Interviews (2/2)
First Chapter
Megan knocked on the door of Sarah’s office. Sarah, on the phone, looked up and waved her in. Megan stepped into the office, closing the door behind her, and quietly sat while Sarah finished her conversation. Sarah hung up, then looked at Megan.
“About time you came to me!”
Megan tilted her head questioningly.
“I am the one responsible for your fathers ever getting together in the first place.”
Megan laughed. She took out her notebook and pen. “Spill,” she said.
“I’m assuming you know the basics - witness, case and so on.”
Megan nodded. “Mm-hmm.”
“What you probably haven’t heard is it wasn’t exactly love at first sight. Well, it was, but it took the form of annoyance at first sight. Kevin, in particular, had a hard time dealing with your daddy’s more...exuberant nature. He was incredibly focused on being professional.”
“So where do you come in?”
Sarah laughed. “I was mad at him one day, and I was leaving his office just as Scotty was coming in for an appointment. The three of us chatted a bit, and I could literally see the sparks going back and forth between them, no matter how much Kev tried to hide it. So, I invited Scotty to a dinner party. The rest is history.”
“So you’re saying Dad would have never made a move if it weren’t for you?”
Sarah tilted her head back and forth, unwilling to take full credit but also unwilling to minimize her own role. “I think it would have taken him a lot longer and would have involved a lot more idiocy. Not to say your dad couldn’t be smooth if he wanted to. There was one time, and this was much, much later, when - ” Sarah broke off, laughing at the memory.
“What?” Megan asked, smiling questioningly.
“Kevin and I went to a gay bar, and Scotty was there with his friends. Now, your dad doesn’t always make the best first impressions, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.” Megan nodded in agreement, and Sarah continued, “So, he was trying to win over Scotty’s friends, who had taken a dislike to him. His ingenious plan involved a great deal of alcohol and karaoke-serenading.”
Megan burst into laughter. “What?! Dad! Singing karaoke?”
Sarah nodded. “Mm-hmm. The first song was pretty cringe-worthy, but the second one...well, I’m pretty sure everyone in the bar - me and probably this guy I dated for a while excluded - was in love with your dad by the time Scotty went up there and took him out of his misery with a kiss.”
Megan smiled sappily. “What song was it?”
Sarah tilted her head back, groaning as she tried to remember. Then she snapped her fingers. “Always on my Mind.”
Megan shook her head. “Don’t know it.”
“It’s an old one. Download it sometime. Or I think Scotty bought the CD after that night.”
“What’s a CD?” Megan teased, grinning sarcastically.
“Get out of here.”
***
After Megan finished her interview with Sarah, she decided to kill two birds and walked down the hall to Tommy’s office. The door was open, so she rapped a quick knock on the frame and walked in. Tommy glanced up from his paperwork.
“Hey sweetie,” he said.
“Hi Uncle Tommy,” Megan replied, sitting down and crossing her legs underneath her. “Whatcha working on?”
“Oh, just some contracts with some new distributors.”
“That sounds...”
“Boring as all hell.”
“I’m telling Dad you swore in front of me.”
“Ah, you can drive now. You can hear the word ‘hell.’”
“Well, I agree. But Dad still thinks I’m two.”
“That’s how dads are,” Tommy explained. “Elizabeth can tell you she still gets that too.”
Megan smiled. “Do you have some time to help me out with - ”
“Your school project? You bet. There are a few main things I remember about the early days of Kevin and Scotty’s relationship. First was their break-up.”
Megan threw her hands up in the air in victory. “Yes! I’m finally getting an explanation for that.”
Tommy laughed. “Well, I don’t know if it counts as an explanation. Maybe just a contributing factor.”
Tommy leaned forward. “You know that your dad is really...well, that I’m not...”
“Elizabeth’s father?”
“Yeah,” Tommy said, clearing his throat. “Well, when I first asked Kevin if he would help out Aunt Julia and me, I...it was when we were up in Ojai at this cabin we used to have. That was the first time Kevin and Scotty went on a weekend trip together. Things...didn’t go so well, and Scotty ended up leaving early.”
“Why?”
