Chapter 18

Mildred, not knowing that the jig was up, made sure to “catch” them in the morning. She had a sharp tongue, much sharper than Bobby would have imagined, and her dire threats might have worked wonders, had he been any other boy. Monica finally stopped the woman’s tirade.

“Stop, Millie!” she shouted. “He knows what we we’re doing.”

Mildred stopped abruptly.

“What does he know? And who said you could call me Millie?”

“He knows why I’m here. He knows my non-existent parents aren’t gone. He knows everything. I told him. He’s too nice a man to lie to.”

“He must be a nice man to lie with,” grumbled Mildred. She’d learned to roll with the punches years ago, and didn’t try to avoid that now.”You two kept me up all hours of the night.” She looked at Bobby’s bare chest. “I hope you don’t think poorly of me for our little subterfuge.”

“I might just get up and come kiss you,” said Bobby, throwing the sheet off of his lower body. His morning wood pointed at Mildred like a heat seeking missile.

“Don’t you dare you dirty boy!” laughed Mildred. “I had enough of those shenanigans when I was her age.”

“Why Millie,” he said, sounding injured. “You aren’t suggesting I’d cheat on my girlfriend, are you?”

“I’m suggesting you just mind your manners,” said the old woman. “I suppose you two will want breakfast.”

“We need to shower,” said Monica. “We’ll be there after that.”

“It’s waffles. Don’t be late or your waffles will be cold.” With that she left.

Bobby rolled over.

“Want to take a shower together?” He grinned.

“You’re some kind of animal!” she said in mock horror.

“My sisters call me a satyr,” he said. His face got serious. “Speaking of which, before you decide everything went your way, I have a secret of my own.”

“What secret?” she asked.

“You may decide to run away from me once you know, but after you told me the truth, I feel like I owe you the truth, too.”

“Okay.”

“You have to promise not to tell anyone, though.”

“I promise,” she said, smiling.

“I mean it, Monica. This is a serious thing. I don’t want anybody to get hurt by my telling you about it.”

“Don’t tell me you’re in the witness protection program,” she said. That was a stock joke around town. The last time someone new had come to town to live there, a rumor got started that the person was a mobster in the witness relocation program. It turned out the newcomer was the great nephew of the man whose house he moved into. That man, John Haskins, had drunk himself to death, but had left the house to his great nephew. John was eighty-three when he died. His great nephew was sixty-two and had just gone on social security. He moved to Wide Ford because he owned the house free and clear, and thought the cost of living would be low.

“No,” said Bobby. “Do I have your word?”

She stared at him. Flutters started in her belly. What secret could he have that he thought was so dark?

“The sisters?” he said. “The ones I talked about?”

“Sheryl and Jessie?” prompted Monica.

“Actually, their names are Julie and Barbie,” he said.

“No, they’re your sisters,” said Monica.

“That’s right,” said bobby. “Sheryl and Jessie are girls I dated, but they aren’t sisters.”

“I don’t understand,” said Monica. “You said you were having sex with sisters.”

She blinked. Her eyes got round.

“Surely you don’t mean...” she trailed off.

“It really was an accident, the first time,” he said in a rush. “It’s a very complicated story. Our dad was trying to teach us a lesson about how easy it is for your emotions to run away with you and Barbie got all fired up. She’s the one who sat on me with no warning. It wasn’t supposed to happen, but she liked it and she said she wasn’t going to stop and ... I’ll tell you the whole story if you want, but we’re not perverts. Not really. We just love each other in ways everybody else would say is wrong.”

Monica sat, frozen, as her mind grappled with the concept. It must be true. It explained why he’d slipped and used Barbie’s name twice. It explained why he couldn’t marry either of them. It explained why they didn’t go out on dates, and just hung around home. And it explained why he didn’t go on dates here in Wide Ford. He did have a girl back home ... of sorts. And hadn’t he said one of them might go to school at Temberson? Now that made sense, too!

He wasn’t just trying to scare her off after having his way with her.

