Chapter 6

Having a baby in the house changed everything. Before this, it had often seemed as silent as a museum. When tiny, little Christopher came home, if he was unhappy, everybody in the house knew it. Gidget fed him from her breast, which she did not feel compelled to cover up while the baby sucked, or later when she changed from one breast to the other. Her breasts looked completely different than Emma’s. They were pear-shaped, and the areolas were huge, maybe three inches across. Her nipples seemed to be in a constant state of arousal. The nice thing about this (other than the show I got, frequently) was that food was instantly available to a hungry baby. Christopher didn’t have to wait for somebody to warm up a bottle.

That changed four weeks later, when Gidget had to go visit the mine. She wanted to take the baby with her, but he was too young to fly. So I learned all about breast pumps and bottle feeding a baby who, prior to this, had enjoyed a warm nipple and gushing milk. In the end, Emma offered him one of her nipples and, as soon as he was sucking avidly, she slipped the nipple of the bottle into the side of his mouth.

That worked, but I got a boner every time I watched her feed him.

Christmas came, and just the four of us celebrated. We heard nothing from either Mom or Dad, but we were used to that. Emma wanted to send them a card, but I thought that would be viewed as us thumbing our noses at them.

We were off from school until after the new year, and I learned all about diapers and skin-to-skin bonding as the little boy fell asleep on my chest. When he was fully asleep, Emma would come get him and transfer him to the crib.

Uncle Bob was involved in all this, too, of course. We were a family, and everybody pitched in.

While Gidget was gone, Emma did most of the child care while Uncle Bob and I worked the ranch. He said I was a “good hand” and it made me feel good, even though I knew I was a bumbling fool who know practically nothing about horses. I learned, though.

It snowed two and a half feet in one night, and Uncle Bob taught me how to use the tractor, which now had a blade on the front, instead of a bucket, to plow the road. Everything we had on the ranch was four wheel drive, so we didn’t have a lot of problems. I did a lot of thinking about what it must have been like when the settlers tried to live here, back in the 1800s. A lot of them must have died, trying to get through a Wyoming winter.

Part of what got me through that winter was that, every night, I got to make love to Emma. I sucked her nipples so much that she started lactating. She was still two months from term, but the combination of Christopher and me sucking got her breasts working early. Her milk tasted deliciously sweet. There was nothing better than watching her while she sat naked on top of me and rubbed her impaled pussy all over my groin. Her baby bump was too big for her to bend forward far enough that I could reach her nipples with my mouth, but that was okay. The crowning pleasure was that when she had an orgasm the baby moved around a lot, like he was having a good time, too.

The only fly in the ointment was that it was hard for me to cum with her on top. We tried doggy style, and it felt good, but just didn’t get me off. She was more than willing to suck me dry, but cumming in her pussy was my favorite thing in the world.

The solution, thought up by Emma, was for me to jack off and, at the moment of climax, slide my prick into her and finish inside her. That worked with her on her back, lying perpendicular on the bed with her butt at the edge and her ankles on my shoulders, or with her on all fours and me behind her, like doggy style. It felt weird at first, but Emma said it was only temporary. Six weeks after our baby was born, she said I could lie on top of her and rut to my heart’s content. She knew I could always cum that way.

They had hit what looked like part of a new vein at the mine, and production was up. Gidget spent a lot of time there, now, and the three of us took care of Christopher. Gidget pumped a little, but now Emma could feed the baby with her breasts. Gidget pumped while she was at the mine, so her milk production wouldn’t be disrupted, but she dumped the milk.

The strangest part of all this was when, one day before Emma’s due date, Mom showed up. She had driven there alone and had taken two weeks vacation time.

“Every mother should be there when her daughter gives birth,” she said.

She was still distinctly uncomfortable with the fact that Emma and I behaved like we were married, but her maternal instincts drove her past that obstacle.

It was kind of comical when she first got there, because Gidget was gone and Emma happened to be feeding Christopher. He was draped over her bump, which hid it a little. Uncle Bob had seen her driving up the road and met her in front of the house. He brought her in and said, “Guess who’s here!”

Mom saw Emma sitting there with a mostly newborn baby at her breast and yipped, “You already had the baby?!”