“Your dad was wary about the whole thing, and Scotty thought he should do it. Kevin got mad at him for not supporting him, and Scotty got mad about getting yelled at for expressing his opinion.”
“And they broke up after that?”
“Yeah, pretty much immediately. Back then, Kevin was pretty good at keeping relationship things to himself, so we didn’t really talk about it. And there was a lot of stuff going on with the company and other things too, so that was a bit of a distraction. He didn’t seem too weird to me; he did some things on a road trip that I was a little surprised at, but I didn’t notice anything huge. But Kitty told me he was, in fact, pretty upset about it. I felt bad when I heard that, because it seemed like, you know, my fault because of the whole Elizabeth thing. I hadn’t realized their relationship was that serious until a long time later, when they got back together and I could see the change in Kevin.”
“How did they get back together?”
Tommy exhaled, looking off to the side. “You know, I don’t know all the details. Something to do with Scotty needing legal help. They started hanging out again, but Kevin was still technically with Jason McCallister then.”
“What do you mean, technically?”
“Jason was in Malaysia working on a mission project. He’d been gone several weeks by that point, but your dad was insisting to everyone that he was going to wait for him. That didn’t last long. Your daddy showed up again, and they were living together a few weeks later.”
“What?!”
Tommy laughed. “Not really. Scotty was in a financial bind and needed a place to stay. Your dad had an air mattress.”
“I was going to say! I mean, I know they’re kind of crazy for each other, but come on!”
Tommy smirked. “Early on, none of us really knew what was going on. We talked about it behind Kev’s back quite a bit, as you can imagine, trying to figure out the details. It just didn’t seem like Kevin to give up his privacy like that, and it was even weirder that it was an ex. But he was very, very clear that he was just friends with Scotty and was in love with Jason.”
“So what happened?”
“A couple weeks in, Uncle Justin got...sick, and Kevin and I stayed up the entire night, helping him out.”
“And when you say sick, you mean what? He overdosed?”
Tommy stared at her in surprise.
“Come on. I heard Dad mention it a long time ago. And Uncle Justin himself sat me down for a very long talk about drugs.”
Tommy sighed. “He didn’t overdose. But he needed to detox, and that was the last time he ever used. Anyway, Kevin and I were down in the kitchen once Justin was asleep. I was having some problems with Aunt Julia at the time, and Kevin was pressing me about it. So, I got defensive and started asking if he...”
“Was cheating on this Jason guy with Daddy?”
“Yeah.”
“Was he?”
“No. But he was obviously very conflicted and very sad. Kitty and Robert’s wedding was only a few weeks later. Scotty was there as Kevin’s date, and despite a great deal of awkwardness, it was obvious something had changed. They were back together officially.”
Megan smiled. “That’s nice.”
“Well, maybe not officially officially,” Tommy added, laughing. “I asked and got some very bizarre answer along the lines of ‘trying to define the word we.’”
Megan had been jotting down notes and looked up then, startled. “OK, that makes sense now.”
“What?” Tommy asked, confused.
“Whenever Daddy’s doing the crossword and Dad helps him out with an answer, he always says ‘how come you know that word and yet can’t define we?’ Then Dad usually laughs this totally annoying fake laugh. Which leads to real laughter and then kissing.” Megan paused, then added, “It’s sick.”
Tommy laughed. “Yep, that’d be where that comes from. There were some other issues during the wedding with the Secret Service - that was back when Robert was running for president, but aside from a few snags, everything went well after that. And a few months later, there was another wedding.”
“Which, according to Grandma, went perfectly.”
“Not quite,” Tommy contradicted. “They forgot to get rings. Robert and I had to lend ours.”
Megan propped her elbow on the edge of the desk, rested her forehead on her hand, and shook her head.
***
Megan was not surprised to see both cars in the driveway when she got home from school. Her dad usually took off from work early on holidays, especially when Daddy wasn’t working either. She walked inside the house and listened carefully. There were sounds coming from the kitchen, so she headed in that direction.
“I’m home!” she called out loudly. “I’m coming into the kitchen!”
She waited a moment and then opened the door. Then she quickly closed her eyes and turned her head away, half-laughing and half-serious as she complained.
“Come on! I announced myself and everything.”