What Bobby wasn’t aware of was that the air of tolerance about girl on girl and boy on boy sex in Wide Ford wasn’t limited to just sleepovers. If a girl didn’t get herself a Temberson man, or somehow find a man elsewhere, and stayed in town, rumor had it that she didn’t have to go without sex if she had a brother, or cousin or uncle in town. Tammy Anderson wasn’t the only girl in town rumored to have slept with a male relative. She was just the only one Monica had told Bobby about.

It wasn’t talked about openly. It was a little like Marijuana, something done in secret that lots of people did, but nobody admitted to. After a while, the culture began to tolerate such behaviors as ... more or less normal. As long as nobody found out about it, anyway.

And Monica, if she’d been asked two days ago, would have said it was, indeed, perverted for a brother and sister to have sex.

But a lot had happened in the last 48 hours, and she wasn’t the same girl she was before she came to stay with Millie for the purpose of snaring a man.

The man, it seemed, had snared her, for one thing. It was relatively easy for her to understand why other girls might want to be in bed with Bobby.

She and her mother and Millie had set a trap, and that was despicable behavior. She knew why it had been done and she had to admit she’d been a willing participant. But once she got to know Bobby, it seemed wrong to dupe him. She understood fully the danger he’d put himself in, too, by telling her his secret. He could go to jail for a long time, depending on how old his sisters were.

“How old are your sisters?” she asked, abruptly.

“Julie is seventeen and Barbie is sixteen,” he said. He wasn’t absolutely sure about Barbie’s age. He had a hard time remembering birth dates, and birth years were just beyond him. His dad always reminded him of an upcoming birthday.

“So they’re old enough to know what they’re doing,” she said.

“I thought so. Dad thought so, too.”

“Your father knows about this?”

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you everything, but let’s wait until there’s time to go straight through.”

“After breakfast?” she suggested.

“Deal,” he said.

She thought about his offer to shower together. Doubts had surfaced.

“You shower first,” she said. “I’ll change the sheets.”

“Okay,” he said, his demeanor subdued.

“And we’ll talk after breakfast,” she said.

“Thank you,” he breathed.

They acted as if everything was fine at breakfast, though Monica had to force herself to eat. What was she thinking ... coming here to let a complete stranger have sex with her and probably get her pregnant?! If this didn’t work out after all, the only way she could explain it to her mother was by telling her what she’d sworn not to tell anyone. If she did that, Bobby would probably go to prison for statutory rape and incest. And if their father knew about this, he might end up in jail, too!

Her feelings were unsettled. At some point, the night before, she had embraced the concept of trying to make a go of a long-term relationship with Bobby Carpenter. The idea of marrying him had seemed possible. She could do a lot worse. Or thought she could do a lot worse. Now, maybe not so much. Maybe she’d stumbled onto the worst. She didn’t know what to do, and there was no one she could ask for advice. So she ate her waffle and decided she’d hear him out before making any decisions.

They went for another ride in his car, but this time not to view spots of interest. They parked in a small parking lot at one end of a bridge, where people from the car pool that went to Turner Springs gathered. There were four other cars parked there, so it didn’t look odd for another one to sit there.

He went over the whole story, explaining the triple dating, and what had happened that fateful night when he was out with Sheryl and she wanted to have sex. He admitted that he’d chickened out because he didn’t love her, or even like her enough to enter that kind of relationship. He told her how he’d caught his sisters in flagrante delicto with their dates, and how he’d tattled on them to their father.

He explained that Bob had been drinking, and when he tried to show them how easy it was to lose control, things went awry and he and Barbie ended up having sex. He described himself as out of control, and Barbie as insatiable, saying he knew it was wrong, but couldn’t resist her, and she knew it was wrong but couldn’t have cared less. He talked about how Julie had tried to bring some sanity back into things, but had been sucked into the vortex herself.

The only thing he left out was that Bob was having sex with both of his daughters, especially since Bobby had gone off to college.

“I wish you could meet them,” he moaned, when he finished. “I’m sure you’d understand if you were around them for even a few hours. They’re very demanding, Monica.”

