Feuds and Reckless Fury by K. Webster

Canyon

Awar began on the Fourth of July with a marriage proposal, fireworks, and a fist to my father’s face.

Just. Like. That.

It’d been brewing, sure—a slow, burning build of anger and resentment toward my father. Over spring break of my junior year of high school, after he’d been gone a week “on business,” he came back and filed for divorce from my mother. He claimed he’d long since fallen in love with someone else and only recently found the nerve to do something about it. Mom was devastated and shocked. Fell into a deep depression. Went from stay-at-home mom to suddenly finding herself in the work world, searching for her sense of self-worth.

The separation wasn’t nasty and cruel.

It was cold and unfeeling.

Mom went numb as Dad froze her out.

I hated him for it.

Worse, I wanted to destroy the person who came between my parents. The monster who wedged themselves into an eighteen-year marriage, slicing through it like it meant nothing.

For months, Dad hid his mistress from me and my younger sister Carrie.

No matter what sort of digging we did, we weren’t ever able to find anything on the mystery woman.

On the Fourth of July, while standing on Dad’s boat, I learned who his mistress was.

It wasn’t a woman at all.

Dad, in front of his two stunned and confused children, proposed to Quinn Sommers.

His best friend.

His male, longtime gay best friend.

Dad had barely slid the ring onto Quinn’s finger and grinned at Quinn’s uttered, “Yes,” before I rammed a fist into his face.

The fireworks were like a gunshot in the air, defining the very moment when all hell officially broke loose in my world.

Dad may have been the catalyst, but it was someone else I went to war with.