Kevin laughed, and Megan could hear them step away from each other. Scotty cleared his throat.
“Sorry, honey. We just can’t help ourselves.”
“This is child abuse,” Megan declared.
“How was your Valentine’s Day?” Kevin said as he stepped closer and hugged her with one arm.
“Good. I was the only girl in my class to get a dozen roses and a box of chocolates delivered to school.”
“Secret admirer?”
“Well, that’s what the card says, but you guys aren’t fooling anyone.”
Scotty chuckled, turning away from the stove where dinner was cooking. “Too smart for your own good,” he said.
“And how’d the paper go? Do we finally get to read it now?”
“Yep,” Megan said, reaching into her backpack and pulling out a folder. “I got an A, but my teacher says my future lies in creative writing rather than reliable investigative journalism.”
Scotty turned to face her again, a confused expression on his face.
“What does that mean?” Kevin asked.
Megan shrugged. “Everybody else had these really boring stories. Fix-ups or blind dates, followed by uneventful relationships which ended in marriage a year or so later. Apparently, my story was ‘approaching unbelievable soap opera.’”
Kevin rolled his eyes, flipping through the pages of Megan’s story. “Our relationship is not a soap opera.”
Scotty walked over to the table and set a bowl of spaghetti down. “It kinda is,” he allowed. Turning to Megan, he added, “Go wash up, please.”
Megan stood. “OK. And I’ll leave you two alone after dinner. I know today’s kind of an anniversary for you.”
“What do you mean?” Kevin asked.
“Just something Kitty told me about,” Megan said as she walked closer to the door. She turned around and leaned against the frame, “I can never watch a Chad Barry movie again.”
“I hate my family,” Kevin muttered.
“And apparently that wasn’t the end of the story...” Megan said leadingly.
Scotty looked at her in shock, scoffing angrily. “I can’t believe someone told you that. We were never going to have a threesome.”
Megan’s mouth dropped open. “That...ew, that’s what she wouldn’t tell me. Ew!”
She hurried out of the room, and Kevin turned to Scotty, staring at him in reproach. Scotty threw his hands in the air and turned back to the stove.
The End
Megan knocked on the door of Sarah’s office. Sarah, on the phone, looked up and waved her in. Megan stepped into the office, closing the door behind her, and quietly sat while Sarah finished her conversation. Sarah hung up, then looked at Megan.
“About time you came to me!”
Megan tilted her head questioningly.
“I am the one responsible for your fathers ever getting together in the first place.”
Megan laughed. She took out her notebook and pen. “Spill,” she said.
“I’m assuming you know the basics - witness, case and so on.”
Megan nodded. “Mm-hmm.”
“What you probably haven’t heard is it wasn’t exactly love at first sight. Well, it was, but it took the form of annoyance at first sight. Kevin, in particular, had a hard time dealing with your daddy’s more...exuberant nature. He was incredibly focused on being professional.”
“So where do you come in?”
Sarah laughed. “I was mad at him one day, and I was leaving his office just as Scotty was coming in for an appointment. The three of us chatted a bit, and I could literally see the sparks going back and forth between them, no matter how much Kev tried to hide it. So, I invited Scotty to a dinner party. The rest is history.”
“So you’re saying Dad would have never made a move if it weren’t for you?”
Sarah tilted her head back and forth, unwilling to take full credit but also unwilling to minimize her own role. “I think it would have taken him a lot longer and would have involved a lot more idiocy. Not to say your dad couldn’t be smooth if he wanted to. There was one time, and this was much, much later, when - ” Sarah broke off, laughing at the memory.
“What?” Megan asked, smiling questioningly.
“Kevin and I went to a gay bar, and Scotty was there with his friends. Now, your dad doesn’t always make the best first impressions, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.” Megan nodded in agreement, and Sarah continued, “So, he was trying to win over Scotty’s friends, who had taken a dislike to him. His ingenious plan involved a great deal of alcohol and karaoke-serenading.”
Megan burst into laughter. “What?! Dad! Singing karaoke?”
Sarah nodded. “Mm-hmm. The first song was pretty cringe-worthy, but the second one...well, I’m pretty sure everyone in the bar - me and probably this guy I dated for a while excluded - was in love with your dad by the time Scotty went up there and took him out of his misery with a kiss.”
