Chapter 14

Paul’s next step was to talk to his mother. This decision was prompted by the fact that he didn’t want to lie to her... keep lying to her. He didn’t think she’d understand, but if he was going to spend any more time with the twins while he was home on break he wanted it to be on honest terms. He could no longer say he was going over there to tutor them. When he got home he found her in her sewing room. Sewing was her hobby. Actually, he knew she would say quilting was her hobby. She had made their clothes when the kids were younger and had transitioned into quilts after her husband died and an insurance polkicy payout had made things more comfortable. She still worked to support her family, but at least they could buy new clothes. She was part of a quilting guild that made and donated quilts to the local emergency shelter.

“How was your friend?” she asked, when he paused in the doorway.

“I wasn’t truthful to you,” he said. “In fact, I haven’t been truthful to you for a while, now. I’m sorry and I want to tell you everything.”

She reached to turn off the machine and then swiveled her desk chair around to face him.

“What’s going on?” she asked, with a frown.

It took him half an hour to explain that somehow, while he was tutoring the twins, feelings had developed between him and them. She interrupted several times, but only to confirm information he gave her.

“Both of them are your girlfriends?”

“Yeah. They didn’t seem to mind and nobody made me choose one over the other.”

“So you weren’t tutoring them?”

“No. I did tutor them and it did help them bring their grades up. It’s just that later in the year they only needed one night a week, instead of two. So the other night we ... um ... spent time together.”

Mirriam thought back to what “spending time together” had meant when she was a girl, and later when she met the man she married.

“So you spent last night at their house?” she guessed.

“Uh ... yeah.”

“I only met their parents once, but they didn’t seem to be the kind of people who would invite a young man over to spend the night with their two daughters,” said Mirriam.

“I don’t think they realized I’d be spending all night there. I was just invited over for dinner.”

“Did the girls realize you’d be spending the night?”

“Yes. It was their idea.”

“Do I need to worry about any pregnancies?” she asked, bluntly. She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation with her shy, wallflower son who hadn’t gone on a date until he was in the second semester of his senior year in high school. She’d been delighted that those twin girls had lured him out on that date, and the few others that she knew about. She hadn’t dreamed they were seducing him!

“No, Mother,” he said. “I might be a novice at all this, but I know better than to chance that.”

“So you didn’t have sex with ... them?”

Paul groaned.

“The first time it happened was just before I left for Cornell. Before that it was ... other stuff. They really did teach me about how things work on dates and in relationships. They didn’t want to have sex and I didn’t try to. But before I left I guess they got emotional and...”

“You took their virginity?” moaned Muriel.

Paul decided that what he’d already said was more than enough. One more tiny little lie would be appropriate in this situation.

“We didn’t exactly talk about that at the time. Things got kind of crazy.”

“With both of them,” sighed his mother.

“That’s the problem. They don’t want me to choose one or the other. They both want to keep being my girlfriends. Bob ... their father ... that’s the only thing he said to me this morning. He said the world wouldn’t accept both of them having only one boyfriend and he asked me what I was going to do.”

“What did their mother say?”

“Not much. When we woke up she opened the door a little and said breakfast was almost ready. She invited me, by name, to have some breakfast.”

“Good grief,” moaned Muriel. “This is a very strange family, Paul.”

“I’m aware of that, Mom,” he said. “The problem is ... I like them both. It might even be more than just liking them. When I’m with them I feel all ... I can’t describe it.”

“I can imagine,” muttered Muriel. “You never answered me about the pregnancy issue. Did you use a condom?”

“No. They’re ... um ... protected.”

“Considering that their parents let you spend the night with their daughters, I guess that doesn’t surprise me. I should have talked to you about all this before it happened.”

“How could you? I couldn’t even talk to a girl before I met them, unless I was tutoring her. And most of the girls I tutored didn’t want to chat. They wanted to learn their lessons and send me on my way. These are the first girls who treated me like I was a real human with real feelings.”

