Chapter 3

By early summer, the county sheriff’s office had completed its slow but quite thorough investigation of the death at the speedway. No one blamed me, or even Emily very much for what happened, but there was a distinct undertone that no one in county government wanted this sort of thing to ever occur again. Emily and I were prepared for this and we presented to the small county commission our proposal.

Emily and Leanne both wanted a larger house and even bigger bedroom for the three of us to live in. My trailer was not an option, nor really was Emily’s smaller ranch house. It seemed that Darlene was going to end up with dad’s old trailer after all. My ladies wanted something new, bigger, better and more updated ... modernized. That alone would be expensive – especially considering that I still hadn’t found my father’s hidden bank account.

He never trusted banks. ‘The IRS can seize them ... not so with a safe buried underground!’ He quite accurately stated to me on several occasions. He just never told me where! I’d asked him, several times in fact, and he’d just laughed, ‘Look for the sign that says Treasure!’ He’d thought that I was smart enough, unlike my dim sister, to find his buried stash ... but I’d looked everywhere – twice, if not more often!

Anyway, my senior fiancé was loaded and willing to spend the bucks. She wanted to build a bigger and much more modern and fancy equestrian center on the new property, on a big 1200 acre parcel of ranch pastureland right across the street from the Speedway. My father had quietly been offering to buy that property for the last few years of his life, to no avail ... but the elderly owners were friends of Emily’s family, and through her the deal was now easier (and cheaper) to make.

In addition to the world-class equestrian center, we told the county commission, we wanted to build an all new horse only racetrack. Assuming that the county would vote to allow pari-mutuel betting onsite – in return for the certain very lucrative county sin-taxes. This would permanently separate the cyclists from the horsemen and women, and allow me to expand, update and improve the motocross facilities as well, now that all of the existing horse-only structures and tracks could be removed.

They agreed ... with surprising willingness to even help promote and encourage the ballot measure for the next forthcoming fall election. In the interim, Emily bought the new property and began tearing down the old 1950’s ranch house so that something big new and modern could replace it, to be complete and ready for move in hopefully by Christmas. She also moved all of the horse training and stabling facilities that could be dug up and moved to the new site, and hastily purpose built everything else that was needed to put herself back in business by this wintertime, as well.

The new county Pari-mutuel Gambling ordinance passed, easily, and Emily wrote those first dozen or two extremely large checks to start the construction of our new racetrack. When done, it would be the finest such facility for a dozen or more counties around us, and we’d be major enough to join the local Texas racetrack circuit, right from the very start. Our new seats would hold up to six thousand people, for any event, and we were sure we’d get significant attendance at our major events from nearly every big city in the state.

We calculated that once Emily’s old property sold, that we could just manage the rest of the necessary construction that we couldn’t otherwise finance through the local county bank. My father never believed in mortgages and always paid cash for everything ... but damned if I couldn’t ever find his buried treasure!

I did find that my love for Emily and Leanne just continued to grow ... and equally between the mother and the daughter. We had decided to get married, but the logistics of it ... a proper polyamorous wedding without the necessity of converting to Mormonism, overwhelmed us. We couldn’t just engrave ‘It’s Complicated’ on tasteful ivory card stock and mail it off to all of our various friends and family. Besides, if marrying one woman wasn’t complicated and life-disrupting enough, then marrying two, mother and daughter at that, would just multiply all the usual relationship difficulties, plus allow for even less available closet space.

That’s me ... the pessimist. So, we dithered and delayed, and six months later just before Christmas the three of us moved into our new house together. Emily was already seven full months pregnant with our son and now Leanne had just tested positive too. Still none of us were married yet! Three days later we had visitors at the door, the local minster of the largest church in Hillside Lakes, along with his wife!

You can’t keep secrets in a small town or a rural county. Everyone knows everybody’s business and gossip is an Olympic sport here. My father never cared what the local tongues wagged about him, mostly in speculation, but Emily had a very well-heeled clientele of rich families that tended to avoid any hints of scandal ... especially where their young future debutante daughters were concerned.

Being still a teenager, now at the age of eighteen and graduated from high school, Leanne had never shied away from any public displays of attention, or had much been at all secretive about her sex life with her similar aged girlfriends ... who had certainly done their share of gossiping and tittle-tattle around town.

“So ... what are the scandalous rumors, innuendo or hearsay about us this week?” I asked the prim middle-aged bespectacled speckled minister Lee, while Emily offered him and his wife each a cup of coffee.

“Oh, about the usual.” He winked at me with a thin smile.

“We just thought you might like to be aware,” added his wife, “that in fact you’re not the only family in this county with an obviously unconventional domestic arrangement.”

“Not at all,” he agreed, “in fact, I could name at least ten other households just inside the town alone that have rather complicated sleeping arrangements. Another ten, at least, including other outlying rancher families.”

“At least ... and there hasn’t been a stoning, lynching or barn burning yet,” she emphasized, reaching out to grasp and gently hold first Emily’s and then Leanne’s hands. “Are you pregnant too, dear?” She asked Leanne, who nodded, “I thought so ... it’s the glow of your skin. Blessings to you all!”

“So ... people may point and smile, but no one’s going to really care? How about your more conservative competitor, Dr. Wilson at the Baptist church?” I wondered

“Derrek?” The minister’s wife laughed, “No, you’ll not hear a cross word or pointed finger coming from him ... especially since he’s a very happy cuck and let’s his deacon Freddy handle almost all of his night work with the Mrs. for him! She makes him wear a penis-cage too, from what she’s told me, complete with a lock and key that she wears around her left ankle bracelet ... so that she can make him just watch as she fucks her other lovers while he remains locked and impotent. She told me once that she just unlocks him and lets him cum on her feet once a year, on their anniversary. Happy as clams about the arrangement ... all three of them.”

“I did say there were quite a few other’s locally with rather different sorts of personal relationships. ‘Lucky Cucky’ won’t be breathing a word of fire and brimstone at any of us... ‘He who throws the first stone’, and all of that!”

“And you mean by us?” Leanne giggled, never one to miss an obvious innuendo.

“Well,” Maria, the minister’s wife blushed, “I was rather fond of snuggling unchastely with other morally flexible young women, back in my younger days.”

“And still occasionally with older ladies too, once in a while!” Her husband laughed, “And I still find a friend in our bed on the odd occasion.”

“Notice, that he isn’t in the least bit complaining about having a willing additional lady to entertain in his bed.” Maria laughed, and added, “Sometimes I think this town has a Fairy Godmother with a very perverted sense of humor! Hardly anyone ever gets divorced around here and just about everyone has some sort of sexual secret kink or taste for polyamorous adventure. Sometimes, I think if you peeked into any bedroom around here on a Saturday night, you’d find more than two people together in bed ... sometimes four or even five.”

“If not a half-dozen or more,” Lee added, “and sometime, just between us lads, I’ll tell you over a few beers about two different local ranches that are really secret bunny clubs, with quite a few bored local housewives there turning part-time tricks. Including at least one woman who is very prominent in the local county and town government.” No guesses needed as to whom ... the town mayoress all-but undresses me with her eyes, every time we meet!