Jennifer stepped out of the shower at her mom, Darla’s house. With the wedding behind them, her mom and her new husband, Ryan, would be on their honeymoon for a couple of weeks, so Jennifer planned to stay there for the rest of her break from school. Finals were the next week, so she had most of the week to get all her things together and put them into storage before she would have to hit the books. As she rubbed the mist off the mirror, she heard a noise coming from downstairs. She stuck her head out of the door and wrapped a towel around her body.
“Hello?”
Jennifer waited. She figured it was her sister, though she didn’t hear anything else. Walking towards the stairs, she looked down and saw someone’s back in the kitchen. Jennifer froze, unsure what to do. Her hands went to the towel and clutched it to her chest. At that moment the man turned around and smiled at her.
“Hi, you must be Jennifer.”
The guy walked towards the bottom of the stairs. Although she was definitely alarmed, something about the man’s calm demeanor put her at ease. Come to think of it she vaguely recalled her Mom saying that she had given the house keys to someone or other. She had given them to an assistant or something.
“What are you doing in my mother’s house?”
“Oh sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t think anyone was home. I needed to pick something up for your stepdad, Ryan. You know, work stuff for when they are off in the South Pacific.”
“Oh, okay. How do you know who I am?”
“I figure you are his new stepdaughter and um,” he said, averting his face,” your towel is slipping.”
Jennifer looked down to see the top of her small breasts edging the hem of the towel. She quickly pushed the towel back up. She could see mirth in his eyes as he tried not to look. She could also see lust. She realized then that he was the same guy who had caught her in the coat room with Charles. Her eyes looked down at herself and she quickly started to back up towards her room to get dressed. Her cheeks were red and she could feel the blush going down her neck and chest.
“Well sorry to bother you. I will be on my way now Jennifer.”
She did not look back as she fled into her room and shut the door. She figured the guy must be some personal assistant or someone close enough to Ryan that he was invited to the wedding. Her day was not turning out to be as peaceful as she had hoped. After she heard the door close downstairs and she was sure he was gone, she went and bolted the front door. Jennifer did not need any more uninvited guests.
Jennifer spent the rest of the day and into the night going through her old things. Cleaning out her old closet was like going through a time capsule. Helping herself to the full liquor cabinet, she decided to take a break with a glass of wine as she looked through some old photo albums. As she sipped the wine and felt waves of nostalgia wash over her, she had a crazy idea. She wished there was a way that she could just buy her mother’s house. This place was where she grew up and it held so many happy memories, it just killed her to think they were selling it. But what could she do? After all, she didn’t have the kind of money it would take to buy it. On top of it Ryan seemed to be pushing the issue of the sale. Jennifer thought that maybe it was because he didn’t want his new wife to have a way out. Or maybe she was just feeling protective – or paranoid.
But she thought that Ryan was controlling and getting rid of Darla’s house would be like a guarantee for him that she couldn’t leave him. At least that is how Jennifer saw it. Jennifer never said a word though. How could she tell her mom that the guy she was going to marry might be rich, but he was also a class “A” jerk? Jennifer was sure that his son’s would be no better. She wasn’t looking forward to having to meet more rich assholes. She was sure that they had just as little class as their father did. The thought of holidays with the three of them looking down their noses at her was almost more than she could bear. Jennifer knew that she would have to get used to this new situation eventually, but at the moment Christmas was still eight months away. She could afford to maintain her morose outlook about it for a while yet.
Jennifer stewed about the wedding and then she stewed about where she was going to live after she got out of college. It had all just changed so fast and she was finding it hard not to blame her new stepdad Ryan. Before she left for college, her mother was dating some other guy entirely. Then, the next thing she knew, she got a phone call from Darla telling her that their mother was engaged. On top of that, it was to an entirely different guy that Jennifer had never even met, let alone knew anything about. There was a slight sadness mixed with a fair amount of irritation because Jennifer felt like she was losing her mother and gaining three pompous men in return. She knew she had not even met her new stepbrothers yet, but she was already convinced they would be jerks.
She tried to spend the rest of her break relaxing. She knew the material for the finals pretty well already. She wanted to visit with some of her friends that had decided not to go off to school, or had gone to college locally. Her friend Cindy was working at a local club, The Highball, so she went down there to get a few drinks the next evening. The more time they spent talking about old times the more homesick Jennifer became. Still, they had a good time dancing and laughing, just like old times. It turned out that her mother had left her a couple of messages while she was dancing. By the time she saw them, she was on her way home anyhow and didn’t bother checking them. Had she taken a minute to listen to the voicemails, she would not have been surprised to find the front door unlocked when she got back to the house.
Jennifer walked in slowly and paused, listening to see if she heard anything. By this time she was getting almost used to random people appearing in the home. It did belong to her mother and she just had to deal with her penchant for giving out sets of keys.