“That doesn’t negate the fact that they aren’t even eighteen yet and are still in high school. Meanwhile you’re fifteen hundred miles away in college. Do you really think that has even a small chance of working?”

“All I know is I think about them while I’m at school and I haven’t met any girls like them. I mean I’ve made some friends who are girls, but none of them are interested in dating me.”

“All right, I understand that. The only fooling around I ever did before I met your father was with some neighborhood boys I had known all my life. Even then, it was all curiosity and not passion. I couldn’t believe your father paid any attention to me at all, back then. But he did, and he didn’t give up when I was too shy to talk to him. Later, when we got to know each other and I wasn’t so shy anymore ... well, let’s just say I understand how crazy things can get.” She leaned back in her chair. “But to spend the whole night there? What on Earth were you thinking?”

“I was thinking about how much I had missed them,” he said. “I didn’t actually intend to spend the whole night there. I figured I’d stay until midnight, maybe, and then just crash in the car until morning. But they kept wanting to ... um ... interact with me ... and eventually we were all so tired we just fell asleep.”

Muriel covered her eyes with both hands as she thought back to those first wild nights when she had let George between her legs. They had both been insatiable. Back then protection had been up to the boy, because girls just didn’t go ask their parents to be put on birth control pills. There had been several pregnancy scares during their courting period because there were times when he didn’t have a condom. But it had all worked out. They’d gotten married and he’d given her two fine sons before fate took him away from her. She pushed those thoughts away and concentrated on her son.

“Why would you crash in the car? Why wouldn’t you just come home?”

“I didn’t know exactly how late I’d get to stay,” he moaned. “And I couldn’t tell you why I was going over there.”

“You mean it wasn’t for dinner?” Sarcasm was heavy in her voice.

“I was afraid you’d forbid me to go,” he groaned.

“Forbid you to go? You’re a grown man, Paul. I can’t forbid you to do anything!”

“I don’t know what to do,” he groaned.

“Well, I agree with their father on one thing. Eventually, if this lasts – and I doubt it will, mind you – but if it does, you’ll have to choose one of them.”

“What if they won’t let me?” he moaned.

“They’re in the grip of hormones,” she snorted. “Sooner or later one of them will lose interest, especially since their ‘boyfriend’ is fifteen hundred miles away. Surely they’re dating other boys.”

“They’re not,” he sighed. “I face time with them several times a week and they’ve consistently said they’re not dating other guys.”

“Oh my,” she said.

“That’s not the worst of it,” he said, softly. “Last night they said they loved me.”

“Oh good grief,” said his mother.

“And I told them I loved them, too,” he whispered.

There was more, but it doesn’t add to the utility of this story. Suffice it to say that Muriel, thinking that they’d all get it out of their systems, sooner or later, said that it was his decision whether to spend more time with them while he was home. She did specify that Christmas Eve and Christmas day she expected him to spend with his own family, but he said he’d already been planning on that.

In the end, over the two weeks he was there he went to see the twins four more times. They borrowed the family car and went out with him on actual dates, but when they returned home he went into their bedroom with them. Passion consumed them all during the two hours he spent in that room each time and he left the girls limp, naked, and very satisfied.

He was pretty satisfied, too.

Her parents said nothing to him other than normal pleasantries, but they knew what was happening in their daughters’ bedroom. On those nights the girls did not seek out their father. Not only that, but they didn’t seek him out the next two nights for more than simple cuddling.

Then Paul went back to Cornell and Bob’s dance card got full again.

All the parents involved thought things would wither on the vine, especially when Paul told the girls he’d gotten a full time job the next summer and couldn’t come home. Nobody thought this ‘romance’ could survive that kind of separation.

The only problem was that nobody talked to the girls about it, or asked them how things were going. They seemed to be doing okay. When the crash came – and Julie and Bob were sure it would – they’d deal with the fallout, then.

