THE FIRST TIME

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN - FAMILY AFFAIR

"It's a family affair"

SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE (Single from 1971)


How do you tell someone that they're your long-lost sister and that you're the one, she's spent years trying to find? As Jen was finding out, this wasn't the easiest job in the world and she figured that the most important part of telling Eve the truth, came in getting the timing right. How to go about it though, was the big question, and seeing as her own brain kept drawing a blank, her conclusion became that since this was such an unusual situation, it also required her to go to a source for help, who she'd never really talked to before. Joey's dad, Mike.

Why him, you may ask? The way Jen figured it, if anyone knew about keeping secrets and how hard it can be to tell the truth to someone, it had to be the man, who aside from having kept the students at Capeside High well supplied in fine Ganja for a handful of months, had also led a secret double life with his mistress, while his wife was at home dying of cancer. Not that knowing any this made Jen want to talk to him, but according to Joey he was a changed man, now that he'd paid his debt to society, so she figured that it couldn't be the worst idea, she'd ever had.

When she found him, he was busy setting tables up on the patio of the Ice House, for what was sure to be a very busy day ahead of them, seeing as not only was it tourist season, but also a Saturday and with many of their usual patrons also returning from their own vacations, this meant lots of nice dinero coming in for Capeside's best family run restaurant.

"Hi, Mike. Need some help?" she tried casually asking Mike, who smiled in his friendliest way back at her.

"Nah, this was the last of them, but you're very sweet to offer your help, considering that you don't even work here. Although, with all of the free help you've been so kind offer, it almost feels like you deserve a small paycheck. Only almost, though!" Mike joked and it helped put Jen at ease that he was clearly in a jovial sort of mood this morning.

"If you haven't noticed, I usually have the ulterior motive of wanting to hang out with daughter, whenever I've done so" Jen truthfully answered Joey's dad, who chuckled to himself at her candid response.

"If you're here to see Joey, I'll have to disappoint you. She won't be in for another hour, at least" Mike replied, while Jen gathered enough courage to ask him what she needed to.

"Actually, I came here to pick your mind on something" she told Mike, who looked confused for a moment.

"I can't say that I'm an expert on anything, unless you're looking to find out how to put the best clam chowder together, perhaps?"

"Look, you don't have to answer me, if you don't want to. It's just that I have to tell this girl something, that's pretty big and I'm not really sure how to. Basically, I'm her long-lost sister, who she's been searching for since she was eleven years old" she confessed to Mike, who looked circa as surprised as Grams had been, when she'd told her.

"Wow! I can see why something like that would be hard to get out, but don't you think that she'll just be happy beyond belief, when you tell her? I'm guessing that Joey would have been, if she all of a sudden had a long-lost close relative turn up at our door. Not that it's likely to ever happen".

"How did you tell your daughters about your infidelity? Again, you don't have to answer, if you don't want to and I know that it's none of my business, what happened long before I became friends with Joey ..." Jen rambled and began to wish that she'd come up with a different way of asking what had to be the last question, anyone would want to answer.

"It isn't really the same thing, is it?" Mike calmly asked back, making her at least glad, that he didn't take her question the wrong way.

"It was still a big secret, that you had to confess to them. It can't have been easy to".

"I hate to tell you, but the only way to go about it is to gather your courage, hope for the best and get it out there. In your case though, I'm sure that it can only end with huge smiles and big hugs" Mike reassured her, before he had to continue with his prep work for the day, or they would have been hopelessly behind by the time that the first customers arrived.

As Jen walked the short distance from the restaurant back to her grandmother's house, she also began to form a plan in her head and a rather simple one at that. She would call up her unknowing half-sister at the cheap motel, she was staying at and ask her, if she wanted to come with her to the beach. Knowing that Eve considered herself somewhat of an expert, when it came to hitting on hot teenage boys, she could also use the excuse of not getting anywhere with Ricky beyond the flirting stage (something, it was sadly becoming clearer by the day, would likely be the only outcome of her "Great Summer Fling of 1999"), to ask for some hints in the flirting department that would probably end up sealing the deal.

