Double Trouble by Deborah Cooke Read Free Book Online

was going to be fun. “It’s seven in the morning, Dad. I’m still working.” A lie, but who was to know.
    “As if you knew the meaning of the word. At least your sister had the sense to marry well.”
    Oh, I bit my tongue hard hard hard. Want to see the scar? I think there’s a permanent notch left as a little souvenir. All the same, there was no question of me telling him about Marcia.
    Hey, let her do her own dirty work.
    “So, what is this? A breakfast invitation? I like my eggs over easy, you know that.”
    He harrumphed, but I knew he was pleased. “If you take too long and it’s cold when you get here, I won’t hear any complaints.”
    “Deal.”
    “Well, hurry it up then.” He hung up the phone with a clatter loud enough to make me wince. I brushed my teeth and washed my face and headed out.
    I was going to need sustenance. This doctor’s appointment was not going to be fun. They never were.

Chapter Three
    ----
    Subject : butterball city
    Dear Aunt Mary -
    Ever since I moved in with my honey bun, my own buns have been spreading 4ever and 4 days. What should I do?
    Fat in Fresno
    ----
    Subject : re: butterball city
    Dear Fresno -
    Body Fat Index, thine enemy is contentment.
    Misery, in marked comparison, is a tested and true means of melting away those unwanted pounds... and maybe a few wanted ones. Think of that, the next time you look at those fashionable waifs. Wouldn’t you be miserable, living on half a grapefruit a day?
    OTOH, a layer of subcutaneous fat is a good way to minimize wrinkles.
    So, choose from the doors that lovely Carol Merrill is showing us:
    Door #1: dump him, B miserable and waste away to zip
    Door #2: join a gym and GO to it. Buy moisturizer.
    Door #3: get over it and buy bigger jeans
    The choice, my little dumpling, is all yours.
    Aunt Mary
    ***
    Uncertain? Confused? Ask Aunt Mary!
    Your one stop shop for netiquette and advice:
    http://www.ask-aunt-mary.com
    ----
    I t took my father about two seconds to start scowling when he opened the door and found me on the step. “What in the heck are you doing here?”
    I pretended to swoon. “How could I resist such a greeting?”
    He would have shut the door in my face, but I’m faster than him now. I got my boot into the gap between the door and the frame. He glared at it, glared at me, then shuffled back into the house, leaving me there.
    No, you didn’t miss anything. This was the same man who had invited me for breakfast not three hours before. And no, he hadn’t forgotten. He was just in a mood. He’s become kind of a capricious, ornery leprechaun in his sunset years—well, since my mother died. He can be as funny as hell, but he’s changeable and unpredictable.
    I think it’s his way of dealing with being alone. It’s no secret that husbands usually go first, but my mom’s been gone more than fifteen years.
    I think it ticks him off, as if all those years of falling on his knees got him nothing. God pulled a fast one on Connor O’Reilly and he doesn’t appreciate the joke.
    Used to such receptions and his many moods, I shut the door behind myself and followed my dad into the kitchen. He was always particularly snarly about going to the doctor.
    I refused to pander to him. Rudeness got rudeness. I gave as good as I got, which usually ticked my father off enough to laugh.
    Eventually. First came the tirades.
    “Trouble is what you are, Mary Elizabeth, trouble is what you’ve always been.” He sat at the table and poured himself a cup of strong tea before giving me another look. “Your sister, now, there’s a girl who gave your mother and I no grief at all, none at all.”
    Ah, dear sainted Marcia. She who never took my father to the doctor, she who never called, she who seldom sullied her angelic reputation by actually showing her face at the ol’ homestead. Be amazed, oh gentle reader, for I gritted mine own teeth and said naught.
    It just about killed me. Look, Ma, I’m Hercules. Maybe Atlas is more like it,