The twins graduated high school with honors. Julie attended the ceremony gravid to the point that they were worried her water might break at any moment. Her due date was only four days hence. Thankfully, the baby waited another day before demanding its freedom. The girls were with their mother during her labor, but only Bob was allowed in the delivery room when a baby girl, named Megan, was actually born.

“Another girl?” Bob groaned, but then he grinned and kissed Julie’s sweat-dampened brow.

The twins were fascinated with their little sister and both spent most of their free time hovering over the infant. That free time was curtailed because both of them took part time jobs to build up their savings accounts before going to college. Emma (to everyone’s surprise) had been accepted in the accelerated bachelor of science nursing program at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. With intensive study she could get that degree in one year. “Intensive study” meant not only the classroom work, but 900 hours of clinical practice in six different specialties. What that meant, in practice, was six hours of class and five or six hours of clinical practice each day. After that she could go on to get a master’s degree in nursing and become a registered nurse. That program took two or three more years, depending on how heavy a course load she was willing to take each semester.

Beth also changed her mind about her future career. She now wanted to be a teacher, and Creighton also offered a master of education program. It would take her roughly the same amount of time to complete her studies as it would Emma, if Emma went on to become an RN. They would be required to live in a residence hall for the first year, but after that they could move off campus, if they desired to.

Both had good enough grades and recommendations to get accepted and both were eager to go. It probably helped that Omaha was only an hour away from the suburb in Lincoln where they lived. They wouldn’t have their own car, but they assumed Daddy would come get them from time to time for a weekend at home.

They would be correct in that assumption.

To be fair, it wasn’t because Bob wanted to keep plundering their tender, tight pussies. It was Julie who missed them so much. Taking care of little Megan was fine, but it was also a little exhausting, even with Bob’s help. Several times she was heard by Bob to mutter, “I’m getting too old for this shit.” When the girls were home it was much better and if they were home, then they couldn’t be getting in any trouble at school. Nobody expected them to get into any trouble, but it was a better excuse to ask the girls to come home for the weekend than, “I want to take a nap and I can’t do that because Megan keeps me on my feet.” Julie was also nursing, and Megan was a greedy little thing who loved to suck her mommy’s milk-filled nipples. Bob offered to help, but at four months of age Megan usually didn’t leave much for him.

Of course the girls didn’t mind coming home. It was much quieter there, even with the baby, than it was in the dorm and there were fewer distractions. For Emma it was also a break from the almost frantic pace her studies required. At home they could catch up on the reams of reading they hadn’t done yet and any homework that needed to be finished by the next Monday. Bob usually picked them up on Friday night around six-thirty and took them back Sunday evening, dropping them off at their residence hall at eight P.M.

Friday and Saturday nights, of course, were spent heaving their nude bodies up at (or down onto) their father’s stiff penis. More than once Julie elected to get a full night’s sleep in one of the girls’ old beds while they took over care of Megan for the night. That meant they could sleep with their father, something they had never been able to do before this. They liked it because they had instant access to his erections, and if he didn’t happen to have one, they had instant access to give him one. And, since one of them had to get up during the night to take care of Megan, either changing her diaper or feeding her with milk Julie had pumped, that meant the young woman was awake. Getting a nice orgasm with Daddy’s penis in her was a good way to get sleepy again. Bob, of course, got less sleep than usual, but he had all week after he took them back to school to recuperate.

Paul, meantime, had gotten a job working for a tire company, fixing flats and installing new tires. One of his contacts in that job found a car that had been T-boned on the passenger side, but not hard. The rear door would no longer open. The owner negotiated with the insurance company for a payout that let him keep the car, which still ran fine. Then he spent the insurance money on other things. It had no real value in terms of resale because of the cosmetic damage. The mechanics said was in good mechanical shape, and Paul got it cheap. He had bought it for the same reason millions of other people buy a car: He didn’t have to walk or ride his bike to work or around town anymore. He shared that news with his girlfriends, who he was now in contact with almost nightly, on the phone. Nobody was talking about ending the relationship and the “I miss you’s” were fervent and frequent.

