Home For The Holidays

I’m no sneak, and I hate anyone invading my privacy, but since my family was shutting me out, I had no other choice. I’m the one who set up my mother’s email and passwords along with all her social media accounts, so I know that she uses her and dad’s anniversary date for everything because if her head weren’t attached, she’d lose it. That date, along with mine and my brother’s birthdates, are about the only things she’s guaranteed to remember.

I jumped up from my bed and headed over to the desk where my state of the art computer sat and booted it up. I felt slimy going behind mom’s back and invading her privacy, but in a sense, I felt justified as well. I’m part of the family, and just because I’m away at college doesn’t negate my need to know shit. I’m amazed at the shit my brain can talk me into justifying.

There was nothing on her book of faces page, and she’s crap at Instasham, but her DMs were a gold mine. It was there where after hours of reading, I was finally able to piece together the fact that my brother was cheating on my sister in law with her best friend.

The first time I read the words, they didn’t register since they seemed so foreign to all I knew and believed. My brother and I were raised in the same house with the same dad who taught us both about loyalty, honesty, honor, and all the other happy shit you’re supposed to know as a functioning human being.

I dry heaved over the toilet for a good ten minutes after reading that before going back to my digging. For months mom has been talking to her sister, who has been her sounding board for as long as I can remember, so I knew all of the meat and bones of the situation would be found there between the lines of what the two women shared.

My aunt, who has sense, was disappointed in her nephew and worried for her niece in law. She, too, had been the victim of a wayward husband whose dick led him astray after straddling her with a couple of his bigheaded kids.

My aunt is an unconventional nut, though, and someone I hold in high esteem. Instead of fighting her ex for custody, she took half his shit and gave him custody, taking the kids for weekends only while she went back to school to finish the degree the asshole had told her she wouldn’t need since he was going to take care of her for the rest of her life.

Everyone called her the most horrible names for giving up her kids as if the dad shouldn’t have as much responsibility as the mom. He was the most pissed of them all. My aunt Sharon kept her head up and did what she had to do with mom and I cheering her on from the sidelines.

In less than two years, she finished her degree, landed herself a job, and then fought the bastard for her kids. After two years of having his lifestyle hampered since he had to sneak around with his mistress because part of the divorce agreement was that he couldn’t have her around the kids, he was ready to give them up, so there wasn’t much of a fight.

Two months later, aunt Sharon was married to the man she’d been secretly seeing, a man who was richer and a few years younger than her ass of an ex. I think the fact that uncle John was younger is the thing that really got under my aunt’s ex’s skin.

It didn’t help that his mistress always drooled over uncle John and things got even worst when my cousins started calling him dad. I love to see that shit because I’m a hot sticky mess who loves drama.

Anyhoo, since my aunt knows the bitterness of being cheated on and the hell that is a nasty divorce, she was ready to skin someone alive. And that’s where I found that snake, Tessa. Tessa had been introduced to the family by Deidre. She’d been her maid of honor, and I think the person she trusted the most outside of family.

According to what mom said, Tessa had seen Deidre kissing some guy when they were out together one night while Deidre was a few months pregnant. According to mom, Tessa had taken this news to Tom, who, without asking his wife for the truth, had taken it upon himself to take her friend’s word and decided that his wife, whom he loved, was a lying cheating slut.

Even me, not the one closest to her, saw the red flags in that story. Now mind you, I don’t know Tessa that well, but the few times I’d seen her, she reminded me of the mean girls from high school. Now me, being the born bitch that I am and am always accused of being, can see right through that shit from a mile away.