“Naw, that one’s mine,” said Uncle Bob. “His mother is ... um ... busy right now, so Emma’s filling in for a few days.”

Emma rolled Christopher off onto one arm, displaying her nearly bursting belly.

“I’m still pregnant, Mom. Why are you here?”

This wasn’t a strange question. Since we’d been dumped off on Uncle Bob, our parents had called maybe three times. Those conversations were always awkward and it was obvious they were calling out of duty, rather than the desire to actually talk to us. Later, Dad told me that we had severely disrupted their sex life, because every time they got intimate, one of them would say, “Do Emma and Bobby do this?”

They got over it, eventually, and I think that’s one reason Mom couldn’t bear to miss being there when Emma popped.

Having Mom there didn’t change our status. We decided that we weren’t going to change anything because of her, and still slept together. We didn’t make it obvious, but Emma’s bulging belly couldn’t be ignored. It was obvious that Mom was uncomfortable, but three days after she got there Emma’s water broke and then it was all business for Mom.

I drove us to the hospital in the truck, with Mom and Emma in the back. Mom coached her on breathing and I tried to ignore my sister’s moans, groans, and occasional screams.

Mom stayed with her all the way and I have to admit I was relieved that I didn’t have to be there through the whole thing. At the hospital, since our last names were the same, they just assumed we were married. I filled out all the paperwork that way, too, because I didn’t know what else to do.

So my name was on the birth certificate as the father. We didn’t think of it until years later, but if someone had been suspicious, or investigating us, that birth certificate could have been used as evidence to prosecute me for incest.

Nobody was suspicious, though, and the birth produced a perfect little girl, who had ten fingers and toes, and two eyes, instead of three. She looked like any other baby.

This is not to say I wasn’t worried. Newborn babies have a bluish tinge to them for the first few hours, and look awful to everyone who isn’t on the medical staff or isn’t the baby’s mother (or grandmother). So I was concerned, the first time I saw my daughter. Everyone else talked about how beautiful she was, though, and that helped.

Whether it was just because women love babies, or grandmothers love babies, or because at home everyone else (Uncle Bob and Gidget) acted like Emma and my relationship was normal, but that’s when Mom began to thaw a bit. I honestly think that the week and a half she stayed after Cynthia was born made Mom decide that things weren’t as dire as she had previously thought. The fact that “Cynthia” was her mother’s name might have helped, too. I don’t know. We didn’t ask her if we could do that, so I’m glad she was pleased.

We had gotten used to the noise level Christopher created, but adding Cynthia to the mix raised it back up. Emma’s labor had been eighteen hours long. Part of that was because she was only sixteen. The other part was because Cynthia was an Amazon princess. She weighed nine pounds and eight ounces when the nurses weighed her, and she was twenty-one inches long. I still can’t believe she fit in her mother’s womb.

Mom couldn’t keep her hands off her granddaughter. I know, now, that part of that was her desire to repeatedly inspect the baby from head to toe, looking for signs of defects. But there weren’t any and Cynthia’s behavior and development also proclaimed her to be a defect-free baby.

Still, when Mom left, she spoke into my ear when she hugged me.

“Don’t do this again, Bobby,” she said.

“I love you, Mom,” I replied, instead of making any promises I knew I wouldn’t keep.

“I love you too,” she moaned. “When will you come home?”

“The plan was to finish school, here,” I said. “It was a good plan. Uncle Bob needs my help, too.”

“I can’t believe how expensive and beautiful everything looks, here,” she said. “This is definitely not what I expected.”

“I think it would surprise a lot of people,” I said.

“So have you,” she mumbled.

“Drive safe,” I said.

“Your father and I will come visit when he gets a break,” she said. “I’m sorry we neglected you like we have.”

“All you did was make us grow up a little quicker,” I said. “No harm was done and we’re as happy as clams.”

“Please try not to be too happy,” she said. It was another reference to us stopping what we’d been doing.

“Go,” I said, gently.

She hugged me tighter and I kissed her on the cheek.

Then I went back inside the house to find the woman the hospital thought was my wife.

I brought Emma’s school assignments home with me for the next month. Most of it was stuff either I had already taken, or which either Gidget or Uncle Bob could help her with. She’d given birth in February, so when she got back to school, looking a lot slimmer than she had in the past, there were only two months of school left.

