𝐍𝐎 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐃𝐈𝐄 ⁻ ˢᶜʳᵉᵃᵐ ⁵

8 - how to unintentionally shock your father

"Yeah," Dad gave up his hope of Martha saying something nice; I slumped back into the couch and pulled out my phone, sending Dad a text that read 'you look nice.'

"How's the wife?" Martha had asked Dad, and it was a synchronized cringe throughout the entire room. How is she the only one who doesn't know?

"Okay, Mom, we're good, thank you." Chad came in with his expert defense again, and I gave him a thumbs up as he looked my way.

"Alright, kids. Have fun." Without looking at either of the twins, I knew they were both dying of embarrassment. She was the sweetest mother in the world, don't get any of us wrong, but sometimes she can be a bit much. Sam anxiously looked around at the entire group, clearing her throat to have our undivided attention.

"I asked Mindy to call everybody here because..." A beat. "I have something to tell all of you."

"Let me get this straight." Chad was the first one to speak out of all of us once Sam was done with her trauma dump. "You're saying that you're the daughter of Billy Loomis and, what, that one of us is the killer?"

"The killer told me he knew my secret." Sam was becoming an enigma. "He attacked Tara to lure me back here."

"Then why immediately go and murder some douchenozzle that was stalking Liv?" Chad asked, and Brielle straightened up, holding her hands out in a way of telling everybody to hang on.

"Why are we saying that this piece-of-shit-killer is a guy?" Brielle asked, raising an eyebrow. "It's twenty-twenty-two, Sam. Until we know the killer is either male or female, lets refer to them with gender neutral pronouns. Don't complain, don't say anything. Just listen to me." A beat. "Oh, and Mister Douchenozzle was our older brother."

"The fuck's that got to do with significance?" Chad is a dumbass, but it's okay, because he's our dumbass.

"Brille and Laina Macher, Chad. Vince Macher?" Amber seemed to take it as a personal offense that Chad hadn't put the pieces together yet. "They're all the nieces and nephews of Stu Macher."

"Well, hang on," Wes sat up, "backtracking here, but why does it have to be one of us? Maybe it's Deputy Dewey here. No offense."

I grabbed a fry from the snack tray and tossed it at Wes. He picked it off of his lap and ate it, so I hit him with a pillow. Dad held his hand out in my direction, a plain way of telling me to calm down for a moment. Probably because he wanted to hear Wes out, which was admirable, but I was still upset about it.

"None taken," he began, "but what's my motive?"

"You got stabbed, like, a billion times, got dumped by your famous wife, and crawled into a bottle, I think it's safe to say you're on the suspect list."

I didn't expect Wes to go that low, or to dig that deep, but he did, and now I felt way too many mixed emotions. Why did he have to say all of that like...how he said it? He could've said it in a nicer way, but I'll just dismiss it this time because the stakes are raising in this game.

"Well maybe you're the killer," Dad challenged, "because that...cut deep."

"That would make sense." Brielle suggested, and everybody turned to face her. "For Wes being the killer. I mean, he's not just a love interest, he's the love interest to a direct legacy kid-" she motioned in my direction, everybody glanced at me. "And his mom was part of a shitty inferior sequel, so..."