Short Stories-Family and Holidays

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IN-LAWS & OUT-LAWS

Second place winner in the Blue Mesa Annual Fiction contest.

We waited for him to bring her home. When we heard the crunching of the tires on the gravel we ran to our positions. One of us peeked behind a curtain, two of us busied ourselves in the kitchen and one of us hid upstairs.

Kristen. We never liked her. We were never sure about her.

But we never expected this from her. A betrayal of this magnitude!

We still talk about the first time Rob brought her home to meet us. Christmas. A family time. Our favorite time. One of us grimaced at her straight blonde hair and patted down our mousey frizz, one of us tried to reach out towards her, to welcome her, and was met by a cold steely gaze. One of us gave her a glass of wine. She declined and told us she didn’t drink. We gasped. We are a family of wine drinkers. We drink wine. It is what we’re best at, we told each other. Then Rob said he’d cut back too. Rob! Cut back! He’s only thirty-two! We laughed, he’d always been a joker. The baby of the family. She’ll never make it through Christmas without a bottle of Cab Sav, one of us whispered.

We gave her a day without wine. We gave Rob an hour. We were right. He was on the Montepeluciano by sundown. We won him back.

Feature 2

#LO&JASONFOREVER!

07-09-16 2:50 p.m
Lo—Hi Everyone, Lo here. Sorry to group text everyone, but don’t forget our hashtag—
#lo&jasonforever! on Instagram and FB for all of those amazing candid’s you’ll take. I’m getting
married today! See you all later!

07-10-16 8:00 a.m
Lo—Morning everyone! Lo here. I’ve started a photo stream so you can add all of those
wonderful pictures you took from last night. Let’s try and keep any with blood in them out, shall
we? Thanks. Mrs. Jason Neuman

MERRY MAUDLIN

We were a little shocked when Mother told us Christmas would be at Gram-Gram’s this
year. Not that this was out of the ordinary, every year we went to Gram-Grams. But this year was
different because Gram-Gram was dead.