by Tinnean
“That Dad fell in love with you?” Wills slid an arm around her shoulders and urged her to lean back against him. “Are you kidding? I started pushing him to ask you to marry him almost as soon as you moved in. We had a housekeeper’s suite in the house in Seaford,” he told me, “but since Alice had one of the upstairs bedrooms, we decided to rent it out.”
“And I was lucky enough to get it.”
“Yeah. Do you remember the night Dad knocked down the jerk you’d gone out with?”
“Yes. Jack had come this close to kissing me.” Her thumb and forefinger almost touched. “And when he didn’t, I was certain I’d ruined things, so I called…. Good grief, I can’t even remember his name! Talk about a mistake.”
“Dad had made you cry.”
“Jack did? What did he do?” It was fascinating, listening to stories of when my lover had been a little boy.
“Nothing. He was just trying to be adult about the whole thing.” Jill sent a rueful smile in my direction. “I was twenty. I thought if Jack didn’t want me, I’d just find someone who did, but Luke… that was his name! Luke got grabby. It was a good thing your dad was there.”
“Yeah.” There was nothing rueful about Wills’s smile; it was hard and gritty. “Twoey and I were there too.”
“Twoey had the sweetest nature,” Jill told me. “Most of the time she just looked like a big, dumb mutt….”
“But not then. She was ready to tear his throat out.”
“My protectors.” She patted the hand on her shoulder. “I seem to recall you were holding a baseball bat.”
“You bet. We were ready to help Dad, especially after the jerk landed a punch. He knocked Dad down.”
“Yes, and Jack told me to call 911. Luke was such an—” She cleared her throat and changed what she’d been about to say. “—such a dope. He thought your father wanted the police for backup.”
“I remember.” Wills grinned at me. “What Dad actually wanted was an ambulance for him. He beat the living crap out of him.”
“And then dumped him on the front seat of his car to sleep it off.”
Wills grew serious. “But still, Dad made you cry.”
I swallowed a smile. My lover could be stubborn when he wanted to.
“Wills, you have to remember he was twenty years older than me.”
“He still is.” He turned to me. “I was so angry with him for scaring off the one woman I’d known would be perfect for both of us.”
She tugged on his hand. “Listen to me! He didn’t want anyone—including me—to think he was taking advantage of me.”
“Okay, fine, but he made you cry. I told him if he couldn’t love you he’d at least better not scare you off, because I was going to marry you! I’d loved you since you were my babysitter, and I wanted you as part of our family any way I could get you.” Her eyes welled up with tears, and Wills’s expression became panicky. “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t mind me.” She waved toward the tissue box on the night table, and Wills pulled a few out for her. “It’s being pregnant. Lately I’ve been crying at the drop of a hat.” She held out her arms and waggled her fingers, and Wills hugged her, taking care not to squeeze her too hard. “The child of my heart,” she said softly. “I’m so glad! You’re getting a real gem, Theo. Treasure him!”
“I do.”
“You’re not supposed to say that until the wedding!” Wills teased.
“I can’t wait. I have to say it.” I met his gaze. “Until the end of my days.”
“Ah, Theo….” He rose and pulled me into his arms.
Jill cleared her throat. “Now tell me. What will you two be wearing?”
SO IT turned out we got two surprises that Easter, and we wound up with one and a half extra guests—Pat and the baby Jill was carrying—we hadn’t been counting on.
But as Wills was fond of saying… and as I was coming to realize with his family… the more the merrier.
Chapter 27
EASTER WITH Wills’s family was amazing.
Celebrating Greek Easter with my family the following Sunday… not so much, although it didn’t start that way.
We sat around in the living room. Faster lay sprawled across my lap, and I scratched his ears. Wills, who sat beside me, was talking food with Ma. He didn’t cook beyond nuking a mean frozen dinner, but he knew good food. He’d loved looking through the binder of his mom’s recipes that Jill and Alice had put together for his birthday, and he and Ma talked about Greek versus Italian dishes.