Nebraska was too far away for Paul to go home more than once or twice a year, but he did arrange to get there for Christmas. The twins were home, of course, because the residence halls closed during that season. Creighton is a Jesuit University and while they do not proselytize, spirituality, social justice, service, and self-reflection are encouraged. The Advent Season, of course, is important to the staff and faculty, and students are sent home to spend that time with their families.

That meant that Paul was reunited with the girls who still considered themselves his girlfriends. And who he also considered in that way.

The parents continued to be surprised at the longevity of the relationship(s?), but they did not stand in the way of the reunion.

Again, he stayed in their room overnight with the acceptance of the girls’ parents. His mother didn’t discourage this, either. From her perspective, it was Bob and Julie whose permission was more important.

Again there was what amounted to an orgy of sorts. Paul, having only made love to these two girls, had survived his separation and isolation partly by masturbating regularly, but also by anticipating being able to be with them again. The girls had, more or less, still had a stiff penis available to them, so their enforced segregation was less difficult. As much as they still enjoyed the amorous unions with their father, they also dreamed of sleeping with the boy they loved.

In one sense, it was fifty percent loyalty among the three of them, and fifty percent clinging stubbornly to the ideal of love that all three of them were experiencing with each other. Had they been older, or more experienced, in terms of a variety of lovers, they would probably have given up. But they did believe they were in love (which is half the battle) and they were stubborn, so the relationship survived hibernation. It’s also fair to say that if the girls hadn’t had Bob, they might have been tempted away by other men. Paul, however, was deeply seized by his first love(s) and wasn’t interested in branching out.

Against all odds, this strange relationship, among these unusual humans, would endure more years, during which the girls and Paul all pursued academic excellence on a regular basis, and libidinal pleasure whenever they could get together. The girls cheated, of course, but in one sense it wasn’t hypocrisy, as most people would have defined it. The love they had for their father did not threaten or conflict with the love they felt for their distant boyfriend. They were different types of love, even if those loves were expressed in the same way. While most would argue that a person should cleave to only one person in a monogamous relationship, those same people would agree that you can love more than one person in the world, at the same time. Nobody argues that a married man or woman should not love his or her parents because that would be emotional cheating on one’s spouse. Likewise, no one would argue that loving your children means that you don’t love your spouse. Granted, very few people would applaud the man who has sex with his daughters and claims to still love his wife. But is it impossible for him to love them all? And if the wife does not object to how he shows their daughters his love, is it really cheating?

Of course Paul might have viewed things differently. To be honest he didn’t really think about that too much. And, of course, the girls never said, “We’re being faithful to you by only having sex with our daddy.” They didn’t think about it that way at all. To them, loving Daddy was a natural and normal thing to do. Loving Paul was a different kind of natural and normal thing to do, too. It wasn’t a problem for the three-way relationship at this point in time.

If it lasted and morphed into something more conventional, then it could become a problem. But that was still years away, assuming it ever happened. And even then, if Paul still loved – and made love to – two different women, could he really complain if they made love to two different men?

It’s the kind of thing philosophers love to discuss.

Another year passed, and then another. Bob bought the girls a ten year old Subaru, which was good in Nebraska winters. Muriel, Bob, and Julie became friends, primarily because the twins became the go-between for the two families, until the parents began to forge their own friendship. Whenever they got together, the first few minutes were always the same. “Is it still going on? How crazy is this? How much longer will they all hold out?” Then they would share what information they had about what their children were doing. Wine might be drunk, and several times they went out to dinner together. What they all shared was the desire that all the “kids” survive all this, and prosper and be happy. They also continued to share the skepticism that it could last.

And yet, it did. Usually, only once a year, at Christmas, Paul would meet the girls and the passion that had been banked, like a fire, would flare up as he made love to them both as long as they could manage.

