That Marriageable Man!

“Tony slept over at the Steens’ last night. They’re going to the zoo today, they said we could both come along, too. Hey, know what, Camryn? When I’m as good a golfer as Tiger Woods I’ll go lots of places besides Sioux Falls,” Trent vowed. “I’ll go to Las Vegas.”

“And you’ll probably blow all your golf tournament winnings in the slot machines. All five dollars of it.” Camryn snickered at her own joke.

“I think that Trent is going to be a great golfer.” Kaylin rejoined them with Camryn’s order. “He’ll be the next Tiger Woods. Maybe even better.”

Trent beamed. “I’ll buy a big house in Las Vegas and you can live there, Kaylin. It’ll be a mansion and we can all live there, me and you and Tony and Camryn and Rate and Hot Dog. And my mom, too, if she wants to.”

“What about Flint? And Eva?” Camryn sat up to swallow the pills with a gulp of cola from the can. “Are they going to be living in the mansion with us, too?”

“No.” Trent shook his head decisively. “Flint will want to stay here and work and Eva—”

“Wouldn’t live with us if you paid her to,” Camryn finished for him. “She hates us too much.”

“Wonder why?” Trent looked glum. “Wish she didn’t.”

“If pigs were wishes, we could fly.” Kaylin shrugged philosophically. “Or something like that.”

A few minutes later Rafe Paradise walked into his living room to find Camryn breakfasting on cola and strawberry ice cream and Kaylin in his chair, a massive blue recliner. She was cuddling Hot Dog, the fattest, homeliest, worst-tempered beast Rafe had ever had the misfortune of meeting. Now he lived with the creature. And Hot Dog, with his imperious sense of canine entitlement, was drooling on the chair’s textured upholstery as well as shedding all over it.

Young Trent was stretched out on the floor on his stomach watching TV. Not quality children’s programming, Rafe noted dourly, but a poorly drawn cartoon that featured stick figures blasting other stick figures with some version of nuclear weaponry.

Rafe hardly knew where to begin. Since Trent jumped to his feet and ran to greet him joyously, Rafe decided to let the issue of violent cartoons slide—for now. Trent stopped just a few inches in front of Rafe, his arms at his sides, and beamed. A hug would’ve seemed natural to some, but Trent was wary of physical contact, and Rafe hadn’t been raised to be physically demonstrative. So the two smiled their mutual affection.

“Hi, Rafe. Did you have a good trip?” asked Kaylin.

Since she was the one sitting in his chair, Rafe didn’t scold her about the dog’s presence there, though it was strictly forbidden. Undoubtedly, it had been bratty Camryn who’d placed the offensive Hot Dog in his chair, anyway.

“The trip went well,” Rafe replied. His specialty was contracts law, and he knew the details of his work would bore the kids, should he attempt to explain it. So far, he never had.

He zeroed in on Camryn, who hadn’t acknowledged his presence at all. She was pouring cola over the ice cream and mashing it into a fizzing mess with her spoon before gobbling it down. At ten o’clock in the morning!

Rafe grimaced. “What kind of a breakfast is that?”

“It’s the only breakfast I want,” retorted Camryn

“And it’s not good for you. I went food shopping before I left for Minneapolis and I know we have juice and eggs and—”

“Quit it, Rafe!” Camryn made a gagging gesture. “You’re trying to make me sick on purpose.”

“I’ll have some juice and eggs, Rafe,” said Trent. “I want the kind with the egg fried in the middle of the bread, like my mom makes sometimes.”

Rafe looked at him blankly. He had no idea what kind of eggs Trent’s mother sometimes made.

“I know what he means. I’ll make it for him.” Kaylin rose to her feet and headed out of the room. “Anybody else want anything?” she called over her shoulder.

“No thanks.” Rafe was grateful for her willingness to help. Kaylin was usually cheerful and cooperative around the house, quite different from Camryn, whose disposition could and often did border on the demonic. But although Kaylin was easier to live with, she was as determined as her sister to run wild with the wrong crowd.