“You come for Mother’s Day? I make something very special.”
He smiled at her. “We’d love it, Mrs. B.”
The doorbell rang, and Casey bounced up. “I’ll get it!” She came back with an unhappy expression on her face, which she quickly wiped off. “Aunt Agalia and Uncle Konstantinos are here.”
And after them trailed four of their nine kids, although kids was a misnomer. Cressa, the youngest, was seventeen, while Alax, the oldest male, was twenty-three.
“Gia to kaló tis iméras!“ Ma and Poppa said, and my aunt and uncle returned the greeting.
“It means ‘for the good of the day,’” I told Wills.
“We can’t stay long,” Aunt Agalia said. “We’re going to Bellanca’s to celebrate the day.”
“She’s their oldest daughter,” I murmured.
“I’ll need a score card.” Wills grinned at me. “Your family is almost as large as mine.”
How little he knew. I thought wistfully of the aunts and uncles and cousins I hadn’t seen in so many years… Ma’s family, Poppa’s family.
“We wanted you to meet Daria.” Clinging to Alax’s arm was a young woman I didn’t recognize. “She is Alax’s girlfriend.”
Ma and Poppa made a fuss over her, although Casey seemed to keep her distance.
I rose to my feet. “This is William Matheson.”
Ma was suddenly nervous. “He’s a… friend of Teo’s. William had no place to spend Easter, so Teo brought him for a visit.”
I noticed that my aunt and uncle put the three younger girls behind them and glared at me. Uncle Konstantinos said, “If we’d known—”
Poppa went red in the face and snarled something in Greek that sounded like, “What’s in the past is in the past.”
Well, he and Uncle Konstantinos had never been very close.
Wills was effortlessly charming Aunt Agalia. Although I knew he wasn’t happy with the situation, he was willing to go along with Ma’s announcement that he was just a friend who had no one to spend Easter with.
I had the world’s best fiancé!
I excused myself to use the bathroom, and Alax sneered at me. Too many years had passed, and I was too old to cross my eyes at him, but I was tempted to. He’d always been spoiled and obnoxious, and it looked like he hadn’t grown out of it. As much as Ma said we had to love family, I was willing to make an exception for him.
I used the john, flushed and washed my hands, and opened the door. Alax was standing there.
“That was quick. You must have gotten really fast.”
“Excuse me?”
“Shooting up.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Uncle Eryx told us why he threw you out!”
I stared at him. Poppa would never tell anyone I was gay. He could barely get the word out of his mouth, let alone address his only son by it.
“Just make sure you stay away from my sisters, you… you crack whore!”
“What?” All I heard was “whore.”
“Don’t act innocent. The whole family knows you do drugs—crystal meth, crack cocaine, all of it! You’ve shamed us all!”
“And Poppa told you this?”
“He had no choice. It wasn’t as if we didn’t notice when you weren’t there to celebrate any of the holidays with us.”
“When?”
“After you ran off. After he caught you shooting up and threw you out. Just you fucking remember… I’m watching you! You eve
n look at my sisters,” he hissed, “and I’ll kill you!” He turned on his heel and stalked back into the living room.
I followed him and stood in the doorway. Daria’s expression was almost avid, but I dismissed her, glancing from one relative to another, to Poppa and Ma, finally meeting Wills’s gaze.
“What’s wrong?”
“N-nothing.”
He would have gotten to his feet, but I shook my head. He turned his gaze to Alax. He’d seen my cousin enter the room ahead of me.
Alax curled his lip. Did he think my lover was my dealer?
Wills relaxed back in his chair, crossed his legs, and smiled. I’d seen that expression on Vince’s face on occasion, and I wasn’t surprised when Alax went white in the face and jumped to his feet.
“Ma, Pop, we gotta go.” He grabbed Daria’s arm and bolted out of the room, ignoring her protests.