There was a light on in the back by her mother’s room and as she walked back there her hands found a glass vase to use, just in case. Having grown up in a safe neighborhood, and knowing her mom, she wasn’t too worried really. As she got closer, she could hear the shuffling of papers, but despite her feeling it would just be another random friend of her mother’s, it took her a moment to get the courage up to peer around the corner to see who it was. This was the downside of the free room and board.
Jennifer came around the door with the vase in front of her and, although relieved, was still shocked when she saw that it was her mother.
“Mom! What are you doing here? I thought you were on your honeymoon for the next two weeks? It’s only been three days.”
“I know baby, but Ryan had a merger deal that ran into some sort of trouble unexpectedly, so he wanted to get back and take care of it. I guess we’ll take the honeymoon later.”
Jennifer could see that her mother was hurt, but that she would never admit it. Her mom was all about appearances. She wanted everyone to think that it was all okay, even if it didn’t feel ok for her. Once again, Jennifer was not going to upset her fantasy world.
“So what are you looking for?”
“Oh, just papers on the house. Ryan wants to have his lawyers look at them and find a buyer as soon as possible.”
“I don’t understand why you have to rush everything. It is not like you guys need the money.”
Darla looked back at her daughter and shrugged.
“You know how Ryan is. He likes to get stuff done, no procrastination. That’s why he has been so successful.”
“No, actually, I don’t really know ‘how he is’ at all. All I know is what you tell me. I have only met him twice mom.”
“I know dear and he suggested that you come by and have dinner with us soon.” She said evasively. “I see that you met new your brother Charlie. I was so happy to see you two getting along.”
“Wait, what?” Jennifer felt the blood drain from her face.
“I saw you and Charlie at the table talking. He’s your new stepbrother, well one of them. He is the oldest and his younger brother stopped by after the wedding. Maybe you met him too?”
Jennifer’s heart rate increased dramatically and she felt like her throat was closing up. While she couldn’t speak from shock, her mind screamed for her to answer. She needed to say something to fill the void. And to find out if what she said was true. Jennifer could not imagine that the man who had his hands all over her at the wedding and whom she kissed so passionately was really her new stepbrother. How could that be?
“The one I danced with at the wedding is my new stepbrother?”
“Yes. One of them. I swear dear, it is like you are not even listening sometimes.”
Jennifer leaned back against her mother’s bed. Darla turned around with some papers in her hands and waved them like they were the winning lottery ticket. Apparently she had been searching for them for a while.
“I just don’t understand why you have to sell the house. Maybe I want to buy it.”
“Oh now Jenny, don’t be dramatic. I know you will miss it, but you don’t want this house.”
“But this was the house that we all lived in. Dad lived here and if you sell it, it will be like losing one of the last pieces of Dad.”
It was finally said. Jennifer was finally able to voice what she had wanted to say for a while. Her father had been gone for 7 years and her mother didn’t even say his name anymore. Jennifer’s older sister wouldn’t talk about him either. They acted like he had never existed and Jennifer just didn’t get it. She knew that was just their way of coping, but she couldn’t be that way. She wanted to hold on to the house. She felt like it was all she had left of him.
“Baby, it’s just a house. You don’t really want this old house, not really. It’s got too much wrong with it. The porch needs to be fixed and it needs a new roof.”
“I don’t care. I do want it. How much are you trying to sell it for?”
“I don’t know. I was going to let Ryan take care of all of that.”
“Of course you were.”
Jennifer was done talking. Her mind reeled from the thought of making out with her stepbrother, but her heart sank from the idea that her mother was really going to go through with selling the house.
“Well, when you find out let me know. I might go down to the bank and see if I can get a loan.”
“You know they‘ll never approve you Jennifer.”
“They might. I will figure something out. Thanks for the show of support though. So are you staying over there tonight, or here?”
Darla looked at her youngest daughter and sat down on the bed. The older woman had not realized how much all these changes were going to affect her. It was true that there were a lot of memories of her husband in this house. That was one of the main reasons that she was okay with selling it when Ryan suggested it. She couldn’t deal with all the memories and selling the place would mean one less painful reminder to deal with. For the most part she had made a kind of peace with it, but she hadn’t thought about how it would affect Jennifer.
“Honey, I know this has all happened so quickly, but I am married to Ryan now. So yes, I will be staying with him. You are staying here until you go back to school, right?”
“Yeah. I guess I will get a storage unit and get my stuff out of here.”
Jennifer did not want to sound bitter, but she was and she didn’t know how to let it go. She was more than just a little disappointed, she was devastated. Darla stayed to grab a few more items that she threw in a suitcase. Jennifer heard a noise downstairs and she looked to see the same man that had walked in the day before. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t been concerned with who he was yesterday. She was just so distracted with everything going on. She had figured he was an assistant or something. He waved slightly and she wondered if he had heard what she had said about his father. Or had he heard what she had said about her own father?