Megan smiled sappily. “What song was it?”
Sarah tilted her head back, groaning as she tried to remember. Then she snapped her fingers. “Always on my Mind.”
Megan shook her head. “Don’t know it.”
“It’s an old one. Download it sometime. Or I think Scotty bought the CD after that night.”
“What’s a CD?” Megan teased, grinning sarcastically.
“Get out of here.”
***
After Megan finished her interview with Sarah, she decided to kill two birds and walked down the hall to Tommy’s office. The door was open, so she rapped a quick knock on the frame and walked in. Tommy glanced up from his paperwork.
“Hey sweetie,” he said.
“Hi Uncle Tommy,” Megan replied, sitting down and crossing her legs underneath her. “Whatcha working on?”
“Oh, just some contracts with some new distributors.”
“That sounds...”
“Boring as all hell.”
“I’m telling Dad you swore in front of me.”
“Ah, you can drive now. You can hear the word ‘hell.’”
“Well, I agree. But Dad still thinks I’m two.”
“That’s how dads are,” Tommy explained. “Elizabeth can tell you she still gets that too.”
Megan smiled. “Do you have some time to help me out with - ”
“Your school project? You bet. There are a few main things I remember about the early days of Kevin and Scotty’s relationship. First was their break-up.”
Megan threw her hands up in the air in victory. “Yes! I’m finally getting an explanation for that.”
Tommy laughed. “Well, I don’t know if it counts as an explanation. Maybe just a contributing factor.”
Tommy leaned forward. “You know that your dad is really...well, that I’m not...”
“Elizabeth’s father?”
“Yeah,” Tommy said, clearing his throat. “Well, when I first asked Kevin if he would help out Aunt Julia and me, I...it was when we were up in Ojai at this cabin we used to have. That was the first time Kevin and Scotty went on a weekend trip together. Things...didn’t go so well, and Scotty ended up leaving early.”
“Why?”
“Your dad was wary about the whole thing, and Scotty thought he should do it. Kevin got mad at him for not supporting him, and Scotty got mad about getting yelled at for expressing his opinion.”
“And they broke up after that?”
“Yeah, pretty much immediately. Back then, Kevin was pretty good at keeping relationship things to himself, so we didn’t really talk about it. And there was a lot of stuff going on with the company and other things too, so that was a bit of a distraction. He didn’t seem too weird to me; he did some things on a road trip that I was a little surprised at, but I didn’t notice anything huge. But Kitty told me he was, in fact, pretty upset about it. I felt bad when I heard that, because it seemed like, you know, my fault because of the whole Elizabeth thing. I hadn’t realized their relationship was that serious until a long time later, when they got back together and I could see the change in Kevin.”
“How did they get back together?”
Tommy exhaled, looking off to the side. “You know, I don’t know all the details. Something to do with Scotty needing legal help. They started hanging out again, but Kevin was still technically with Jason McCallister then.”
“What do you mean, technically?”
“Jason was in Malaysia working on a mission project. He’d been gone several weeks by that point, but your dad was insisting to everyone that he was going to wait for him. That didn’t last long. Your daddy showed up again, and they were living together a few weeks later.”
“What?!”
Tommy laughed. “Not really. Scotty was in a financial bind and needed a place to stay. Your dad had an air mattress.”
“I was going to say! I mean, I know they’re kind of crazy for each other, but come on!”
Tommy smirked. “Early on, none of us really knew what was going on. We talked about it behind Kev’s back quite a bit, as you can imagine, trying to figure out the details. It just didn’t seem like Kevin to give up his privacy like that, and it was even weirder that it was an ex. But he was very, very clear that he was just friends with Scotty and was in love with Jason.”
“So what happened?”
“A couple weeks in, Uncle Justin got...sick, and Kevin and I stayed up the entire night, helping him out.”
“And when you say sick, you mean what? He overdosed?”
Tommy stared at her in surprise.
“Come on. I heard Dad mention it a long time ago. And Uncle Justin himself sat me down for a very long talk about drugs.”
