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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ZANDER
Christmas dinners at our parents were awkward. My mother often whispered in my ear, “Where’s Vicky?”
“Mom, you know she can’t come over. I can’t afford Hayden stopping by unannounced.”
“She needs to tell her brother you two are a couple.”
I slid a forkful of green bean casserole into my mouth. “You’re right.”
Owen peeked across the dinner table. “Why are you and Mom whispering? Everyone in this house knows you are dating Vicky. Correction, we know you’re living with Vicky. Translation in a relationship. Her family is in denial.”
“Not true, Owen. Her father knows. But her mother doesn’t.”
My father smacked Owen’s shoulder. “When your brother is ready to stop living a lie, then he’ll reveal the truth.”
Mom grabbed dad’s hand. My parents worked on their marriage over the years. They had monthly sessions with a marriage counselor. My mother also voluntarily entered rehab. Happy my mother was sober. My parents appeared in love. Good they rekindled the flame.
I glanced around the table. “You’re right, Dad. If you all would excuse me. I have a prior engagement.”
Placing my empty plate in the kitchen sink, I stood there brooding. My father was right. Vicky and I needed to talk. It was time to stop hiding.
At five in the evening I arrived at the Gaster Estate.
Mrs. Gaster greeted me at the oversized double doors. “Zander, it’s good to see you.” She smiled.
“Good to see you too, Jo-Anne.” I pulled her into a hug. I’d called Vicky’s parents by their first names for years.
Vicky begged me to accept her parents holiday dinner invitation. She said they felt I despised them all of a sudden. There were no ill feelings toward her family. Only toward her brother. We were still best friends in a twisted way. Maybe now that we were all back home, we’d become closer again.
“Zander, you know we love you.”
“I love you all, too.”
I stepped back. “After my near death experience my father became a father again. It’s upsetting he took so long to come around.”
Her brown eyes sparkled, and she rubbed my arm.
“Better late than never,” she said with a thick southern drawl.
“I suppose.”
We sat around the table laughing and joking over dinner. Harvey glared at me a few times. I didn’t know what to make of it. Vicky said he didn’t appear upset if we dated. Maybe he changed his mind.
Trying to keep my eyes off my woman, his daughter, proved to be the most difficult. I graduated at twenty-one years old with an undergraduate degree in Architecture.
The extensive class load was challenging.
At twenty I moved off campus and purchased a condo for Vicky and I.
Hayden never popped up at my door so, I felt most at home in Princeton. Whenever I’d stay at our condo in Boston, there was a chance Hayden would drop by unannounced.
That last fucking time he appeared at our door coincidentally, after I arrived home, pissed me the fuck off.
The motherfucker had the nerve to challenge me.
Called me a coward.
