It was only chance that my step-sister, Tessi, was up at the house that weekend. She wasn’t usually, she was the only of my three step-siblings not to show up on a overly predictable schedule, Thursday nights to Sunday nights, college and jobs not withstanding. It was weirder than random chance, because, while I was at the house, Evan, my older brother, and my stepbrothers, Ian and Jan, were absent. Even weirder, my stepmother, Mae, was out of town for the weekend. Tessi never ever came to visit when Mae wasn’t home. Tessi rarely came to visit even when Mae was home; Mae visited Tessi more weeks than not.
My curiosity overcoming manners, I’d finally gotten it out of Pops that Tessi didn’t like to visit because of her father’s family. That’d not made much sense to me. Tessi and Granny Rose talked every day, Gramps always took Tessi, Jan, and Ian hunting, usually extending the invite to Evan and I, and Tessi lived on the same block as Aunt Bea. Pops was tactful with his explanation, but I guessed Tessi had a problem with Mr. Benedict. I’m not sure why she found him a problem, since Mr. Benedict only came down to the house on nights of the new moon. Usually, he stayed out at his lean to with his cases of beer, shotgun, beer can targets and trip-wires, deadly booby traps, and HAM radio. He did a bit of firewood on the side, at least enough for Mae’s woodstove to run all winter, but usually it was chopping deadfalls.
Evan said last time he’d seen Tessi in the city, they’d gone drinking. It’d been swell, he’d claimed, until, walking back to her apartment, she’d gone on a drunken rant about her hate for Mr. Benedict. I guessed that the reason Tessi never stayed for holidays, well, that, and being the only other girl, she had to bunk with me, and she hated to intrude like that.
Continue reading ‘Abandon’
