Chapter 2

The next morning I showed Penny how the monitoring station worked, and went over the business records I kept, and explained why I kept them. She wanted to know how the systems themselves worked, which called for a lecture on electronics and some math, but she sucked all that in with no problem. She had been making good grades before she dropped out of school.

When I thought of that, I Googled GED and found a number of entries, including some that said you could get a regular diploma online. I didn't trust those off hand, but I'd look into them later. I had a sales call and a warranty repair on a bad motion sensor to do that morning, so I told her to explore the GED thing herself and see if she could come up with a plan to finish school while working for me. She wasn't going to work for me forever, after all, so she'd need some kind of high school completion to move on with her life.

She wanted to know how to answer the phone, and how to get in touch with me, so I answered both questions and then took off to get work done.

When I got finished, I would normally have eaten out, but decided to go home instead. I hadn't asked Penny to fix me anything for lunch, but if she had, I didn't want it to go to waste. When I got there, and walked in, she was sitting on a chair in the kitchen, feeding Dilly.

And she was crying softly. It was that low, really hopeless kind of crying.

"What's wrong?" I asked, only a foot inside the doorway.

She jumped, and Dilly squawked as he lost the nipple he'd been sucking on. It looked very dark and large and turgid as her wide, tear-filled eyes rounded on me. She tried wiping her eyes and giving him the nipple back at the same time, which didn't work well, but eventually they got straightened out and he was sucking again.

"Nothing," she said, looking away.

"You were crying," I said. "That's not nothing."

"Look, it's no big deal, okay? I just still have things on my mind, that's all. How did your morning go? Did you make the sale? There's tuna salad in the fridge, and I cut up a cantaloupe. There are strawberries too."

It was obvious she didn't want to talk about whatever was bothering her. I figured it would come out when she was ready. Maybe, now that her life was a little more normal, she was upset about her parents being the enormous butt-faces they were.

"He's thinking about buying a system. It turned out a squirrel had chewed through the power cord to the motion sensor. He won't do that again. Fried the little sucker but good."

"That's awful!" she squeaked.

"Well, next time you're online, see what you can find for armored service wire, eighteen or twenty gauge. If you can find something that's not too expensive, we'll start using it in areas where little gnawing animals might be able to get to the wire."

"Okay," she said.

Apparently the nursing bra wasn't for use around the house. She was braless under the T shirt she was wearing, and when she finished with Dilly she just let the shirt fall to cover her breasts. I was beginning to think those nipples were permanently erect, but tried not to stare.

And that was the way it stayed, there at home. If we went out, she put on the nursing bra, and carried what I would have called a dish towel with her that she used to put over her shoulder and cover Dilly's head with as he nursed. But at home, she just went braless, and when it was time to feed him, simply bared a breast for him to suck on.

On this particular day, while I was eating my sandwich, I noticed that he spent ten minutes on one breast, but only two or three on the other. I asked her about it.

"He doesn't empty me," she said. "He eats really good, but I produce a lot of milk."

"Well," I said.

"Well, what?" she asked.

"He eats really well, not good."

"He thinks it's good," she said, one eyebrow rising.

"I'm sure he does," I said. "But you know what I mean. You're a professional woman now. You need to sound like it."

"Oh pish," she said. "Who cares about that stuff?"

"Customers care," I said. "If they hear a hillbilly talking, they'll think it's a hillbilly operation, with hillbilly service."

"I do not sound like a hillbilly," she said, obviously miffed.

"You know what I mean," I insisted.

"Why do grownups do that?" she complained. "Here I was, having a perfectly wonderful day, probably the best day I've had in months and months, and you have to go and ruin it by giving me talking lessons."

"Speech lessons," I corrected. I grinned. I thought she'd laugh.

She didn't. Instead, thunderclouds gathered on her face.

"Wa'll I'm sure soree, there, mister, that mah talkin' is so poorly an' all, but us hillbillies don't hardly git no edumucation lahk all them city slickers do. Whut I wuz sayin' wuz that my brat here don't suck 'nuff of my titty milk, an it leaves me kinder sore sometimes. That's why one of my titties is a little bigger'n t'other, I 'spect. You s'pose?"

"Take it easy," I said, no longer smiling. "It's not that big a deal."

"Well if it's not that big a deal, then why did you bring it up?" she yelled.

