Gage (Men of Honor 1)

“What do you need son?” How is she always this cheerful no matter when I call? I want that for my Holly. No fucks, no cares, no nothing given.

I filled her in on the widow’s latest trick and what I knew she was up to. Of course she knew what was going on since she and Lucille spoke every day and I was usually their topic of choice.

“I already told you I’d make you a deal. Get me that grandbaby I’ve been hankering for and I’ll nix the bitch.”

“Ma, stay outta my bedroom business, and watch your mouth. You know dad will have a fit if he hears you talking like that.” Reality TV has turned my mother into a potty mouthed harridan.

“Oh please, your father knows better than to mess with me when I’m in one of my moods, and this chick is fast becoming one of my least favorite people.” I listened to her now familiar rant about the widow and what she’d like to do to her and all women like her if she could get her hands on them.

“So what else is Holly doing today?”

“Just lunching with the girls and I just found out this one is planning to ingratiate herself. I have a meet that I can’t get out of so you’re up at bat.”

“I’ve got the bases covered boyo don’t you worry about it.” Ma loves Holly, she loves her, because she loves me, and want only what’s best for me as any mother should.

She protects my girl like a lioness with her cub. It doesn’t hurt that she’s my carbon copy and won’t take shit from anyone. “So the little twit is out for trouble huh, what is it that she’s after anyway have we discovered that?”

“Who knows, it can’t be money because the old man left her well off, then again his kids are trying to get that back. Maybe she’s just one of those people who just like to start shit in other people’s lives.”

“Or maybe like every other woman with a heartbeat she finds my boy irresistible. Whatever the case you’re a married man and that’s just tacky.” That’s my ma; she thinks everyone is after her handsome boy. Who am I to gainsay her? “Just do me one favor, no physical attacks.”

I have to put that out there because ma is a scrapper. She might not look it, but boy does she have a temper. Dad has had to pay I don’t know how many people over the years to keep her out of the courthouse, because when she gets pushed too far she blacks out or some shit and starts swinging.

The first time it happened I was a kid and some other kid shoved me on the playground and scraped my hands and knees. From what I remember ma had knocked hell out of the kid’s mother and it had been a big thing. I guess people don’t expect women of high society to have that in them. They’d be surprised.

One of the reasons she’s so protective of my baby is because she knows what kind of childhood she had. My in laws are cold detached human beings who had their first and only child late in life. They are devout…something, and neither of them are too well off in the looks department.

So it’s a fucking mystery how they ever produced something as perfectly gorgeous as my girl. I personally think she was switched at birth. If that’s true then whoever did it did her a great disservice. Having been homely all their lives, they had no idea how to deal with a child that was just plain beautiful from birth.

So their answer was to try to repress her all her life. They seem to have a grievance against her beauty and treated her as some sorta pariah. The only thing that saved her from total abuse was the aunt who had been a member of the sorority she’d joined in college.

Aunt Emma was completely different from her brother. She’s a lively vivacious woman who although not as beautiful as my baby, wasn’t anything to sneeze at. She’d been more worldly than her brother and his wife and had sheltered her niece from their more archaic ideas when it came to raising their daughter.

It took me a while to piece this all together, and in the end it was Emma and Lisa who’d given me the backstory. Holly would never say a word against her parents.

Ma on the other hand goes on a rant every time their names are mentioned. So this, along with the fact that my ma knows how much I love her, makes the claws come out for ma.

“I’m not promising anything, if she gets out of hand I’m gonna smack her silly.”

“Ma!”

“You asked for my help Gage Sievers you take what you get.” She hung up the damn phone.