Chapter 22

Julie found everybody else eating breakfast. There was tension in the air, but it wasn’t thick. It was more the kind of tension that exists when strangers are thrown together and can’t do anything about it. Barbie was stuffing her face, which was normal, but she was also asking Monica questions about the town she came from. She paused long enough to look at Julie and say, “I figured you needed your beauty rest,” before going back to Monica.

Bobby looked up and said, “Hey,” before going back to destroying a stack of pancakes.

Monica was nibbling on a piece of bacon. The plate in front of her had syrup residue on it, indicating she had already finished her pancakes.

Julie had barely sat down before Bob plopped a full plate in front of her.

It all seemed so normal that she felt a little dizzy. Was this all some kind of bizarre dream?

She poked her wrist with the tines of her fork. All conversation stopped and she looked up to find four people staring at her.

“I thought maybe this is all a dream,” she said, shrugging.

“Trust me,” said Monica. “It’s not.”

The decision was made before Julie had time to think about it.

“You want to go do something after breakfast?” she asked, looking at Monica.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Christmas shopping?”

“It’s Christmas Eve,” said Barbie, who suddenly looked very alert. She looked at Monica. “Didn’t you already get him a present?”

Monica’s face flushed dark.

“Things have been kind of ... hectic,” she said. “I had other things on my mind. I wasn’t even sure we were going to be together at Christmas.”

“She doesn’t need to get me anything,” said Bobby.

“Did you get her something?” asked Barbie.

“I don’t have a lot of money, Barb,” said Bobby.

“Did you get me anything?” Barbie’s face was pale.

“Christmas is about giving, not receiving,” said Bob, his voice firm. “We’re together, and that’s the most important thing. We give each other our love, and that’s the most precious gift there is.”

He blinked, and then his eyes darted to Monica. She was staring at him, but took another bite off the end of the piece of bacon in her fingers.

“I just thought doing something normal together might help us get to know each other a little better,” said Julie.

“Okay,” said Monica. “But only if Barbie comes, too.”

“Me?” Barbie looked wary.

“I want to get to know both of you better,” said Monica.

The men stayed home. Bob said something about making cookies and Bobby said he never got to take naps anymore, and was going to seize this opportunity.

Julie drove. Barbie called shotgun, but Julie told Monica to sit up front. Barbie was pouty as she got in the back.

There was tension in the car until Barbie spoke.

“You should sleep in our room tonight. It would be like a slumber party. It would be fun.”

Julie was so flabbergasted by Barbie’s suggestion that she just stared at the road ahead. Monica turned in her seat to look backwards.

“I’m surprised you’d want to do that,” she said.

The reason Barbie had made the offer was simple. If Monica was with them, she could not be under Bobby, with her legs wrapped around him while Bobby’s sperm - sperm that belonged to his sisters! - flooded her pussy.

Julie nodded, but didn’t agree out loud. She wanted to ask her little sister what she was doing, but not in front of Monica.

“Well, if you and Bobby stay together, we’ll become sisters, kind of,” said Barbie.

Monica didn’t want to go to a “slumber party.” She’d gone to dozens of them in high school, and most of them had gotten pretty intimate. She was pretty sure that wasn’t what Barbie had in mind, and things were already kinky enough. Her mind started to consider intimacy that involved these two girls, and she forced herself to stop. That life was behind her. It had been required by social constraints when she was a girl, when being with a boy could bring disaster. But she wasn’t a girl any longer. She was a woman now, a woman who could have a man in her life. She did have a man in her life, a man who had, she hoped, impregnated her!

The world twisted a little bit as she realized she did hope she was pregnant. It was crystal clear in her mind. She wanted to have Bobby’s baby. She wanted to have Bobby. She wanted a normal life. What was making it so strange was that the man she wanted wasn’t normal. His sisters weren’t normal. His father wasn’t normal. None of them were normal, but if she got what she wanted, they would become her family.

These were uncharted waters, and not just for her. Nobody would be ready to form a bond with a family like this. You could always get an ex-girlfriend alone and declare that you now owned this man, and tell her to butt out. But what if the ex was his sister. Two sisters! How did you handle that? She couldn’t go to someone else and ask for advice, because nobody else had been through something like this. Or would admit it if they had.

It would be so much better if she wasn’t pregnant. Then she could walk away.

But walk away to what? The only place she could walk away to was Wide Ford. And that was a dead end.

No, she had to make this work, whether she was pregnant or not. And these girls had said they’d abide by her decision.