Rafe’s temples began to throb. “Did the girls go out last night, Lion?” He never forgot Trent’s nickname-of-the-moment.

“I don’t know,” Trent replied. “I was playing with my Gameboy. It’s the best present I ever got, Rafe. Thanks again.”

Rafe got the picture right away. The kid wasn’t going to squeal on Kaylin and Camryn, maybe his own choice, maybe because they’d threatened him to keep quiet. Perhaps if he rephrased the question, a standard lawyer’s trick... “What time did the girls get in last night, Lion?”

“I don’t know anything, I was playing with my Gameboy.” Trent stuck to his story.

“By the way, Tony is at the Steens’,” Camryn said in the acidly sweet tone she used to induce guilt. “Did you forget about him? ’Cause you didn’t mention him.”

Rafe felt guilty, all right. “I was just about to ask where Tony was.” He hadn’t forgotten about eight-year-old Tony, he assured himself. He’d been just a second or two away from noticing the child’s absence.

As he glanced from the boy to the girls and then to the dog, a peculiar feeling of unreality swept over him. It had been a whole year, and sometimes he still had difficulty believing that they were all here, living with him. That the life he’d known as a carefree bachelor had been so drastically, irrevocably, changed.

“The new neighbors are moving in today,” Trent said, flopping back down on the floor. “Did you see the moving truck when you came in, Rafe?”

“No, it wasn’t there.” Rafe already pitied the new neighbors who’d been unlucky enough to rent or buy the other half of the duplex in this development of town house condominiums. He knew that the kids’ noise and other antics had driven the Lamberts, the yuppie couple who’d previously lived there, to move across town.

“Maybe it just pulled in this second. I’m gonna go check.” Trent leaped to his feet and ran out the front door, closing it with a jarring slam.

Camryn clutched her head with her hands. “That felt like a cannon blast to the brain,” she complained.

“Where did you go last night and what time did you get in?” Rafe forced himself to ask, hating his role as warden. It was a role thrust upon him and he knew he wasn’t very good at it.

“I went miniature golfing with my friends and then we stopped at the Dairy Queen for sundaes. Real wholesome Midwest teen fun, huh, Rafe? Oh, and I was home before my curfew.” Camryn had a smile that was positively angelic.

Rafe had been fooled by her the first few days after she’d moved in. Then he’d caught on—the girl was actually the devil in disguise.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, scoffing his disbelief. “And Kaylin is going to be the valedictorian in her class and you’re going to be the prom queen in yours.”

The odds of either event occurring went far beyond the realm of possibility, with Kaylin’s and her “what’s bad about a D?” philosophy toward education and Camryn’s Princess of Darkness persona so at odds with the wholesome students at Riverview High. The same odds applied to Camryn’s version of how she’d spent her evening.

Kaylin came into the room carrying a plate with eggs and toast and a glass of orange juice. “Where’s Trent?”

“Pestering the new people next door, or trying to.” Camryn glanced at the food and sat up. “I’m starving! Can I have that?”

“It’s Trent’s,” Rafe said.

“I’ll make him some more. It’ll be cold by the time he gets back, anyway.” Kaylin handed the food and juice to her sister and sat down on Rafe’s designer recliner, wriggling in next to Hot Dog. The dog opened one eye, then closed it again, accepting her presence without protest.

“I feel kind of sick.” Kaylin swallowed visibly. “Like I might throw up. Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten all those Oreos. ’Specially not on top of the Twizzlers.”

“For breakfast?” Rafe heaved a groan.

“I had milk with them.” Kaylin was defensive. “Milk’s good for you.”

“Just don’t puke in here or else I will, too!” Camryn shuddered as she proceeded to shovel the food into her mouth.

Rafe decided to skip this particular conversation. “I’m going upstairs to unpack and change.” He fled from the room.

Two