Eric, Jody Kaye [well read books TXT] 📗

Around town, they call us the Kingsbrier Quintuplets. On the technical side, we’re not Kingsbriers. Our daddy, Ross, married the incorrigible Miss Rose Kingsbrier six years before we were born. It’s only because we live on the plot of land that holds our momma’s family name that we’re not referred to as the Cavanaugh Quintuplets. Though, each of the five of us has had it pounded into our heads to answer to either name when it’s called.

Daddy doesn’t care one iota his progeny are better known by his wife’s maiden name. I figure he’s damn proud they don’t call us anything worse—especially me since I have a knack for getting into scuffles at school and on the football field, back alleys, and I’ve thrown down in pasture or two. Lately, he’s been nostalgic, remarking about the no-nonsense way Momma managed to raise five babies and giving all the credit to her.

Even I’m aware of when to mind my manners in public, and I’m smart enough to know Momma couldn’t have done it on her own. It’s not easy keeping five kites flying at once. Hold the string too tight and it flounders. Give the line too much slack and you never know where you’ll be chasing off to trying to find it or what tree you’ll climb to get the kite back unscathed. I’d like to see any other parents manage as well as mine did. We haven’t made it easy on them.

Kingsbrier, the property, is a sprawling Texas ranch. The house is low on the horizon, cut into a rolling hill, so it looks to only be one story. Wide wings of bedrooms flank either side of the Tudor home my grandfather built. An enormous pool hides behind the left wing. To the right, where our rooms lay, are immaculate gardens. Acres of green grass cut off where a grove of trees was planted long ago. A stable, several outbuildings for storage, and residences—once used to house occasional staff members—are spaced across the vast property.

This land was Rose’s inheritance from her oil-rich father who passed when us quints were little. It was a windfall Ross had little need of as Daddy is a self-made man in the construction business. There was no silly prenuptial agreement. Ross simply told Grandaddy he was disinterested in Momma’s fortune. The bulk falls to us when we turn twenty-five.

Determined to instill a work ethic in his kids, Ross is about to cut us off and we’ll have to figure out life’s hard knocks on our own. The five of us have always known about this, but for as down to earth as our parents made our upbringing, ask me how intimidating it is for a kid raised in a mansion? Over the next seven years, we’ll either forge paths our own or fall and be trampled. I’m thinking he hopes we’ll learn to pick ourselves up, brush the dust off, and keep going.

As cocky as it sounds, the Kingsbrier quints have been proving people wrong since the day we were born. Hell, it may be a family trait. Grandaddy wanted grandchildren to carry on his legacy. After years of trying, Rose and Ross agreed to fertility treatments, figuring maybe they’d wind up with twins.

What they got was a pair, a spare, and a spare, and yet another spare. Eric and I are a set of identical twin boys. Of the other three babies, only one was supposed to be a girl; my sister Brier. However, Daddy tells the tale that he’d already decided not to underestimate his children when our mother had managed to stay pregnant for so long with all those buns in the oven. So, when a second daughter—whom they’d spent months referring to as Davy—made a grand entrance as baby number four, displacing the birth order for Eric and me, and making me the youngest, he wasn’t shocked.

Now, with five eighteen-year-olds ready to leave the nest, it’s anyone’s guess what’ll happen. Or maybe not.

Plenty is predictable around this house. Like how Brier came home before curfew from the party we were at celebrating our high school graduation, which is this afternoon. She pretended to go to bed and then snuck back out for one last hoorah in case the discipline hammer falls on all of us. I’m pretty sure B knows what I’ve overheard this morning.

Cotton-mouthed from too many beers last night, I slunk down the stairs after the enormous wooden front door shut. Being hung-over in front of our mother is not something I advise.

Momma is standing outside, inspecting the front garden. Judging by her demeanor, Mrs. Rose Kingsbrier-Cavanaugh believes the rumor is true.

“I’m too young for this, Ross.” She points a manicured finger at her long blonde hair. For as long as I can recall, it’s only ever down around her shoulders at daybreak. “The lot of them may give me white streaks, but this color is not from a bottle.”

Daddy kisses her and I spy a moment of solace passing between them. I should feel worse for spying on them from the dining room window. But I don’t. Neither looks as if they’ve slept a wink and if they did, it was fitful. The fact that only four of the five of us quints were in our rooms this morning when my parents awakened is the least of their problems.

Those big life lessons?