“Yes, we’d better go,” Aunt Agalia said. “Bellanca will be expecting us. I’ll talk to you later in the week, Dianthe. Kaló Pasxa.”
Ma raised her eyebrows. “Kaló Pasxa.” Happy Greek Easter.
Poppa walked them to the front door, and when he returned, he looked… guilty?
Jesus, I hoped Wills hadn’t noticed. “Uh…. Why don’t I take you for a walk through the neighborhood, Wills? We’ve got time, don’t we, Ma?”
“Not more than twenty minutes. Acacia, you will help me.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Come on, babe.”
Uncle Konstantinos’s Chrysler was just pulling away from the curb. Alax had taken his own car, and his girlfriend was already in it, but he was eying the convertible Wills had rented. When he saw us, he sauntered to the driver’s side of his Hyundai and got in. He let down the window, stuck his arm out, and flipped us off before peeling away, leaving rubber behind.
“You gonna tell me what that was about?” Wills stared after him.
I had to think fast, although it killed me that I was going to lie to him. I’d have to tell him about this, but not now, not today. “Alax and I never got along. He was just bringing up old grudges. He’s as bad as your Uncle Tony.”
“Shit, I’m sorry you have to have one of those in your family.”
I held my hands out palms up and gave him a slight smile. “That’s the way it goes.”
“I guess. Now, what were you going to show me?”
“The school I used to go to is right down this street.” And I started talking casually about classes, teachers, and friends, and the hazard was neatly sidestepped.
IT WASN’T the best Easter I’d ever spent with my family. I’d lost my appetite and pushed the hiroméri, the smoked, salted pork, from one side of my plate to the other, and made a shambles of Kokkina—pasxalina avga—the dyed red Easter eggs, cracking the shells too hard and crumbling the yolk and white.
I remembered the scene in Cambridge just last week:
MARTI HAD gone to Jack. “Daddy?”
“Yes, munchkin?” Jack put down the newspaper he’d been reading and gave her his full attention, something Wills had told me he did for each of his children. With an example like that, Wills would be the best dad.
“We were learning about family customs in CCD!”
Back before Poppa had thrown me out, I’d known some kids who went to CCD… the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. It had gotten them out of class early, which they liked more than learning about their religion.
Jack smiled at his daughter. “Really?”
“Mmm-hmm!” I watched in awe as Marti peeked at Jack through her lashes and spun her machinations. “Sister Anne explained how sometimes they just start, and the families like them so much they keep doing them every year!”
“That’s very interesting.”
“I thought so!” She gave JR a poke in the ribs when he started snickering. “Anyway, we… I mean I thought it would be fun if we started a tradition of our own!”
“All right. And what might this tradition be?”
“Well…. You know how we always tap our Easter eggs on the table to crack the shell? Well, I thought we could tap them on our heads!”
Jack glanced at Wills, who had his part of the newspaper in front of his face. When Marti had brought this up on Friday, I’d been charmed to learn that Wills had tried for numerous Easters as a child to persuade his dad to crack an egg—which Jack wasn’t supposed to know was raw—on his head, with no success.
“All right, munchkin,” Jack said now. “If that’s what you want. When did you want to start this new tradition?”
“Today?”
“All right.”
“Thanks, Daddy!” She jumped up and threw herself onto him, and then she danced back. “Let’s get Alice and do it now!”
“WHAT… HOW—” Jar stared around at us in dismay as egg yolk ran down his hair and onto his cheeks.
“Oh, yuck!” Marti’s eyes were huge.
Wills had to struggle to keep from laughing. One glance at him, and I fastened my gaze to the tablecloth to keep from laughing myself.
“Whose idea was this?” Jill stood there with her hands on her hips, exasperation in every line of her pregnant body.
“Daddy said we could!”
“Jack, really!”
“Apparently it was Sister Anne. Something about starting new traditions.”
