Roman

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The trailer was hot, stuffy, and smelly.

Of course, that’s to be expected when you’re sharing a double-wide in the ass-end of Oklahoma with three other men.

I was bored.

And cranky.

And horny.

And I needed a drink, but my brothers and I had agreed to keep the trailer dry, for Dad’s sake. Not like it’d do any good—the ornery old bastard was bound and determined to drink himself to death no matter what my brothers and I did.

Remington was out breaking horses with our neighbors, the Callahans, and he wouldn’t be back for hours yet, and Ramsey was out on a bender, and had been for a week, so I didn’t expect him back for another day or two.

Which left me here alone, with Dad, babysitting his grouchy, surly ass.

Speak of the devil—he blinked awake from his nap, and glared at me. “Rome. Get off your lazy ass and get me a beer, dammit.”

I flipped channels until I found a daytime replay of a celebrity gossip show, which I left it on, because there were often highlights of hot celebrity chicks.

“You’re on the wagon, you old drunk.” I heaved my carcass off the protesting, sagging, creaking, ancient couch and snagged a diet Coke from the fridge, tossing it to him. “No more booze for you.”

“Fuck that shit,” he snarled. “I been a drunk for thirty years. Ain’t quittin’ now.”

“Doc Mullins says you’ll die if you don’t quit.”

“Doc Mullins can kiss my ass.” He popped the top of the soda and slugged back half of it. “And who gives a good goddamn, anyway?” he groused.

“Uh, well, Rem, Ram, and me, for one.”

“That’s three, dipshit.”

“Yeah, but we’re identical triplets, so it counts as one.”

“’Cause you can only muster half a shit between the three of you?”

“We came back, didn’t we?”

He lit a cigarette and puffed angrily. “Yeah, and who asked you to? Not me, that’s for fuckin’ sure.”

“You had a heart attack, Dad. How’re we supposed to be effective smoke jumpers when we know you could keel over dead any minute? You’re all the family we got.”

He had nothing to say to that, and we watched highlights of a fancy dancy Hollywood movie premiere from the night before. The main actor, Dawson Kellor, I’d seen in a few flicks—and his wife was hot as fuck. The next to pose for photos was Harlow Grace, and standing with her was a tall, lean, dark-haired guy with green eyes; something about him struck a chord in my head somewhere, and I paused the image on the TV.

“He look familiar to you, Dad?” I asked.

Dad peered. “Maybe a little. Why? You know him?”

I shrugged. “Naw, but that’s why I asked you.”

“Well un-pause the fuckin’ TV, and maybe they’ll say his name.”

So we watched them pose and then the narrator rambled on about Harlow’s recent hiatus from acting:

“Recent photos of Harlow surfaced recently, showing her locked in what appeared to be a passionate kiss with this same guy you’re seeing her with now. She vanished more than two months ago after a lewd video was leaked online, only to be discovered in a dive bar in Ketchikan, Alaska, making out with this guy…one Xavier Badd. Who, apparently, is the youngest of eight brothers—”

A female voice cut in. “Eight brothers who are mighty damn fine, I might add.”

“His last name is Badd? What are the chances of that?” I paused the TV again, glancing at Dad. “Ketchikan. Ain’t that where you grew up, Dad?”

He was staring at the TV, frowning furiously at the close up of the dark-haired kid, who looked freakishly familiar.

“The fucker had eight kids?” Dad murmured. “Thought for sure I’d have beaten him there, at least.”

“Who?”

“Your uncle.”

I gaped at him. “Uncle? What uncle?”

Dad heaved himself out of the chair and shuffled into the kitchen, digging around in the cabinets.

“What are you looking for?” I asked. “I threw away all your booze.”

“Even the stuff I had hid in the cereal?”

I laughed. “Yeah, even that.”

He growled like the bear he resembled—six-four, heavy and huge and hunched, with shaggy hair that had once been grizzly bear brown, but had now gone gray. “Damn you.”

“What fucking uncle, Dad?” I demanded.

He gestured at the TV. “Him. The bastard.”

“That’s just a kid, you idiot. Can’t be more than twenty, twenty-one.”

