Page 27 of Property of Bigfoot
“Fine, but I’m not taking Nanny and Pop’s room. That’s just weird. It still smells like someone died in there.”
“No, it doesn’t. You’re just being weird.”
“Okay, you sleep in there, then. Let’s see how you like it when your parents’ ghosts are getting busy in the room while you try to sleep.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Did you take a bullet to the brain yesterday and forget to tell us?”
I giggled. “Nope, but you clearly didn’t understand how weird it would be to sleep in that room until I really made you think about it.”
“Yeah, thanks for the glimpse of my parents’ afterlife sex life.” Brady scratched his head. “Aftersexlife?” He questioned.
“I think you had it right the first time.”
“Some days, I really hate that I’m your favorite uncle.”
I made a face at him and put my balled up fists up to my eyes in a crybaby motion. Brady flipped me off.
It wasn’tuntil we took the second load of my things over that I noticed something was off. After scanning the living room twice, I finally realized what was missing. “Brady, did you take that grandfather clock out of here?”
“No, why?” He called back from the kitchen.
“It’s missing.” I turned around just as he barreled into the living room.
“What the fuck?”
“That’s not all,” I said as I took another slow spin around the room. “The antique pieces have all been replaced.”
“Son of a bitch!” Brady seethed the words out as he yanked his phone from his pocket. “That mother fucker is going to bring every fucking piece back here.”
“If she didn’t sell them already.” My heart ached at the loss of all our family heirlooms. It wasn’t all of them, but there were a few pieces of furniture that had made the journey from Scotland in the mid-1700s. The Long Case Grandfather Clock had been one of those pieces. “I might just add her to my body count if we can’t get that clock back.”
“I know.” Brady came over and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. He tugged me into his side. “Your dad isn’t answering his phone.”
“No surprise there. It’s like he forgot that we’re his family once he married that skank. I wonder what he’ll think when he finds out she was okay with pointing a killer in my direction after she flirted with him.”
Brady sighed. “Honestly, Sam, I’m not sure we should tell him just yet.”
“Why not? He needs to know. If nothing else, he should protect my little brother from that woman. What if she takes him and we never see him again?”
“I have my doubts that your father has a legal leg to stand on there.”
My eyes must have widened to twice their normal size. It never occurred to me that my little brother might not be biologically related to me. “That’s impossible right? He would have had a DNA test done before he agreed to marry her. I always assumed he would verify that kind of thing. Didn’t he?”
Brady shook his head. “I don’t think he did. Never saw any proof of it, anyway.”
“Well, shit. How long are we supposed to wait?”
Brady pulled me over to the couch that had also been replaced with much cheaper furniture. Once we sat down, he laid it out for me. “I talked to Bigfoot about a lot of things last night and we need to trust that he’s working on this. More importantly, he has some pretty tech-savvy members who are digging for all the information they can before we go to your dad.”
“What if he’s in on it with her.”
“Fuck that!” Brady grunted. “No fucking way does my big brother know that his wife tried to kill his daughter. No fucking way. He would never harm you.” Brady was frantic as he clutched my shoulders and turned me to face him. “You know your father loves you to the end of this Earth, right?”
My head shook back and forth of its own volition. “I don’t know that. Not anymore. He checked out after mom died, and I never really got him back. It’s like the part of him who loved me died with her. Maybe I remind him of her too much. Maybe he decided he hated me because I was gone when it happened. I don’t know. When I got back from the Army, he already had a new wife and kid.”
“I know your dad has been lost for a long time, but I promise that he never stopped loving you, kid.”
There was nothing to say to that. My uncle loved his brother. I loved my dad - the one I grew up with anyway. The man he had become since I left for the Army, since my mother died, they were two different people. My faith had been tested and my father found lacking. Case in point - the house we were sitting in. He had been trying to take it from me simply because his wife wanted it and didn’t give a damn that it was specifically left to me in my grandfather’s will.
