It’s a picture of me and Hall from only ten or fifteen minutes ago: covered in bells, sugar cookies everywhere.
Look who’s engaged!she’s typed over it.Congrats, Hal and Betty.
“It’sHall, andBettiewith anie, you plastic bag of lake water,” I say to my phone, rapidly playing catch-up in my mind. How in the hell?! I haven’t spoken to Callista in years. Someoneherehad to have snapped that picture, and then sent it to Callista...
The gears grind to a halt.
*
Chapter Eight
MARILOU IS FELIX’Sfourth wife, a Filipino competitive surfer and the mother of his youngest, a baby boy named Adrian. She loves the Marvel Cinematic Universe and seahorses, runs three miles along the beach every morning, and can speak three languages—all of which she’s teaching to her stepchildren. I have never heard a single judgmental word fall out of her mouth in relation to Felix’s myriad faults. She is, far and away, the most sensible woman my idiot brother’s ever met in his life, is light-years out of his league, and therefore it comes as no shock that he’s sabotaging their relationship.
I grab an orange from the kitchen fruit bowl and hurl it at him. Felix ducks. “Hey!” he yells, patting the top of his head. That orange never came near his head.
“The fuck are you doing, texting Callista?” I yell back. “You’re a moron.”
Felix colors. “I haven’t been texting Callista!”
“I’ve got proof.”
He beckons, agitated. “Show me.”
“Maybe I’ll just forward it to Marilou.” Right now, Marilou’s visiting her sister in New Hampshire and is going to fly in closer to Christmas to be miserable with the Watson-Hugheses. Hughes’s. Hughes’.
“No!” everybody yells in tandem. “Not Callista!” That woman’s name is a plague, a dark shadow on Hughes history. Grandma even hired a witch to keep her out of our lives for good, so I know somebody with the name Moon Goddess in their screen name is about to receive a scathing review on Yelp.
He bounds over. “Don’t show anything to my wife. She’ll leave me. I’m already paying a fortune in alimony and child support.” He eyes my phone beadily, as if he can snatch it and delete whatever evidence I’m harboring.
“Oh,Felix.” Mom’s head drops to one side in disappointment. “What are you doing? I thought you were finally over that.”
“You two were a nightmare,” Dad rejoins. “I can’t go through it again. I can’t.”
From a corner, Kaia strums her guitar and sings lowly, “Chea-ea-eating, chea-ea-eating, Felix’s wives are flee-ee-eeing.”
“I have to keep the lines of communication open with Callista,” Felix interjects. Loudly. Whenever he knows he’s in the wrong, he cranks up his volume. “We have...” His eyes shoot up to the ceiling as he calculates. “Two kids together. I told Marilou from the beginning that she has to respect the relationships I have with my kids’ mothers. Those are protected bonds, to ensure healthy co-parenting.” For Felix, co-parenting means he gets to see the majority of his kids one weekend out of every month. He also gets them all for the whole week of Christmas and then for two weeks in summer to celebrate his birthday.
“You don’t have any kids with Callista,” Athena points out. Felix glares at her. He was clearly banking on his relationship and co-parenting history being so convoluted that we’d mix up who the mothers of his children are.
Felix and Callista are a match made in hell. They get back together every other year or so, after sabotaging each other’s healthier relationships, only to break up all over again. They’ve divorced twice. The second judge begged them to stay apart. “After the last intervention, you swore you were finished. What are you doing talking to her about my engagement?” I snap. Hall, in the process of building Marshmallow Fluff snowmen with two of my nieces, freezes in place. Stares at the ginormous ring on my left hand, as though he’d forgotten our ruse. “Callista posted it all over the Internet! She has no business doing that! You had no business telling her!”
“Why shouldn’t I tell her about yourjoyful news?” he replies defensively. “What are you hiding?” He points at Hall, face contorting. “I don’t like that guy. I wanna know more about this supposed ‘movie.’ ” Hall’s mouth opens, but Felix plows on: “And you’re not even an actress, Bettie.”
Aren’t I?
“I’m telling Marilou,” I say prissily, twitching my eye at Hall and pointing my finger at the floor. He obediently hurries over to stand at my side for backup. “She deserves to know.”
“Do it. Do it, and I swear to God I will gouge your eyes out.”
“And so he swears to gouge her eyes out,” Kaia hums softly, fingers dancing up and down the guitar strings. “But you don’t need eyes, to see all his lies...” She bends over her iPad to scribble that line down.
“Stop it,” Mom snaps, smacking him on the shoulder. “Don’ttalk to your sister like that. And Kaia, stop narrating. It’s unsettling.”
I turn to my brother. “Felix, have you lost your mind? That woman tried to burn your house down.”
“The police never proved it was her,” he begins, and I have to tune him out, because no way am I listening to the Callista Burned My House Down, That Bitch, Or Maybe She Didn’t, We Might Be Getting Back Together, Except No We’re Not, I Saw Her Out With Somebody Else, I’m Suing Her For Burning My House Down story again.
“How long do you give it until Marilou finds out?” Kaia wonders. She’s investigating Callista’s Instagram page. “Marilou follows all your exes on here. Did you know that?”