Paul got his baccalaureate degree and went on to work on his master’s. Emma got her RN certification and was offered jobs by half a dozen hospitals. Beth got her teaching certificate, which meant she could start teaching in Nebraska immediately. That state did not have full reciprocity with other states, in terms of her degree transferring directly to get certification in other states, but that’s not unusual. The educational system in America is fractured into thousands of different certifying boards and agencies. Creighton, however, is a fully accredited institution of higher learning and what was on Beth’s transcripts almost certainly would be accepted by other states, at least in the Midwest. What was missing from her transcripts could be taken in that other state and she could then get her teaching certificate there, if she so desired.

In her case, though, she accepted a job teaching third grade in St. Paul, Nebraska, which was two hours from “home”. She chose that place after a powwow with Emma. One of Emma’s job offers was a nursing position at the hospital in Grand Island, which was half an hour from St. Paul on US highway 281. In theory they could still live together and one of them could commute. Which town they lived in depended on what was available, in terms of housing and whether the cost of living in each town was different enough to make the commute worth it.

They did not, of course, plan to bring Paul to that part of the world. He had at least another year to go on his master’s degree. Then he’d have to see what kind of jobs he could find. The plan was for the girls to relocate to wherever he could find a job, since both of their chosen careers were in shortage situations and they could get employment almost anywhere. They picked the Grand Island area because that’s the first place that offered Beth a job and it was only two hours from Mom and Dad. The women were now in their early-to-mid-twenties and while they still loved sleeping with their father, the maturity they now enjoyed meant that all those pesky hormones that made them so manic were now gone, or at least reduced.

Basically, they could go without sex for a few weeks and it didn’t drive them nuts.

The girls found a house for rent in the tiny town of St. Libory, which was almost exactly halfway between Grand Island and St. Paul. It was a typical rural town in Nebraska, having a convenience store/gas station, a small church, a volunteer fire department, and some two hundred homes and businesses, most of which supported the agrarian lifestyle of the area. The house was old and poorly maintained, owned by a seventy-five-year-old woman whose farmer husband had died twenty years earlier and who still lived in the “new house” they had built before he died. She hadn’t moved away from town because she’d lived there long enough that all her roots were there. She had nowhere to go and assumed she’d die there. She had three grandsons who had been uninterested in doing the repairs to “the old house” until they saw who was going to move into it, “camping out” until they could furnish it. Suddenly repairs needed to be done daily and all three boys often showed up to do them. The boys were in high school, but teenage high school boys are quite willing to set their sights high. In their defense, the women flirted with them a little bit. Those repairs really needed to be done.

Bob and Julie came for a visit, pulling a U-Haul loaded with furniture and boxes of things from the girls’ old bedroom, which was now going to become pre-schooler Megan’s room. Julie’s comment on seeing the still uncompleted repairs was “Oh my,” but Bob grinned and said, “Remember our first house? It was a shithole a lot like this!”

Bob and Julie left that night. There was no lodging in St. Libory and home was only two hours away. The twins were tired enough that they didn’t even try to entice Bob to stay and help them christen the beds they had taken out of the U-Haul and set up in the largest bedroom. Even in there the beds had to be scooted together so that one could get around them. Together their beds were a little larger than a king, and this room really couldn’t hold more than a queen. It was long enough that their dressers fit in, but that filled up the room.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Emma, as they surveyed where they would sleep that night. “It’s only temporary, anyway. Once Paul gets a job we’ll blow this popsicle stand and live with him.”

“It’s a year and a half, Em,” groaned Beth. “That’s not exactly temporary.”

“It could also just be two semesters and summer school,” said Emma.

“He can’t go full time like that. He has to work to pay his rent,” Beth reminded her.

“Not if we send him money every month. This place is dirt cheap and if we cook instead of going out we’ll save some money.”

“Seeing as how there’s no place to go out to in this town, that should be easy,” said Beth.

“I’m sure those boys would be happy to take us to Grand Island and feed us,” said Emma, with a twinkle in her eye.

