Startlingly Different

Chapter 2

Kelly:

I'm up early as usual, even on Saturday, so I read in bed for a while, then get up, leaving Jack, who's a night owl, sleeping and go to get a spot of breakfast.

My son, Zane, turned fifteen last month in August, still sleeps also.

My daughter, Indigo, nine, is awake and joins me in the kitchen, her wide blue eyes still sleepy.

"Hiii, sweetie..." I coo, ruffling her reddish-brown hair. "Want some breakfast? I'm making maple pancakes with walnuts."

We both love walnuts and unusual pancake combinations.

As we eat and chat, I look out over the London skyline, marveling still at the morning fog, even several years later.

My first husband, Kevin, who is Zane's biological dad, returned to Llanview after our divorce and we rarely see each other these days.

Jack and I live together in our flat on the tenth floor, but we're in no rush to marry.

London and most other huge cities, don't have that small-town mentality of shaming and stigmatizing non-marital births.

I think about my aunt Dorian, who during the 1990s and early 2000s, struggled with being stigmatized and sex-shamed in Llanview because she is a self-made millionaire and says what's on her mind quite bluntly.

I smile softly, thinking about how she exposed the hypocrisy of the old-money crowd that had dominated Llanview for so long.

My cousin Cassie, Aunt Dorian and I now can laugh over the time back in 1993 at a journalism awards banquet when my aunt was scared over the possibility of having breast cancer.

She'd gotten drunk over wine and had gone to the banquet with Cassie and a Jason Webb who my aunt had been dating at the time.

The then-queen matriarch of Llanview at the time, had come with her extra-marital lover, a Sloan Carpenter.

Viki's husband, who was bitter over losing Viki to Sloan, had been there with a lover of his own.

The three of them...Viki, Sloan and Clint, who were from the old-money clan, really looked down on Aunt Dorian and wasted a lot of time trashing her and calling her vile names in private while smiling and pretending to be pitying of her in public.

Well, my aunt was having none of their phoniness and called them out, telling them that the room was suffocating in hyp-ocrisy.

Cassie and Jason had been worried about my aunt partially because they were becoming aware of how vicious Viki, Clint and Sloan could be when crossed.

Now I'm glad that Cassie and Aunt Dorian can laugh about it today.

Sloan died shortly afterward and I think Viki, who has long-term mental instability coupled with DID, began to crack apart.

My aunt, who is practically a grammarian, said the word hyp-ocrisy so distinctly and quite loudly.

I would have loved to have been there at the time to see that.

I decide to ring up my aunt, since I know she is up also.

She's a diplomat and she and a team of several others are coming to London next month in October for an international summit.

She picks up after just two rings. I ask her if she wants to stay at our place for the week-long summit.

"It'll be a great chance for us to catch up and for you to see your great-niece and nephew."