as she wrapped the tape measure around his waist. I grinned at Auntie J who was giggling quietly to herself.

“She was better than the other girl though,” Auntie L announced.

“Which one?” Pop asked gruffly, dragging a hand through his silver hair that was swept back like he was some damn hipster popstar—the good-looking bastard.

“Now, what was her name?” she mused. “You know Hunter, the one with the…” She rolled her hands in front of her chest to indicate what I assumed was big boobs.

“Oh, Carrie,” Pop said with a sly grin. “What was wrong with her? She never even stayed the night.”

“She didn’t need to.” Auntie J moved around to my back, stretching her tape. “She got what she needed in the barn.”