A Family Kind of Guy by Lisa Jackson

this.” Bliss slid a pancake onto the stack that was heaped on the plate before her father. She’d slept fitfully last night, her dreams punctuated with visions of her father strapped to an IV, of meeting women she didn’t know and introducing herself as their sister, and, of course, of Mason. Good Lord, why couldn’t she get him out of her mind? It had been ten years since she’d been involved with him. A decade. It was long past time to forget him.
    â€œWhat kind of trouble?” Her father slathered the top pancake with margarine, then reached for the honey spindle. Drizzling thick honey over his plate, he looked up at his daughter as if he expected her to accept the turn of events that had knocked her for such an emotional loop.
    â€œYou know with what. Brynnie. My half sisters. The whole ball of wax, for crying out loud. It’s…well, come on, Dad, it’s just…well, bizarre, for lack of a better word.” She shook her head, then winced as she poured them each a cup of coffee. After setting the glass pot back in the coffeemaker, she settled into the empty chair across from him.
    â€œNot bizarre, honey. It’s right.”
    â€œRight?”
    â€œFor the first time in a lot of years, I…I feel free ’cause I’m not livin’ a lie.” Blue eyes met hers from across the table. “Your mother was a fine woman—I won’t take that away from her—but we weren’t happy together. Hadn’t been for a long time.”
    â€œI know.” A dull pain settled in her heart. She’d felt the tension between her parents, known that theirs wasn’t a marriage made in heaven, but still, they had been married and Bliss, though she hated to admit it, still believed in “till death us do part.”
    â€œShe’s gone, honey,” her father said. “I would never have divorced her, you know.”
    â€œOnly cheated on her.”
    He looked down and sliced his hotcakes with the side of his fork. “Guess I can’t expect you to understand.”
    â€œI’m trying, Dad,” she said, unable to hide the emotion in her words. “Believe me, I’m trying.” Resting her elbows on the table, she cradled her cup in two hands. Through the paned windows she could see the barn and pastures. White-faced Hereford cattle mingled with Black Angus as they grazed on grass sparkling with morning dew.
    The silence stretched between them, with only the ticking of the clock, the low of cattle, the rumble of a tractor’s engine in the distance and an excited yip from Oscar as he explored his new surroundings breaking the uneasy quietude.
    John washed down a bite of pancake with a swallow of coffee. “Since I had the heart attack and looked the Grim Reaper square in his black eyes, I’ve decided to do exactly what I want with the few years I have left.”
    â€œAnd that includes marrying this…this Brynnie woman.”
    â€œBelieve it or not, Bliss, she’s got a heart of gold.”
    â€œAnd a string of ex-husbands long enough to—”
    â€œShe made some bad choices, I know. So did I. And if it’s any comfort to you, I never ran around with another woman while I was married to your mother.”
    â€œJust Brynnie.” Bliss couldn’t hide the bitterness in her voice.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIsn’t she enough?”
    He shoved his half-eaten breakfast aside and skewered his daughter with a look of sheer determination. “I know you don’t approve. Can’t blame you. But no one was hurt.”
    â€œWhat about Mom?”
    â€œYou mother and I…we had an arrangement.”
    â€œAn arrangement?” Bliss sputtered, choking on a mouthful of coffee. “It’s called marriage, Dad, and one of the vows a person takes when they get married is fidelity. To be faithful. It doesn’t seem a lot to ask.” She couldn’t help the rising tone of her voice, as