Dad hurled the empty Coke can at my head. “I know that, you dumb sonafabitch. His dad—my twin brother.”

I shoved up out of my chair and faced my dad; we were of a height, and I had the build he’d had when he was young—bear-strong, bull-necked, heavy in the shoulders and chest.

“The fuck are you talking about, old man?” I snapped. “You don’t have a brother.”

“Fuck you know about it, boy?” he snarled back, straightening to his full height and reminding me why he’d been so feared in his time. “I had a brother, just never told you about him. He’s dead now.”

“You’re not making any damn sense.”

He glared at me, eyes bloodshot and sagging. “Get my trunk from my room.”

“Why?”

“You wanna know, or don’t you?” He gestured at the TV. “That kid is your cousin. An’ apparently you got eight of ’em.”

I groused under my breath as I fetched his antique seaman’s trunk from his closet and set it by his chair. He flipped the lid open and rummaged around in it, hunting through overstuffed manila file folders and stacks of paper bound with twine, and bags of trinkets and sheaves of old photos, until he found a tattered leather photo album covered in dust. This he opened, flipping through the pages until he found what he was looking for and tossed it onto my lap.

“Look there,” he said, tapping at a particular photo. “See what you see.”

One of a handful of old black-and-white photos featured two young men, big and burly and strong, thick-shouldered, with shaggy hair and beards and flannel shirts, their arms around each other’s shoulders, standing in front of what looked like a log cabin. They were identical twins, and looked to be in their early twenties. Happy, grinning, in the prime of life.

It was clearly Dad, and an identical twin I hadn’t known he had.

I stared at him. “You had an identical twin fucking brother, and you never told us about him?”

“Weren’t none of your business.”

I glanced at the other photos, all of him and his twin, and a stunningly beautiful woman with black hair, seen sitting on the lap of…one of the twins—I certainly couldn’t tell which.

“Who’s the hot lady?” I asked.

Dad didn’t answer, toying with a loose flap of Formica on the edge of the counter. “Your aunt Lena.”

“Meaning, the wife of the uncle I didn’t know I had? The one who’s dead?”

“She’s gone now, too.”

“She was gorgeous.”

There was a butter knife crusted with old peanut butter on the counter; and in a swift, angry movement, he hurled it across the room where it smashed handle first in the fake wood paneling by my head, and then fell to the thin, threadbare carpet with a dull thump.

“The fuck, Dad!”

He didn’t answer, instead stomping across the trailer, kicking the screen door open, and pacing out into the tall grass beyond the trailer.

I gave him a minute, and then followed him into the blazing Oklahoma air. “What the hell is going on, Dad?”

He bent and snagged a blade of grass, breaking it apart in his thick fingers. “You think it’s coincidence I had multiples?” he asked, his voice surprisingly quiet. “Liam and me were twins, as alike as you three are. We were as tight as the three of you are, too. Did everything together.”

“So what happened? Why is this the first I’m hearing of him?”

“What do you think could happened that could split up twins?” He gestured back at the trailer. “Lena happened,” he spat, and paced farther away.

“You fought over a woman?”

“Not just any woman. The woman. Lena Dunfield. Most beautiful woman either of us ever saw.”

“You loved her, and she loved him.”

“Bingo.”

“So you never spoke to him again because of it?”

He spat. “Ain’t tellin’ that story twice. Get your brothers back here and I’ll tell it all at once.”

“I have cousins,” I said, after a long silence, trying the thought on for size.

“Eight of ’em, it seems.”

“I’ve always wanted to visit Alaska,” I remarked, watching him for his reaction.

He laughed bitterly. “Be my guest. Just leave me out of it.”

I had eight cousins, living in Ketchikan, Alaska. One of whom was apparently shacked up with the hottest actress in Hollywood.

This could prove to be interesting.

I pulled out my cell phone and called my brothers and told them to get their asses back home. And while I waited for Rem and Ram, I did some Googling on my phone.

Apparently my long-lost cousins had a bar in Ketchikan called Badd’s Bar and Grille…

When the boys got back, demanding to know what the panic was, I shot them a wolfish grin. “Have I got some news for you.”

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