Mom and Dad showed up for my graduation, to see me get my high school diploma. Mom was a lot more relaxed. Dad was pensive, but Cynthia thawed him, too. He sat for hours with her on his lap while he read, or watched TV. Every once in a while he’d yell that she needed to be changed. “I do not do diapers,” he said, firmly, more than once.

They only stayed three days that visit. Both needed to get back to work. Again, we were invited to come back home.

“I have a job, here,” I said. “Uncle Bob’s been putting money in a college account for me. He’s going to do the same for Emma. She and Gidget have talked a lot about geology and what a geologist can do, and she’s interested in that. Gidget has offered to let her go along on a few trips as her assistant, so she can see what it’s all about. If she’s interested, then she can go to college for some related degree.” We didn’t mention where and why Gidget was performing her work as a geologist.

“But she’s still a child,” objected Dad. “And she has a child.”

“I can take care of Cynthia while she’s traveling. Everybody here knows she’s grown up enough to take on the mantle of an adult,” I said. “You sent us here, and we’ve learned how to fend for ourselves. Our future is secure. Uncle Bob has a child to be his heir, but he says we’re welcome to live and work here for as long as we want to.”

“I don’t like this,” said Dad. “We sent you here to deal with a problem, not to leave home forever.”

“Look,” I said. “I would have graduated and gone away to college anyway. I would have started my own career and family. I’d have been gone anyway. And Emma wouldn’t have been far behind me. When you sent us here you did deal with a problem, but it also gave us options we wouldn’t have had if we’d stayed home. Sending us here turned out to be life changing, and in a good way.”

“What you’ve done is wrong,” Dad argued.

“Maybe it was,” I said. “We all make mistakes in life and maybe this was one of them. Maybe Emma will meet some nice, young geologist and fall in love with him and get married. Maybe I’ll meet a girl at college and do the same thing. Who knows what the future holds?”

I knew that was bullshit. Emma and I would stay together for the rest of our lives. I was sure of that and she’d told me so numerous times. One of the things she’d repeated over and over again, as she rode me with my stiff cock in her pussy, was, “You cannot have a girlfriend at college. You have to come home to me and our child.”

That BS was what Dad wanted to hear, though, and it distracted him from our incestuous relationship enough that he changed the subject.

“What will you study at college?”

He was an engineer, and I knew he probably wanted me to follow in his footsteps. He made good money and he wanted what all parents want: for our lives to be better than his had been.

“I’m thinking veterinary medicine,” I said. “Uncle Bob spends a ton of money on vet services. If I’m a vet, I can take care of the stock and we could even expand the operation. We have way more pasture than we need to support the number of animals we have, now.”

“A vet,” said dad, softly. “I guess that’s not so bad. You can get a job anywhere.”

My father still dismissed his brother as a ne’er-do-well, who wasn’t disciplined, and who might do something stupid (like bet the ranch on a hand of cards) and end up homeless. Of course he didn’t know about the mine, or how lucrative the Arabians really were. He had no idea that Uncle Bob’s investments were bringing in a lot of money in dividends and interest. In his eyes, Uncle Bob was an ex-marine who got lucky with cards. And everybody knows luck can change.

He’d probably never change his mind, either, unless he lived on the ranch like we had. He needed to spend enough time with his brother to get to know him better. But adults have priorities in their lives that trump extended family, sometimes. They don’t see it that way, but that’s how it is.

Another way he could understand the black sheep of the family better was through us. And we’d be happy to serve in that capacity.

That assumed the family didn’t paint us with the same brush they’d painted Uncle Bob. And they might. It would become known that Emma had a baby out of wedlock, and that the father of that baby had abandoned her. That, added to the fact we were living with Uncle Bob, might be enough to get us dismissed. If so, fine. What they didn’t know wouldn’t affect us.

I will admit that the idea of becoming a veterinarian was, initially, a pie-in-the-sky idea. If I had known how hard it would be, I might have gone in a different direction. The problem with becoming a veterinarian is that it takes nine years. You get your four year Bachelor’s degree first, usually in some related field, like biology, and then you spend another five years getting your doctorate.

Those nine years mean you’re not at home, with your lover and child, and other extended family members you now think of as your family.