Meet The Family

A Sassy Culprit

Mrs. Tindsley was sitting next to her husband, who was wording the numerous benefits of alcohol avoidance habits. The meal she had carefully made for dinner was silently cooling down on his plate, and so was her patience.

"Stertinosis, the recently discovered syndrome, affects half the brain in people involved with regular alcohol consumption. Medical researchers have proved that an abrupt shortage in the stock of alcohol in various local groceries in the neighbouring area can produce visible improvements."

"What about the other half?" asked Samantha. She pointed her glass towards Mr. Tindsley, eagerly.

"Erm..."

Her son was looking at his empty plate. Half-forgotten about the rest of the food sitting at the perpendicular bisector of the table separating him from his female cousin.

"And how do they even diagnose diseases like that. It seems more like they make up a list every year, so to keep showing people it is a real science. Looking to Damian here, everyone could come over and say he's got half his brain malfunctioning. Is there even something like a highly functional person?"

"Shut up!" Mrs. Tindsley thought to herself. What a blithering mouth she's been given!

"You..." Mr. Tindsley had been bickered with the mildly passionate retort. In spite of reprehending the girl, though, he allowed himself a, "you have a reasonable point. But I'm afraid you haven't worded it plausibly."

Damian rose up and quietly left the room. As his mother, she eyed in her husband gravely. "See what you've done, you and your broken logic?" She didn't say it out loud, though. But it was all in her eyes, in her very own eyes...

Two weeks in, she had caught her husband frolicking with Samantha in the living room. The distance between their bottoms was down to any at all, as he showed to her beloved niece the photographic memento album of theirs, in between conjoined laughs of amusement.

Mrs. Tindsley watched in dread within her concealment, as Samantha confessed to him, "Boris, you make me laugh like no one else could!" She clearly wasn't expecting this outcome, ever since her sister impolitely invited her own daughter out. Samantha was known in the family by her fierce spirit, but Gwyneth could never accept that her unmarried twenty-year-old daughter would neither seek a job nor polish a degree. Mrs. Tindsley was well-aware of it by the time she heard of it, yet she cared too much for her niece to solely condemn her to a life of credence, hedonism, even prostitution.

Boris was at first uneasy with her apparent lack of responsibility, but he condescended as Mrs. Tindsley told him she'd been a smart girl at school and had never involved herself with unordinary company or the like. She proved herself to be a quiet girl, and Mrs. Tindsley sighed in relief when she found out her main hobbies revolved around smooth afternoon videogaming in the living room and casual reading once inside her bedroom at night.

Mr. Tindsley also pffered her a place in the family. And the new member brought out with her some peace to a single-child family like the one they had been. But as his spouse and caretaker, she felt beguiled as she found out of the growing fondness between the two.

Julian stopped Mrs. Tindsley before she went after her son with the raise of his hand. "Let me go..." he asserted to her. She conceded. After all, Damian was also his grandson. Samantha also retired to her bedroom. In no less than a moment, she was left alone with Boris. Family matters? So it seemed. And she was eager to discuss it with him.

It was no more than a week ago that it had happened. And by it, Mrs. Tindsley was referring to the change in Samantha's humour. She was no more the casual odd-one-out in the house. Something had changed. She demanded an explanation to her husband. Mr. Tindsley allegedly grew closer to her, spoiling her with gifts and whispered words. She was shocked by the acts of her husband, which constituted an offense to her rights as his exclusive wife.

Mr. Tindsley revealed the change in behaviour she had observed were only a mere exhibition of the development of the newly-received member. Since her arrival into the family, she'd met new neighbours, made her first friends, and was finally overcoming the end of her belated way into adulthood. Which couldn't have been possible without the close support of those she shared her home with.

Mr. Tindsley declared his obliviousness to the reasons behind the sudden mood spurs. Feeling her generalised sense of misplacement, he was given the honour of supporting her. And so, he rightfully brought her into the family. To this she retorted, she wasn't just a lost sheep, she was also young, educated and attractive. More than that, she was her niece, and the one responsible for bringing her in.

"But you should have also stuck to hers. Instead she ended up sticking to me. And now, you throw her back like a piece of dirt. You'd seen it coming, yet you turn it against her, against me, against our son." He sighed and added,

"Soon it'll be our wedding anniversary. You don't want my father to see us like this, do you?"

Mrs. Tindsley gave in. More than the perfidious whims she could see through her husband, she knew about the effort he'd had to bring them all together under the same roof, despite the odds and all the distinct personalities of theirs. She knew the share each own had in it, but only to him they would owe the final word. After all, what could an inexperienced mathematician, who had gone over her family to study in the renowned Abercroft University, tell all her friends after she'd wrecked her marriage, secluded her niece, and lost her son to a nervy philanderer and his senile father?

No, she'd still have a chance on this family. "Well! I shall have a private talk with my fellow niece," she pointed out, yet soon her husband's keen look convinced her to add, "I'm sorry for these ruthless conjectures of mine, my faithful husband. Should you forgive me if I pay up those with love and gratitude?"

"Absolutely, my dearest wife!"

Upstairs, Mrs. Tindsley didn't follow her husband when she irrupted into her son's bedroom, just to find him asleep.

"Damian, spark! I've brought you something to eat..."

"I don't wanna eat!" she heard him say, without a single nudge.

"It's chocolate milk... and some biscuits," she uncovered the couple of round cocoa-spotted wafers. But as he numbly grabbed a bite on them, she added,

"Take these with your milk. It'll make you feel better tomorrow," as she gave him a glimpse of two equally-shaped pellets.

"But Father..."

"Father doesn't have to know."

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