“I am not a cradle-robber,” said Beth, with dignity. “And in any case, I am taken. I will not cheat on the man I love.”

“We don’t have to save money for college anymore,” said Emma. “And we don’t have to start paying our student loans back for six months. If we send him support for those six months then maybe he’ll be finished this time next year.”

“I hope so,” groaned Beth. “I can’t wait to live with him. We’ve gone through so much and sacrificed so much. I want to sleep with him every night!”

“We will, we will,” said Emma.

Later that night, after driving to Grand Island for supper since they didn’t have any food, yet, the twins settled into their combined bed and held hands.

“I can’t believe we’re here,” said Beth in the darkness.

“You mean out of school?”

“Yes, and also so much closer to being able to be with Paul.”

“What I can’t believe is that he’s waited for us all this time,” said Emma.

“Why? We waited for him.”

“Yes, but you know Daddy is right. The odds against this working out have always been long. We’ve both known the whole time that one man loving two women doesn’t usually work.”

“We’re different,” said Beth.

“Are we? Every other woman our age wants to fall in love and have a man like Paul. Why are we so different?”

“Because I’m not jealous of how he loves you and you’re not jealous of how he loves me. All we want is to be with him and it doesn’t matter who he’s kissing now because we know he’ll kiss the other one next.”

“Yes, but it really is normal for him to want to choose only one of us in the end,” whispered Emma. “Just like we’re normal women, he’s a normal guy. What if that’s what he does?”

“He won’t,” said Beth, firmly. “He’s different than normal guys, too.”

“Oh? And how is that?”

“He’s different because other guys go with the flow and behave like everyone expects them to. They settle for the one man one woman idea. Paul decided he didn’t want to do that way back when we were seventeen.”

“So, is he as strange as us?”

Emma thought for a moment.

“We need to get our internet set up. I think we need to do some research.”

Their research was delayed significantly by events in their lives. Both were starting new jobs and that had to be their immediate focus. For Emma, the Grand Island Regional Medical Center was busy and understaffed. Everyone said it was due to Covid, but it didn’t matter. Emma had to hit the ground running and she was offered all the extra shifts she wanted. She took them for two reasons. First, she really had nothing better to do with her time. Secondly, that money could be sent to Paul to help him with his expenses so he didn’t have to work and could finish his master’s program more quickly.

For Beth, the start of school was still a month away, but this was her first real classroom experience since student teaching and she wanted to be prepared. She visited with the Principal and learned that the student body was anticipated to be between 600 and 650. The school served a large chunk of rural Howard County. The classroom load, historically, averaged out to 13 students per class. Beth would be the only teacher in her classroom, but she might have a para, if they could find one, and it was common for some of the parents to volunteer for various things. There was a curriculum and even some lesson plans, but as she looked through them she realized they were old enough they needed to be updated.

As a result of this initial flurry of employment activity, the women didn’t go visit their mother and father very often, even though the drive wasn’t that onerous. And, as a result of that, neither woman had the sexual release that often mitigates stress in one’s life. Initially that wasn’t an issue, since they did, occasionally get to strain up against the weight of Bob as he powered his incestuous penis deep into them and both give and get orgasms.

A point of interest should be inserted, here. While the girls were in college they got to visit home frequently and, of course, that meant sleeping with their father frequently. Everyone was used to that arrangement and Julie still felt no deficit, sexually. Bob’s libido (and ability to perform) had grown over the years, rather than lessening. Basically, while he trained them, the activity trained his body to produce an erection pretty much on demand. Now that the girls were living two hours away, though, there was less “call” on him and he transferred a lot of what he’d been getting (and giving) from the girls to his wife. Julie loved it, at first, but being dragged to bed two or three times a day can wear a woman down, eventually, especially if she’s caring for a toddler. It was not odd for the girls to get a call from their mother suggesting they needed to come home for a visit on their next day off because she needed a break from the amorous advances of her hubby.