“I wish I could meet them, too,” she said. Trying to imagine these girls, as described by Bobby, was like trying to imagine one of the animals that had gone extinct. People could describe them, but actually seeing one was impossible.

Except in this case, it was possible.

“You could!” he gasped. “Come home with me at Christmas! You could stay with us and meet everybody. Then you could get to know them and decide whether you want to have anything to do with me or not.”

“I may not have that luxury, Bobby. If you got me pregnant, my options are very limited.”

“If that happens, I’ll do whatever you want. If you don’t want me around I understand, but I’ll still send you child support or whatever you need. I won’t have a full time job for two more years, but I’ll do what I can.”

“I’m not really interested in being a single mother,” said Monica. “I know it was a low down plan, but it’s worked for a lot of girls before this. Most of them learned to be happy with the guy they married.”

“Do you want me to marry you?” he asked.

“I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to work,” she said. “You’re supposed to ask me if I’ll do it.” She blinked. “Then again, there have been a lot of fathers who strongly suggested that a Temberson boy marry his daughter. They’re not quite shotgun weddings, but they’re kind of close, sometimes.”

“Come home with me. If you don’t like it, I’ll drive you back here. Please, I really want to make this work.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why do you want to make this work?”

“Because I like you,” he said. “Because we’re friends. Aren’t we?”

“You don’t marry your friend, Bobby. You marry the person you fall in love with.”

“You just said that a lot of girls from Wide Ford married men just to get out of town. You also said a lot of them learned how to be happy. Doesn’t it make sense to commit to someone who’s already your friend? Love takes time, but friendship can happen very quickly. It did for us. At least I feel like it did.”

“But it was all fake!” she moaned. “It was a trick. It wasn’t real!”

“So you’re saying the only reason we had sex was because you had to. You didn’t want to, but because you had to, you grinned and took it. Is that what you did?”

“No!” she said. “I loved it. I’m glad it happened. Or I was glad it happened.”

“And how many other guys are you glad you had sex with?”

“You know I was a virgin,” she yipped. “You were my first!”

“Is that the truth, or another lie, designed to trap me?” he asked.

“Don’t be a dick, Bobby. You know I’m not trying to trap you anymore.”

“Well, pardon me, but that sure sounds like a friendship to me. In a friendship, you accept the other person, warts and all.”

“You’re talking about two huge warts!“ she yelled.

“I am,” he said, holding up his hands. “I freely admit that. Please. Come home with me and meet my warts. I’ll make them behave and get to know you.”

“Why would you have to make them behave?” she asked.

“Because they’re going to hate you on sight,” said Bobby. “They don’t want me to meet a woman and fall in love with her.”

“Better and better,” groaned Monica. “Could this relationship get any harder?”

“Well,” he said. “There is one thing.”

“Only one? I can’t wait.”

“I kind of hope you are pregnant.”

She was speechless. Her mouth opened and closed several times before he went on.

“I love my sisters,” he said. “I loved making love with them, and to them. You know how that feels because I loved making love with and to you last night. You three are the only women I’d even consider doing that with. And I can’t help it, but each time I’m with a woman I feel that way about, I wish I was getting her pregnant. I can’t do that with my sisters. And they’re on the pill to make sure that doesn’t happen. But you’re not my sister. And you knew you were ovulating and you let me go all the way with you. That’s why I wasn’t angry about your plan. I already liked you. Maybe I love you. I don’t know. The only other girls I feel that strongly about are my sisters. You can’t be in love with your sister. You can love her, but you can’t be in love with her. Right? Well, I’m not so sure about all that. Our family is different. But whatever I feel for you it’s strong, and when you said I could make love to you, again, after that first time, I hoped I had finally found the girl who could have my babies.”

He shrugged.

“Okay. That’s it. No more surprises.”

She swallowed.

“Gee. Thanks so much,” she mumbled.

“I’m sorry,” he sighed. “I’m not so good at this relationship stuff.”