Tags
Chelan, chocolate martini, family, fiction, Lake Chelan, Rosalind, Rosalind Rees, wedding, writing
I’m really not sure how many installments this will take, but I hope you enjoy reading #3. Part 1 and Part 2 are still available to read, and if you’d like more info on me or any of my other work, please visit my website at www.francesca-rogers.com.
My dad set to work making the first of four chocolate martinis for my mom while James and I splashed around the pool for an hour. We headed into the hotel room just in time for Mom to hustle James into a quick shower. My dad took the opportunity to join me in a grown-up drink. The man mixes one hell of an old-fashioned.
“Is she okay?” I asked. We could hear Mom yelling at James not to run around the bathroom naked.
“You know how she gets around the family.”
I nodded in understanding. I strapped a four-year-old into the front seat of a car that goes from zero to sixty in less than four seconds, and I’m one of the normal ones in our family.
“You want something stronger than whiskey?”
“Sure do, but I don’t want to hallucinate purple clowns again.”
I grinned at the memory. “Coward.”
Mom made a dramatic entrance, silencing any sharp retort my dad might have come up with. She looked flustered, and I imagined that James had probably eluded her more than once between the moment she stripped off his swim trunks and tucked him into formal shorts.
“Rosalind, we’re heading over to the casino with James for the wedding rehearsal and dinner. I need you there no later than 8:00.” Mom bustled around the hotel room straightening up nonexistent messes while scrupulously not meeting me in the eye.
“Great. That gives me plenty of time for a shower.” She nodded and refolded James’s blanket. Nerves like that are visible from space. “Why do you need me there by 8:00?” I asked casually.
“Oh, the rest of the family will be joining in for some fun, and it would be nice to have you there to help with traffic flow, that sort of thing. Besides, you know how rowdy some of the family likes to get.”
Mom refusing to look me in the face while simultaneously mentioning the need to corale our batshit extended family led me to one nasty conclusion.
“You put me on pervy Uncle Lou detail, didn’t you? Are you kidding?” Surely a joyride with the four-year-old didn’t merit this sort of punishment.
Lou is my grandmother’s stepbrother, and he’s always been kind of off in the head. And gross. I’m sure he wasn’t invited to the weekend’s shindig, but like any rodent, he was good at sniffing out crumbs of information from the more gullible members of the family. No doubt he’d already inserted his awkward self into some of the day’s earlier festivities, and most people in our family were too kind to tell him how to get back home.
“Look at my face and ask me again if I’m kidding. You’re the only one who can keep him in line, Rosalind, and I need that for the next 24 hours. After that, you’re free.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and shook my head at her in disappointment. “If the rest of you had the guts to kick him in the face just once, he’d listen to you, too.”