Anything that happened after that would just have to be winged, more or less.


"Joey, we have something important that we need to discuss with you".

Those words from Bessie were the first that Joey had heard that Saturday morning, after she'd woken up and walked into their kitchen, still wearing her jammies and wiping the sleep from her eyes. It was only Bessie and Bodie, who were in there, since her dad was opening the restaurant that day (a chore, he usually shared with Bodie) and the teething Alexander was getting his beauty sleep, after having kept the rest of them up for half of the night with his crying fits. For this reason, too, Joey wasn't entirely herself yet and not entirely sure that her tired head could contain too much information at that particular moment.

"Can't it wait until after I've had a cup of coffee and my morning shower?" she drowsily replied to them, as she poured herself a cup of that brown stuff, that would hopefully help her to fully wake up, before work started, and she had to get her head in the game. After pouring a teaspoon of sugar into it, she sat down at the kitchen table and took a sip. To be perfectly honest, she only drank coffee for the slight morning caffeine buzz, and it quickly began to make her spring to life again.

"We've, ehm ... maybe, you should explain it to her, Bessie" Bodie began, before looking pleadingly towards the love of his life, who was sitting next to him.

"Joey, I don't know exactly how to say this ..." Bessie continued on for her fiancée, although she too seemed like it was hard for her to say, whatever it was that she had to.

"Did something bad happen?" Joey worriedly asked them, seeing as this wasn't usual behavior for her older sister, who usually never had any trouble telling someone the unbridled truth to their face.

"No, it's nothing like that, Joey!" Bodie reassured her. "If anything, it's the complete opposite".

"As long as you two stop speaking in riddles this instant, I'm sure that I can take it!" Joey sharply and sarcastically answered them, before taking yet another sip from her cup of the drink, that almost shared her own nickname.

"A few days ago, while the rest of you were at work, a lawyer came to our house, saying that he represents the Von Wenning family. They want to buy the restaurant from us and they've made us a very generous offer ..." Bessie started explaining, although it wouldn't be many moments, before the blood started rushing to Joey's head and made her wake up in an instant.

"You can't actually be thinking about taking it, can you? The restaurant was mom's pride and joy and our parents built it up from nothing, we can't just sell it!" Joey protested, as clearly and loudly as she could.

"Dad thinks that we should take the offer too. We've been talking and ..." Bessie tried continuing, even if it was no use with the foul mood, she'd just put her younger sister in.

"I don't even want to hear it, Bessie! I'm as much a part of this family as you are, and I'm saying that it'll only happen over my dead body!" Joey continued to protest, before doing something that even she had to admit a few moments later, had been pretty dumb. She'd run out of the house, still wearing only her morning slippers and her PJ's and with no plan, where she could head off to, to cool down.

One problem with living so far away from her friends (most of whom lived in either the center or the Eastern part of town, while her family's house was almost as far to the West as you could go, while still being within the town limits) was that if she wanted to visit one of them, her only mode of transportation was her row boat, that was safely chain locked to the tiny dock, they had practically at their doorstep. With the key to that chain lock still being inside of the house though, that made the boat a "No-Go" and it severely limited how far she travel off to, also given that she was dressed in a way that was sure to make everyone she met, stare at her like she was an alien from a previously undiscovered solar system. To her luck, or lack of it, depending on your perspective, it wouldn't be long until she ran into someone, that being Pacey's older brother Doug in his police cruiser, who spotted her and pulled up to the side of the road next to her.

"Isn't it a little early in the morning to be going to a costume party, Joey?" Doug jokingly asked her, after she'd stopped her pointless walking to talk to him.

"How do you know that I haven't just come home from one?" she smart-assed asked him back, making him shake his head slightly at her reply.

"It's easy to see why you and my wise-ass little brother make for such a perfect couple! I'm not just asking you as a cop, I'm asking because you're practically a part of our family already and when I see a fifteen-year-old girl who's dressed like you are, walking the streets at this hour of the morning, it's my job to ask her some questions. I can at least give you a ride, if you'll tell me where you're off to?" Doug slyly offered and considering her lack of other options, that wouldn't involve her walking through town while being laughed at by every tourist, she ran into, it was simply far too enticing of a proposition to resist.