Dilly got upset, because his mother was upset.

I got blamed for that too.

That night, I woke up in that special way that makes the waker tense, suspecting something is wrong. Usually it's because the waker thinks some sound woke him, but that sound has gone, now, and it's worrisome. It's happened to you before. Maybe you thought somebody - a stranger - was in the house. Of course, usually, you figure it out. The furnace banged. One of the kids went to the bathroom and flushed the stool. Maybe someone in the house coughed.

But that night I couldn't figure out why I had awakened.

Then I heard the sob. It was soft, but I recognized it instantly. Penny was crying again.

I got up and went barefoot to her room. She had installed a nightlight in the outlet on one wall, probably because she still had to get up and feed Dilly in the night, and that made it easier to see and change his diaper and so forth.

She was sitting on a hard backed chair she'd borrowed from the kitchen, and feeding Dilly. I realized she must sleep nude, because the only clothing being worn in that bedroom was the diaper on the baby. And she was sobbing gently, whispering "I love you," to her son.

I almost didn't go in. I figured she was still missing David, Dilly's father, and the only thing I would be tempted to tell her was that she was well shut of him, and to move on with her life. Since she probably wouldn't want to hear that, I almost didn't go in.

But she was in pain, and my job, as her uncle, not to mention only friendly relative, was to support her. So I cleared my throat and stepped into the room.

She jumped, squeaked in distress, and clutched Dilly to her breast.

"You okay?" I asked. I never was any good at ice breaking.

"I'm naked!" she yipped. Then her head tilted. "You're naked!"

That's when I remembered I sleep nude too. I know that, in the movies, or on TV, when someone gets up at night and goes to investigate something, they get dressed. But in real life, they come as they are, so to speak, grabbing the golf club, or ball bat or whatever, and tending to business first and fashion later. Maybe before the cops get there after you've beaned the intruder.

"I heard you crying," I said. "Again," I added. I figured I might as well go for broke. "And based on the little boy fastened to your breast right now, you've seen a naked man before. I'm more worried about why you keep crying, and why you won't talk to me about it."

She was quiet for quite a while, but I learned a long time ago that when a woman wants to be quiet, to let her, because she's probably thinking about things. Men tend to do, rather than think, but sometimes thinking is the better choice.

"I don't want to tell you," she finally whispered.

"Obviously," I said. "But if you keep crying all the time, neither of us will be happy."

"I don't cry all the time," she defended.

"True," I admitted immediately. I didn't want to argue.

There was a pregnant pause, and then she said "Only when Dilly's eating."

That gave me pause. I couldn't figure out why the act of a baby eating would make a woman sad.

So I took the psychologist approach. "It might help if you talked about it."

"You'll think I'm a pervert."

Dilly fussed and she changed him to the other breast. Even in the relative darkness I could see how large and distended the "used" nipple was. I felt a twinge in my penis, and slight panic in my chest. I couldn't back out now.

"I find it extremely difficult to imagine anything you could say that would make me think you are a pervert," I said.

"You will!" she insisted. "It's not normal!"

"What's not normal?"

She moaned. "I am a pervert! It happens even when you're watching! I thought if you watched, that would make it go away, but it's not! Uncle Bob, what am I going to do?"

I went and got down on a knee beside her.

"Honey, please ... just tell me what's wrong. Please. I want to help you, but I can't if you won't talk about it."

Her head turned toward me, her blond hair bright in the semi-darkness. It was easy to imagine those dark green eyes staring at me.

"When he sucks ... I have feelings," she whispered.

I admit it. I was a bit brusque.

"Of course you have feelings!" I said brusquely. "He's your son!"

"That's the problem!" she practically shouted. "He is my son! And I shouldn't get horny from my own son sucking my nipples!"

When you're a big, mean ex-cop, a man of the world, a guy who's seen it all, who's rough and tough and hard to bluff and used to many a hardship ... you can't really be prepared to confront a situation like that. First of all, most guys never get their nipples sucked. And I'm just guessing here, but those who do, don't get off on it very much. Men's breasts are vestigial, and the nipples with them. And while the primary purpose of a woman's nipples are to deliver milk, they have lots of nerve endings in them to assist in that. Some of those nerve endings are good for other things too. But most men don't have the same nerve endings. I'm not a doctor, but that's what I think, based on my own body.

