Chapter 1

I got a call from a woman named Susan one day, in which she said she was friends with another couple I'd interviewed for the project. She'd gotten my number from them. She asked if I would please come and do a preliminary interview with her and Micky, and consider putting them in the program.

I had, by this time, interviewed seventy couples in the program. I had sixty-three of them "in the can", or finished, and was beginning to feel the pressure of getting the remaining interviews wrapped up so I could start writing the paper. My advisor was very happy with what he had seen thus far, though, and was not pressuring me to finish. His attitude was that, the more interviews I had, the better it would be in the end. So I was open to adding more couples to the project.

"How long have you and Micky been married?" I asked.

"Well, there's a little problem with that," she said softly. "We've been together for fifteen years, but we can't get married. It's a legal thing. But we're totally committed to each other, and we WOULD get married if it were possible."

"I'm not sure I understand why you'd want to be in a project that examines married couples, if you can't get married," I said reasonably.

"Melanie explained what you're trying to prove," said Susan, "and Micky and I look so much alike that people often think we're related. We just thought it could help raise awareness..." She trailed off and it was silent for a few seconds. Then she went on. "We think our situation would support your research, and your research could help support our situation."

I had a sudden thought that she and Micky might be brother and sister, or close cousins, which would explain why they couldn't get married. I knew there were a lot of people who deeply loved each other, but were in that kind of situation, where the law prevented them from pursuing their love like 'normal' people did.

I knew I couldn't put an incestuous couple in this study, but I also knew that there was a very wide vein of material that could be mined in that area. I was already thinking about my Doctorate program, and the idea of doing a study on incestuous couples in committed relationships had already been teasing at my mind. It would make a HUGE splash in sociological circles, if I could get it published.

It was for that reason that I agreed to do the initial interview with them. I didn't plan to use it for the current study, but might be able to plant the seeds for a future project.

I may have mentioned this in the past: Don't make assumptions. They're almost always in error. You'd think I would have figured that out by now.

I arrived at the address given, and found it to be a neat little two bedroom house, about forty or fifty years old, in a neighborhood of similar houses. It was one of those neighborhoods where a lot of blue collar workers are raising new families, and have managed to scrape together enough money to buy their first house. The houses on this street had probably been sold, at one time or another, as "Fixer-uppers". They took a lot of maintenance, but their owners were proud to be home owners, so they took care of them as well as they could on a limited budget.