"Can you drive me over to your mom's house, so I can see if Pacey is home? Which, considering my current attire, I'm well aware is like asking me if you'll drive me to a booty call with your brother, I just don't know where else to go right now!" she exasperatedly told Doug, who opened the passenger seat door for her in reply.

"On one condition: That you tell the both of us what's going on, so we can help you, Joey. That's all either of us want to do here, you have my word" Doug solemnly told her, laying down a law that she could live with. For the time being, anyway.

After she'd told the truth to Pacey and Doug, she borrowed some clothes from their sister Gretchen, just so that she wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb, everywhere she went. They were both understanding, as she'd expected them to be, still it felt to her like this was something that they couldn't help her with, and she would have to deal with on her own. A scary prospect, to say the least.


As Jen had expected it hadn't taken much persuasion to convince Eve to come to the beach with her and after the two girls had met up down by "Abby's Boat Shack" (as Jen liked to call it), they'd made their way down to the already busy, but thankfully not completely overflowing with people either, beach. As for hunks however, there was no shortage of them, wearing just enough to leave a little to their hormone driven imaginations.

"Man, I wish that I could stay here forever!" Eve sighed, as she checked out a particularly well-built college aged guy, who must have been doing his "Buns of Steel" exercises every day for years, from the looks of it.

"I'm sorry to tell you, but Capeside outside of the tourist season and Capeside during the tourist season are two very different things. Once the sun goes away and the cloudy skies come back, it's like most other small towns, where very little happens from day to day" Jen explained to Eve, who nodded understandingly, as she spoke.

"That's what I figured. Do you like living here?"

"You can call me crazy, but I've actually started to like it being that way. It's the complete opposite of my life in New York, where I was always busy with a million different things going on at the same time. Sure, there were nice things that happened to and for me, I just never took the time to savor it, before I had to move onto the next thing, you know?"

"I guess so. I don't really like it all that much, where I live, if you want the truth. Trust me, being a party-loving girl like me in the middle of a bible-belt town, where they look down on you for anything, that makes you stand out from the norm, is like constantly trying to fit a square peg into a round hole! If I'd only had one friend, like I have in you, perhaps it wouldn't be so bad, but all of the girls there are the same: Judgmental little bitches, who sit on their high horses and look down on everyone, who isn't a hundred percent perfect like they are" Eve sullenly explained and in doing so, was drawing even more comparisons between their lives.

"In that case, you don't want to meet a girl that I go to school with, named Heather Johns! As far as being judgmental and looking down on everyone else, she has to be the uncrowned queen! Urgh, just saying her name out loud makes me want to barf my lunch up!"

"I'll take your word for it, without any guts needing to be spewed out! Say what you will about this place though, I still say that as long as it has a cool girl like you in it, it's still a huge step above what I come from. She told her new friend in a total hetero way, if it wasn't clear already, that she only did that only did that other thing once and in her own defense, it was with a very butch looking girl, who'd mistaken her having short hair for meaning something that it didn't!" Eve smilingly joked, drawing a small smile from herself as well.

"So basically, if you had a reason to stay, you would? Is that what I'm hearing?" Jen had to ask, if only to be entirely sure.

"With me having no savings to draw on, I'll have to spend the next year earning enough to pay for my college tuition anyway, so why shouldn't it be here? It's stunningly beautiful almost everywhere you go, the people here seem a lot nicer, than they do at home and the boys here! Mmm, Mmm! Back home, I don't have anywhere close to the sort of selection, you girls have here! Oh, well, that's just life, I guess" Eve sadly sighed and not even having hot guys in speedo's all around her, could get her thoughts back to a sunny place.

"What if I told you that I happen to know for sure, that you have family living here?" she asked Eve, who looked curiously back at her.

"How can you know that?" Eve asked back, as anyone logically would in this situation.

