Page 116 of Living on the Edge

Willy-nilly?

She’s never used that phrase in her life.

Am I living in an alternate reality or something?

“Mom, what are you talking about?” I ask. “Could someone please be honest with me for once in your goddamn lives?”

She tsks at me. “Language, dear. Rupert, could you get me some coffee, please?” She sits down at the table where not ten minutes ago I’d been about to have a relaxing breakfast with…my father. A man I actually like. Someone I want to spend time with.

Last night’s conversation had been difficult, but we’d come out the other side in a good place, opting to keep his identity as my father a secret but to carry on our relationship in whatever way we choose. He was reluctant to out my mother to her husband, citing no desire to blow up the family, and at the end of the day—since I don’t really care about that whole dynamic, it makes no difference to me.

And yet somehow, I managed to blow up everyone’s lives.

Again.

“Does Dad know?” I ask. “August. Does August know?”

“Yes, of course. I haven’t shared a bed with him in…” She waves a hand. “Well, a long time.”

“Are all of us Alex’s children?” I ask incredulously.

“No, no. Abe was a drunk accident, but I don’t know where Annette came from. Some sort of stork wearing a pool boy costume, I presume.”

“Oh my god.” I stare at her. “You don’t know who her father is?”

“August Hollingsworth is her father,” she replies drolly. “But once I realized that sort of thing was dangerous, Alex and I agreed that if we wanted to grow the family we should at least try to let them have the same father. There was a miscarriage between Annette and Alden, and then I decided I was done.”

“So August…can’t have children?” I ask in confusion.

“He can, he just has no interest in vaginas,” Alex supplies. “We didn’t figure it out until later, though.”

“I can’t even…” I stop myself, trying to wrap my head around all of this information. Thank fuck that wasn’t in the article.

“So Alden and I are Alex’s, Annette has a bird for a biological father, and Abe is the only true Hollingsworth heir.”

My mother chuckles, as if this is somehow funny.

“You guys are something,” I mutter. “And Dad just turned the other way?”

That’s the hardest thing to understand.

Mom lifts one shoulder. “Like Alex said, other than our honeymoon and one drunken evening that produced Abe, his sexual proclivities do not include vaginas.”

Nope, I was wrong before.

Thismight be the hardest part to understand.

I don’t have a problem with him being gay but the lengths they all went to seems— “You didn’t tell me about August being gay,” I say accusingly, looking at Alex. “I thought we were opening up to each other?”

He sighs. “That wasn’t my story to tell.”

“Wait, is this because of Grandpa?” I ask suddenly. “You didn’t want him to know his first-born is gay?”

Mom wobbles her hand from side to side. “There was him, but it was more his mother. She was the ball buster. Plus the board wouldn’t have taken kindly to it.”

“But everyonethinksAlex is gay,” I protest.

“Alexisn’t the firstborn son.”

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