“Well, this is one tradition we won’t be following. JR, go get cleaned up. And please don’t drip egg all over the stairs.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Um….” Somehow I managed not to choke on my laughter. “Alice and I have to get back to the kitchen.”
“I’ll help!” Wills came after us.
“How did that happen?” I asked once we were in the kitchen.
Alice had a hand over her mouth, trying to stifle giggles. “We never got around to coloring the eggs on Friday, so Jill volunteered to do them yesterday while you were at the movies.”
I slid an arm around Wills’s waist. “Know something, babe?”
“What, Theo?”
“I love your family!”
HIS FAMILY… I drained my glass of retsina. “Pass the bottle, Poppa.”
He did as I asked and watched as I poured myself another glass. I expected him to say he wanted it back, but it was Wills who reached for the bottle.
“I’ve never had this kind of wine before.” He studied the label. “I think I’ll try it.”
If he did, he wouldn’t drive. And that meant we’d have to stay here overnight. I pushed the bottle away.
“I’ve had enough.”
Wills gave me a thoughtful look, but he made no effort to sample the wine.
I’D HAD more than enough… of dinner, of family, of everything. As soon as we could politely leave, I pushed back my chair and said, “We have to go. Wills has to get back to work earlier than we expected. They called him while we were walking.”
“But… but you were going to spend a few days.”
“Sorry,” I lied. I kissed Ma’s cheek, hugged Casey, and barely gave Poppa a glance as I walked out.
Wills pressed the key fob, and the doors of the convertible unlocked. I got in and was buckled up by the time he walked around the front of the car and climbed in.
“‘Work called while we were walking’? Now do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“No.”
“Okay.” He buckled up himself and turned on the ignition. The convertible had a manual transmission, and he stepped on the clutch, shifted into first gear, and drove away from the house I’d grown up in.
“But I’m going to. I just want you to promise me one thing.”
“Whatever you want, babe.”
“You won’t kill my father.” He was silent for so long I started to panic. “Wills?”
He sighed. “What did he do?”
I told him, and the car stalled out.
“Say that again?”
“He told the family I’m a crackhead, that I use crystal meth and God knows what all else.”
>
“I… I see. Well.” He shifted into neutral and restarted the car. “Two promises I regret.”
“Wills?” He looked grim.
“I promised you I wouldn’t kill that—your father. And I promised your mother we’d be here for Mother’s Day.”
“Now I wish you hadn’t.”
“Yeah. I’d break those promises in a heartbeat.” He made a right turn on to the road that led to US 19 South.
“What are you going to do?”
“We can’t say I have to work. They’d start getting suspicious. We could always tell them the truth.”
“I guess.” My temper was cooling, and I felt sick.
“We’ve got a few weeks to think on it, babe.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I’m… I’m so high-maintenance.”
“Doesn’t matter. I love you just the way you are.” His hand was on the stick shift, and I rested my fingers over it.
God, I was lucky!
Chapter 28
WILLS HAD finally gotten in touch with his maternal grandparents. “I’m getting married, Grandma, and I want to introduce you. Is it all right if we come down?”
He’d already told me he wanted to inform them face-to-face that he was gay, so I wasn’t bent out of shape at how ambiguous he was.
When he got off the phone, he was smiling, and there was a relieved expression in his eyes. “I told Grandma we’d be there for Mother’s Day.” For the past few years, things had been strained between them, although Wills was certain it was because his Uncle Tony intercepted his phone calls. To make certain he got through to them this time, he’d learned Tony’s schedule and called when his uncle was at the nursing home. “Is that okay?”
“It’s a little late to ask, don’t you think?”
“Ah, shit, Theo—”
“That’s okay, I was just teasing you. After all, we will be stopping in Tarpon Springs before we come home.” We hadn’t been able to come up with a valid excuse to cancel the visit. But now…. “And actually, that makes it perfect. We can tell Ma you have to let them know about our wedding. If we can’t cancel it, at least that will keep the visit short.”