"Because your biological mom is also my mom" she nervously told Eve, who (for the first time, in the time that Jen had known her) was completely lost for words.

The wide smile on Eve's face told Jen however, that it wasn't anywhere close to the worst news, she'd ever been given.


Unfortunately for Joey, she still had to go to work that day and it had been a tense affair, where she would actually for once be pleased that she didn't have the time to think about much else than what she was doing. Having Pacey there for moral support no doubt helped, even if they didn't have the time to speak more than fifty words at the most to one another throughout the workday, with how busy it was. As little as she wanted to face it though, this wasn't something that would go away undebated, no matter how much she wanted it to.

"Joey, can we talk for a few minutes?" her dad asked of her, after they'd let out the final guests and all that was left was cleaning up, before they could close down for the day.

"As long as it isn't about you know what" she coldly replied to him.

"It is, but I just want to explain something to you, that's all. It's about your mother, among other things" her dad pleaded his case and if nothing else just to keep him happy, she followed him back to their storage room, where they could speak in private.

"You can say what you want to, I won't change my mind about selling the restaurant!" she sharply said, making it clear, or so she thought.

"Did you know that your mother was busy making plans for our future, even after she'd found out that she likely wasn't going to make it?" her dad asked and in doing so, was bringing up something that Joey hadn't thought about in years.

"Sort of. I remember that she had all of these big sketches and stuff, that she was always working on, when I came home from school. She never told me what it was about, though".

"She told me. In great detail, in fact. Her plan was to sell the restaurant and use most of the money from it to buy a new and bigger house for our family, while the rest would go into converting our present house into a bed and breakfast, that we would all run together. Of course, circumstances sadly got in the way of all of that, but this could be our only chance to live that dream out for her. It would be better for Bessie too; I think that you know that deep down. Working as hard as she has for these past years comes with a hard prize to pay for your physical health and your psyche, and it isn't something that you can continue doing year after year. If she continues on like this, it will take several years off her life, there's no doubt about it" Joey's dad calmly explained to her and while before, she'd been stubborn on her opinion not to sell, now that stubbornness was starting to evaporate, as she thought back to the many times where Bessie had looked like she was a fraction of a second away from passing out, simply from being completely overworked in every conceivable way, shape and form.

"It's just hard for me to wrap my head around, that this restaurant doesn't mean more to the rest of you guys. It's been our life blood, the thing that united us and kept us from falling into poverty. Our lives wouldn't be the same without it, is what I'm trying to say, I guess" Joey explained it to her dad, the best she could.

"It'll be tough for me, Bessie and Bodie to say goodbye to it too, but with the bed and breakfast, we can still keep the spirit of this place alive, plus it won't be anywhere close to the sort of workload, this place gives us. For yourself too, this is a chance to experience what being a normal girl your age is like and without having to come to work five or six days a week, just think of all the other things that you can do with that spare time. You could take extra-curriculars at school, to help your chances of getting into a great college or heck, even start a band, if you wanted to! We all remember how much you used to love to sing" her dad suggested and the more he spoke, the nicer the prospect of it all began to seem to her.

"The sky is the limit, huh?" she cheekily asked her dad back, before getting a kind smile in return.

"Joey, your mother loved you more than life itself, I hope that you'll never doubt that. I miss her every day too and I know that what she wanted for you, wasn't to see you throwing your youth away, by spending entire summers working in here, when you should be out living your life and creating memories that you'll look back on and smile later in life. We only get to be your age once and honestly, you deserve so much better than that, if only for how much you've sacrificed for us already. I can't make up your mind for you and if you don't want us to sell, then it goes without saying that we won't, I only wanted you to know everything that you needed to, so you can make the right decision for yourself".

After a few nights to sleep on it and after having carefully weighed the pros and cons in her head, Joey gave Bessie the go ahead to start the sale process. It would be a different kind of existence for her of course, with the Ice House no longer being any of her responsibility, still it wasn't one that scared her. Not as long as she knew that her mother was looking down on them from heaven, happy that her vision for their future was finally coming true.

END OF CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN