Joanna:How did the service go? Are you okay?
Sarah:Yeah, how’d it go?
Sloan:Xeni-boo! Twins about to murder each other. Brb, but I wanna hear it all. Love you!
Keira:Do you need anything?
Xeni thought about how surreal her day had been, the madness that she knew had just begun to unfold. The lies and the secrets. My god, the lies. The sounds of those damn bagpipes popped in her head as her thumb hovered over the screen. Xeni didn’t have the energy to get into it, not with all of them at once. And the superstitious part of her knew not speak on certain things until they were concrete and sure, especially when it came to money.
When she was ready, she could tell Sarah. She’d mastered the art of the tempered response. Then she could tell Keira and Shae and Joanna. And Sloan when she had time. When she was ready to laugh about it, she would tell Meegan. At the moment, she couldn’t feel the slightest bit of humor in the situation. So in her aunt’s dying words, she did the only thing she could do and stuck to the facts.
The service was lovely.
4
Xeni hoped sleep and a shower would help her find some clarity and peace with her current situation. Instead of a refreshed calm and the joy that came with the potential of a new day, she felt like she hadn’t slept in weeks. Her REM cycles had been filed with dreams that could only be described as stressful as fuck. She woke up dehydrated and, worst of all, angry. Her sour mood hung around as she got dressed and made sense of the hair she hadn’t wrapped before falling into bed. It followed her as she struggled to get the coffee maker working and seemed to triple when she finally checked her phone.
She could only fake it with the girls for so long. She read about Sloan’s kids and Meegan and Sarah caught her up on the most recent drama at school, but it didn’t take much for her thoughts to battle their way back to the surface and push the comfort she could only get from her closest friends to the side. She didn’t tell the girls she had to meet Mason first thing in the morning. She didn’t mention his name at all. She didn’t mention that she was saving as much energy as possible for the conversation she was going to eventually have with her mother. Instead she carefully directed the conversation back to their lives, claiming she needed the distraction. Soon. She’d tell them the truth soon.
After a while though, even their distractions weren’t enough. She wanted to know more about the new flavors Shae was introducing at her bakery, Sweet Creams, but Xeni knew if she stayed in the chat she’d say something. No, she’d blurt it all out. And then one of them would try to soften the blow and she’d snap at them because none of them had ever been in this situation. They would never understand. So she bowed out, claiming the jet lag and the emotion of laying a loved one to rest after such a long struggle. All that factored in, but those were things she’d expected and prepared herself to handle. Xeni didn’t expect to be the likely cause of a family drama that spanned three decades. Yeah, the sour taste of that was thick enough to survive the night.
She glanced at her phone and like magic it started vibrating in her hand. MOMMY. She hit decline, then switched over to the last text message she’d sent her mother. Her mother had jammed up the stream with texts that followed every phone call Xeni had ignored. She ignored those texts too. She’d keep calling and texting, and if Xeni didn’t answer or respond eventually, Joyce Everly-Wilkins would show up. That was the last thing Xeni wanted or needed.
I’m fine.
Please just give me some space.
XP
Kisses, Peanut. The sign off Xeni used when everything was okay. Her mother responded immediately, even though it was barely five a.m. on the West Coast.
Call me back tonight or
I’m coming out there.
You need to talk to me. XM
Kisses, mom.
“See?” she muttered to herself. Xeni slipped her phone into the pocket of her dress, then stopped in her tracks. She stood still for the few moments she needed to remember what she had been doing before her phone rang, then she walked into her aunt’s study. It only took her a couple of minutes to spot exactly what she was looking for on the bottom of a cluttered bookshelf. She plucked an empty manila folder off the top of a full box and wiped the dust on her thigh. She regretted that move for a moment, before looking down and realizing she could barely see the dust on her skirt.
She sat on the arm of a large wooden chair and pulled out her phone. She had a text chain going with Mason now. He’d checked in twice already, confirming the time when they’d meet at the Kinderack Town Clerk office and then again, asking if she’d had anything to eat. She appreciated the consideration, but holy hell did she want to be left alone, just for a little while. She made a promise to the universe that she’d be nice to him the minute the exasperated thought crossed her mind. She knew she could get bitey when she was stressed and she didn’t want to bite Mason. He was the only other innocent victim in this absurd plot.
Xeni just wanted a little more time before she had to turn off the rage and go back to being a polite, considerate person. She sighed and started typing, reminding herself that he was definitely was not at fault here. It was those damned Everly Sisters.
Hey just checking in.
Do you have the proper documentation?
She added the wikiHow link with its cut-to-the-chase descriptions of what they needed to apply for a marriage license in New York, then hit send. She slipped her phone back in her pocket and went to look for the keys to her aunt’s car. Those were easy to find too, hanging on a hook right next to the kitchen door. She grabbed them and went to the garage. She was leaving nothing to chance. Knowing her luck, she’d find the keys to twenty different cars and the garage would be empty. She’d have to marry someone else just to get the location of her aunt’s real carport, then she’d have to have three children of her own to get the combination to another locked door.
Xeni let out a sigh of relief when she found both cars were where they should be. She pressed the open padlock button on the Mercedes key. The single beep of the alarm, the click of the doors unlocking and flashing of the lights was the first bit of comfort she’d had all day. She just hoped it didn’t explode when she put the thing in drive.
Another wave of sadness washed over her as she turned the key over in her hand. Why was her aunt doing this? Her mother? What the fuck was she even supposed to call her now? Knowing she didn’t have time for this, she pushed the feelings down again. Numb was definitely the way to be for the foreseeable future and thinking about every detail of her family’s odd betrayal would only make Xeni feel anything but. She walked back into the house to grab her purse and her phone vibrated in her pocket.
A response from Mason.
Yes, I do.
