I Always Will

King's Folly

Matt, Two Weeks Later

I pace the length of my dining room, with a club soda in hand. Annie—because she believes in me and I don't require her stone cold sober solidarity to keep mine—has a white wine spritzer. Poodle, always following in her foot steps, is sipping the same. Street—my different stride, my ultimate pride, though he doesn't really know it—sips an espresso, though he has a flask of Amaretto that he nips in discreet moments and thinks I don't know.

Leed has a tequila. Ashlynn and Bodie club sodas. Marley a red wine.

On the big screen in some kind of Facetime or Meet or Zoom—i don't know what the fuck, Bridge dealt with that—Trace's drink is not visible, but if I had to guess? He's nursing a beer. Very lovely and very pregnant Katheryn is sporting nothing but a sleepy, exhausted  expression. Split screen from them, Adam has a glass of dark liquor—bourbon, I'd bet my life—and our beautiful and probably most talented family member—MacKenna—is sipping from a can of ginger ale.

Unusual. Her glass is usually filled with a dusky pink blend rimmed in salt that I always assume is a Salty Dog- a classic southern cocktail of grapefruit juice and vodka. But not tonight.

I look at her face. Her bones are prominent, but her skin glowing.

Pregnant, my gut flashes. I look at Adam. He looks...content with his arm around her. He's so steady, I doubt a pregnancy would shift him that much, at this point.

Yeah, probably they're expecting another baby. But I'll file that suspicion away, until they confirm. My old-fashioned instincts are sometimes wrong now, when it comes to the kids. Hell, she could just as easily be on a cleanse, or a Neo-Christian meditation program, or whatever.

I look to the last person I admit as family. Devlin Cavendish. He's looking piously serious for a change, but I don't even need to give him a glance to know it's a false front of sobriety he's adopting and that his glass is filled with a perpetual G&T.

There. Now.

I've run the temptations in the room. I've identified every drink nearly against my will. I've noted the fellow addicts keeping their sobriety, the same as me.

Such is the life of an alcoholic under stress.

I'm worried. No one has seen Row or talked to her on the phone in two weeks. She replies to texts saying she's fine, everything is going well, but she's declined all attempts from everyone to spend time with her.

I heard some scuttlebutt that there was some big deal thing  going on with Row a couple weeks back. Sounds like it was something she was keeping from Riley. I heard it from Street, who overheard Annie and Bridge talking about it. Apparently Bridge over heard Ashlynn on the phone at the MdM offices. She was trying to talk Leed down because he was angsty about some secret he was sure Kat was avoiding telling him, who probably heard it from Trace who knew something about something from Bodie. Or possible Doc Gorgeous. Leed wasn't sure, according to Ashlynn's overheard comments by Bridge-and-Annie via Street.

So that's why I've called all their asses here. To get to the bottom of this.

Because if Riley is back to his asshole, manipulative, stalker-husband ways, and manipulating Row into going along with it because she feels sorry for him, there's about to be an intervention of one on Riley's face. I don't care what shape his legs and feet are in.

Before I get to all that, Annie is insisting we start at the top and admit why I think Row is a little pissed at her mom and me, and therefore not communicating well with us lately.

"Okay. Here's the deal," I say, pacing. "I'm going to say a thing, but I don't want anyone to be confused. The thing I'm about to say is not the thing we're here for tonight. The thing is just a... preamble. A thing that no one really knows, except Row, whom Annie told a couple months ago because she thought it would be helpful to her."