Tommy sighed. “He didn’t overdose. But he needed to detox, and that was the last time he ever used. Anyway, Kevin and I were down in the kitchen once Justin was asleep. I was having some problems with Aunt Julia at the time, and Kevin was pressing me about it. So, I got defensive and started asking if he...”
“Was cheating on this Jason guy with Daddy?”
“Yeah.”
“Was he?”
“No. But he was obviously very conflicted and very sad. Kitty and Robert’s wedding was only a few weeks later. Scotty was there as Kevin’s date, and despite a great deal of awkwardness, it was obvious something had changed. They were back together officially.”
Megan smiled. “That’s nice.”
“Well, maybe not officially officially,” Tommy added, laughing. “I asked and got some very bizarre answer along the lines of ‘trying to define the word we.’”
Megan had been jotting down notes and looked up then, startled. “OK, that makes sense now.”
“What?” Tommy asked, confused.
“Whenever Daddy’s doing the crossword and Dad helps him out with an answer, he always says ‘how come you know that word and yet can’t define we?’ Then Dad usually laughs this totally annoying fake laugh. Which leads to real laughter and then kissing.” Megan paused, then added, “It’s sick.”
Tommy laughed. “Yep, that’d be where that comes from. There were some other issues during the wedding with the Secret Service - that was back when Robert was running for president, but aside from a few snags, everything went well after that. And a few months later, there was another wedding.”
“Which, according to Grandma, went perfectly.”
“Not quite,” Tommy contradicted. “They forgot to get rings. Robert and I had to lend ours.”
Megan propped her elbow on the edge of the desk, rested her forehead on her hand, and shook her head.
***
Megan was not surprised to see both cars in the driveway when she got home from school. Her dad usually took off from work early on holidays, especially when Daddy wasn’t working either. She walked inside the house and listened carefully. There were sounds coming from the kitchen, so she headed in that direction.
“I’m home!” she called out loudly. “I’m coming into the kitchen!”
She waited a moment and then opened the door. Then she quickly closed her eyes and turned her head away, half-laughing and half-serious as she complained.
“Come on! I announced myself and everything.”
Kevin laughed, and Megan could hear them step away from each other. Scotty cleared his throat.
“Sorry, honey. We just can’t help ourselves.”
“This is child abuse,” Megan declared.
“How was your Valentine’s Day?” Kevin said as he stepped closer and hugged her with one arm.
“Good. I was the only girl in my class to get a dozen roses and a box of chocolates delivered to school.”
“Secret admirer?”
“Well, that’s what the card says, but you guys aren’t fooling anyone.”
Scotty chuckled, turning away from the stove where dinner was cooking. “Too smart for your own good,” he said.
“And how’d the paper go? Do we finally get to read it now?”
“Yep,” Megan said, reaching into her backpack and pulling out a folder. “I got an A, but my teacher says my future lies in creative writing rather than reliable investigative journalism.”
Scotty turned to face her again, a confused expression on his face.
“What does that mean?” Kevin asked.
Megan shrugged. “Everybody else had these really boring stories. Fix-ups or blind dates, followed by uneventful relationships which ended in marriage a year or so later. Apparently, my story was ‘approaching unbelievable soap opera.’”
Kevin rolled his eyes, flipping through the pages of Megan’s story. “Our relationship is not a soap opera.”
Scotty walked over to the table and set a bowl of spaghetti down. “It kinda is,” he allowed. Turning to Megan, he added, “Go wash up, please.”
Megan stood. “OK. And I’ll leave you two alone after dinner. I know today’s kind of an anniversary for you.”
“What do you mean?” Kevin asked.
“Just something Kitty told me about,” Megan said as she walked closer to the door. She turned around and leaned against the frame, “I can never watch a Chad Barry movie again.”
“I hate my family,” Kevin muttered.
“And apparently that wasn’t the end of the story...” Megan said leadingly.
Scotty looked at her in shock, scoffing angrily. “I can’t believe someone told you that. We were never going to have a threesome.”
Megan’s mouth dropped open. “That...ew, that’s what she wouldn’t tell me. Ew!”
She hurried out of the room, and Kevin turned to Scotty, staring at him in reproach. Scotty threw his hands in the air and turned back to the stove.
The End