Obviously, they grabbed their plates and forks at once and nearly bumped heads going for the pan I placed on a hot pad on the coffee table.
So, when they sat back and were stuffing their faces, I launched in.
And I was so wired, I didn’t even take a seat before doing it.
“I’m assuming you know some stuff, don’t know other stuff, so I’m gonna run it all down.”
I got four nods from four heads with mouths chewing.
Well…
Hell.
“Right, I don’t know where to begin,” I admitted.
“Start at Auggie,” Lottie said.
“How’s your mom?” Hattie asked at the same time.
Evie and Ryn were still chewing.
Auggie probably should be saved for last because, odds were, that discussion would take the longest.
So I started where all of this started.
Or at least the recent part of “this.”
Hearing about my mom.
“I don’t know how Mom is,” I told them. “I haven’t seen her. I’ve called every day since I heard the news. I’ve asked to see her. She evades. And then Auggie told me that not only was my sister set to marry Reverend Clyde, who’s seventy-five years old—”
Gasps all around.
“—and she will be wife number six—”
More gasps, but with hers, Ryn sucked in so much breath, she started choking.
“—also, my dad apparently has three other wives as well as my mom. Something I did not know.”
“Holy shit,” Lottie said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “So I’m kinda at that place where I’m thinking I’ll never be invited to go and spend time with my mom. And if Mom’s as sick as Saffron says she is, she isn’t feeling up to meeting me somewhere. Even here. And onward from that contemplation, I’ve realized I haven’t been to their place for a long time. So long, it’s been years. They come here. We meet at restaurants or parks. They show up at Juno’s events. They try to get us to go to church. And now I’m thinking that’s probably because my dad doesn’t want me to run into his other three wives.”
“This is…” Evie started but didn’t finish.
“Insane?” I filled in.
“Yeah. That was the word I was looking for,” she muttered.
“Unh-hunh,” I agreed again.
“You know, the fundamental Mormons do that and it’s part of what they believe,” Hattie pointed out carefully.
“No shade,” I said to her. “But if this was that, first, my father, mother and sister would not hide it from me. They never cared what I thought about how they practiced their faith. As you know, they’ve been trying to drag me into it, or back into it, since I left. If that was a healthy part of it, they wouldn’t hide it. And second, my sister isn’t choosing a man to be with who she loves who will also offer her sister wives. She’s being married off to a guy old enough to be her grandfather.”
“Have you talked to her since Aug told you this?” Ryn asked.
“No.”
“So how do you know she doesn’t want it? I mean, it’s unusual, with that wide of an age gap. But there are May-December romances that are real,” she went on.
“Well, mostly I know because we’re sisters. Growing up, we shared a room. And she might be religious, but she’s still a woman who used to be a girl. And when she was a girl, she told me not only about the boys she had crushes on, she told me her hopes and dreams about her future husband. And some old dude was not any part of that.”
“Mm-hmm,” Lottie hummed then said, “I hear you.”
“Whoa, Pez, this is a lot,” Hattie noted.
It totally was.
“I haven’t even scratched the surface,” I shared.
I got a lot of big eyes at that and then they all settled in.
“Auggie found my long-lost brother,” I declared.
Even if they’d just kicked back from the last bit o’ news, when I made that declaration, I actually physically felt them brace.
Then again, they were my girls. They knew I not only loved my brother, I missed him.
I didn’t hold back when I gave it to them.
“He’s an ex-con, a serial husband, though not in the way his father is, in the way he divorced the three women he married since he took off.”
“Oh shit,” Ryn murmured.
“He’s also a wife beater in the sense he did time for it,” I finished.
“Oh Pepper,” Hattie whispered, aghast.
“Yup,” I said, popping the “p” in order to be perfectly clear how much I felt her aghast-ness.
Ryn reached long for a positive spin. “Okay, silver lining: I suppose it’s safe to say your brother isn’t invited to the prayer circle now, so you no longer have to worry about that.”
Evie elbowed her and shot her an eye roll.
“I know, lame, but I got nothing else,” Ryn muttered under her breath.
“Right, and now…do I tell my family my brother is that big of a mess?” I inquired. “Not only did he have three wives, he has five children. He’s apparently a shitty business partner. And in his spare time, he jacks around landlords and gets in bar fights.”