So the first problem is that men can't imagine what a woman feels when her nipples are lovingly sucked. It's kind of like our orgasms. Both genders have them, but the mechanics are completely different, and the sensations are too.

Then there was the fact that, over the years, I'd been attracted, sexually, towards people I wasn't supposed to be sexually attracted to. Every boy, at some time in his life, realizes his mother is hot, on some level or another. Most boys are interested in seeing what their sisters look like naked. Actually, to be more nearly correct, most boys are interested in seeing any woman naked, whether she's related to them or not. And don't snort and say that boys don't want to see what ugly, or fat women look like naked. Every driven by a train wreck? Part of you didn't want to look. Did you look anyway?

Of course you did.

So maybe guys think about these things from a different perspective. Suffice it to say that I did not consider this to be the world-shaking event that Penny obviously did.

I stood up too fast, and swayed on my feet, light-headed.

"Oh my!" yipped Penny, whose head was still turned toward me.

I looked down to find that maybe I hadn't stood up too fast after all. Maybe the reason I was light-headed was because every extra drop of blood in my body was now being used to sustain a really nice erection. Well, not nice, exactly ... not under the circumstances. But it was one of those rock hard ones a guy is normally proud of, if you get my meaning. I realized, somewhat dully, that the concept of a naked Penny being turned on by having her nipples sucked ... had affected me on an unconscious level. And what was now jutting from my groin was only a couple of inches from Penny's lips. For some goofy reason I imagined her eyes again, except this time they were cross-eyed.

"Sorry," I said. I squatted again. My knees complained. My mind wasn't listening to them, though, because it was trying too hard to come up with something to mitigate the unfortunate circumstances I found myself in.

"About the being turned on thing," I said. "I think you're probably over thinking it. A lot of that stuff works on an unconscious level. It's just biology. Stuff can just happen, even when you don't want it to."

I waited for her to say "Like just happened to you?" but she didn't.

Instead, she said "It makes me feel so dirty."

I could hear deep pain in her voice, the kind of pain caused by self-loathing. And self-loathing can poison a person's entire life. Maybe it was that that led me to try to convince her she wasn't the only sinner in the world, so to speak.

"Look," I said. "Do you believe I love you?"

"You have to," she said.

"The same could be said of your parents, but that's obviously not true."

"They're right not to love me," she whispered.

"Stay with me here, Penny," I said, somewhat gruffly. "Do you believe that I love you?"

Another pause, but then a soft "Yes."

"And could I have tossed you in the trash, like your parents did?"

No pause this time. "Yes."

"But I didn't."

"That's true." This time there was a note of wonder in her voice.

"And the reason I didn't, is because I really do love you. Not because I have to, but because I just do."

"I don't understand that," she said.

"You will someday," I said, unwilling to expand the conversation in that direction. Trying to prove love exists can be a frustrating and painful argument. I needed to get her to have a little faith first, and then maybe understanding would come later. "But the point is that I care about what happens to you, and I want you to be happy and successful in life. Do you believe that?"

"Yes," she said, quietly.

"And I did not bring you here to have sex with you. Do you believe that too?"

"Yes!" She said it with so much conviction that it made me want to ask her why she was so convicted. I didn't, though.

"And yet, just now, my body reacted to you. Something natural happened, not because I wanted it to, or was trying to, but just because that's how my body works sometimes. Are you afraid of me?"

"Of course not," she said.

"Then don't be afraid of what Dilly's natural actions do to you either," I said. "It's normal for your nipples to react to being suckled."

I would have been fine if I'd have just stopped there. But my mind was working so fast and I was trying so hard to show her how trivial this problem really was, that I sort of coasted on a bit. Somehow I added: "I can even prove it."

There was another of those long, pregnant pauses just then. That's because I had made that last little comment without thinking it through. What had popped into my mind, while I was talking about Dilly sucking her nipples, was ... well... me sucking her nipples. It was just an errant thought. But the inherent legitimacy of the argument was there. My brain was telling me that it was likely that if I sucked her nipples, it would turn her on too. Makes sense, right?

Well, actually, there probably needs to be an emotional bond of some sort between the woman and whoever is sucking her nipples. I mean if it's some guy who disgusts her, it isn't likely to work. But a mind like mine - only half there sometimes, if you get my drift - sees things on a more simple level. That didn't mean I should share that with her, though.