“Monica?” Barbie’s voice interrupted her train of thought.

“Okay, sure,” said Monica. “A slumber party.”

“Really?” Barbie sounded confused.

“Well, you suggested it,” said Monica. “Why do you sound surprised?”

“I thought you’d want to be alone, so you could...” Barbie’s voice trailed off.

“So I could what?” asked Monica.

Julie blurted it out before thinking.

“We spied on you and Bobby last night!”

It was silent in the car for fifteen seconds.

“Oh,” said Monica, who blushed. Then she sat up straighter. “Why would you spy on me?”

Barbie, being the more pragmatic of the two, abandoned her attempt at subterfuge.

“We were sneaking in there to have sex with him, but you got there first. We had to wait our turn.”

“And you watched?” gasped Monica. “ Is there anything you people won’t do?”

“We’ve watched each other making love for years,” said Julie. “Watching you with him wasn’t so different than watching him with Barbie.”

Monica blinked.

“Weren’t you ... jealous?”

“A little,” said Julie.

“A lot,” admitted Barbie. “I have to admit it made me horny, though.”

“This must be what Alice felt like when she fell through the looking glass,” moaned Monica. “Did he really have sex with you after ... me?”

“Yes,” said Julie.

“He only squirted in Julie,” said Barbie. “Like I said, I got horny watching you two, and I jumped his bones first. He knows how to get me off fast.”

“I can’t go back to Wide Ford,” moaned Monica. “I can’t go back to Wide Ford!”

“You mean after Christmas?” asked Barbie.

“She means that Wide Ford is worse than being here with us,” said Julie.

“I don’t know what to do,” whined Monica.

“I know what I want you to do,” said Barbie.

“Barbie!” warned Julie.

“I want you to let us have him sometimes,” said Barbie. “Not all the time. Just sometimes.”

“Nobody does that,” said Julie.

“We do it,” argued Barbie. “We’ve done it for years.”

“You don’t need him!” blurted Monica, as her own mouth ran away from her. “You have your father!“

This time the silence went on so long that Julie parked and turned the engine off before anybody spoke.

“How did you find out?” asked Julie.

“He told me, at breakfast,” sighed Monica.

“I don’t remember that,” said Barbie. “I think I’d remember if I’d heard him say something like that.”

“It was before anybody else got there. Actually, I figured it out, and then he admitted it.”

Julie turned sideways in her seat.

“And you’re still here?“

“Do not ask me why,” sighed Monica, “because I can’t explain it.”

“I can imagine how freaked out you must be,” said Julie.

“I’m not sure you can,” said Monica. “I’ve done some strange things in my life, but none of that prepared me for this.”

“You’re just trying to get married,” said Barbie. “You even admitted it. You tricked Bobby to get pregnant so you could blackmail him into supporting you for the rest of your life!”

“I also told you things have changed, since then!” snapped Monica, turning to glare into the back seat.

“You really do love him,” said Julie, her voice soft.

“I’m still here, aren’t I?”

“I guess you can explain it after all,” said Barbie.

“So, how do you think it’s going so far?” asked Bob, after the women left for the mall.

“Weirdly,” said Bobby.

“Not too surprising,” said Bob. “Not many girls are asked to accept what you’ve asked Monica to accept.”

“I think it kind of snuck up on me,” said Bobby.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I got so used to how we lived that it just seemed normal to me. I mean, I knew outsiders wouldn’t see it that way, but to me ... to us ... it was just the way things were. And I never thought I’d have to try to explain it to anyone else.”

“She might feel the same way about how she got you to propose to her,” said Bob.

“You mean the whole conspiracy of getting pregnant?”

“Yeah. Think about it. Her mom was involved. Her grandma was involved. Her grandma’s friend was involved. That kind of behavior is almost as unacceptable as incest is, but to them it was simply the normal mechanism of getting one of the town girls taken care of.”

“I never thought of it that way,” said Bob.

“And you didn’t kick her out after you found out about it,” said Bob.

“Because I already liked her so much,” said Bobby. “And I know she likes me. So maybe she’ll overlook our behavior, like I overlooked hers?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Bob. “We are talking incest, here.”

“She came to see me last night,” said Bobby. “After everybody else went to bed.”

“Really?”

“She wanted to make love.”

“Really!”

“And then Barb and Jules came to see me.”

“That seems less surprising,” said Bob.

“Dad, they watched Monica and me, and then, after she went back to bed, came and wanted to make love.”