Chapter 3

When father and daughter appeared together, Beth was pounding the dough for biscuits. It made her look angry, because it looked violent.

"Beth," said Tom, who held out one hand in supplication.

She looked over her shoulder at husband and daughter. Both looked scared. She wondered what looks would be on their faces when she finished talking to them. She hoped she was doing the right thing.

"Give me a second. I need to roll these out and get them in the oven. Why don't you two help me?"

As her demeanor had confused Carly on the way home, it now confused Tom. He had been ready to throw himself on his sword, so to speak, and take all the blame for what had happened. He was so relieved that Carly wasn't "slutting around" that he was practically euphoric. And while he wanted to talk to her more about what had happened, what was most important right now was to preserve his marriage. He hoped taking the blame and apologizing for being weak would move things in that direction.

It was silent as they approached the counter. He winced as Beth picked up the rolling pin, but then she simply handed it to him and stepped back to let him flatten the pile of dough on the counter. She pointed to the drinking glass she used to cut the dough and told Carly to use it. While Carly pressed the rim of the glass into the flattened dough, Beth got out a baking sheet and sprayed it. By then there were biscuits ready to put on it, while Tom reformed the remaining dough and rolled it out again. When the sheet was full, Beth put it in the oven and set the timer.

"Let's sit here," she said, pulling out a chair at the kitchen table. "I need to keep an eye on them so they don't burn."

She thought it was interesting that Carly and Tom sat on the other side of the table from her. Again, she wondered if maybe something had been going on before, and she'd just been blind to it. But his confusion had been too genuine. And Tom would never do something like that behind her back. It just wasn't in him.

It was time. All the worrying, and wondering if her plan would work or be a catastrophic failure wouldn't do any good. She just had to tell them and let the chips fall where they may.

"First," she said, folding her hands in front of her on the table. "I love you both. No matter what happens, I love you both." Wide eyes looked back at her from both faces across the table. "Second, Tom, I haven't been completely open with you. When I was Carly's age, I had a lover. He taught me about physical love. You weren't my first."

"You never said I was," he said, suddenly. He was blinking rapidly. "I mean I knew you were my first, but I also knew I wasn't your first."

"You were my second," said Beth. "My first was ... my Uncle Bob."

There. She'd said it. It was out there, for better or worse. All she could hope for was that it would be better.

"Uncle Bob," said Tom. He knew the man well. They'd hunted deer together ... brewed beer together ... gone fishing together.

"Uncle Bob?" Carly's voice was high. Other than her grandpa, Uncle Bob - she called him what her mother called him - was the coolest old guy she knew. She tried to imagine him ... and her mother ... doing something.

"It just happened one day. I think I was teasing him, and he hugged me ... and it just happened." That's all she said, because that's all she thought they could handle. She couldn't tell them that she had seduced him, and then gotten him hard as often as she dared.

"You had sex with Uncle Bob?" Carly's voice sounded a bit whiney now.

"Yes," said Beth. "So I can understand why you might have been ... curious. Is that what it was? Curiosity? Or have you two been fooling around before this?"

Father and daughter both jumped and said at exactly the same time. Had they rehearsed it, they couldn't have gotten it that perfect.

"I really thought she was you," said Tom.

Beth looked at her daughter.

"You obviously knew who he was."

"Yeah," said Carly. "But he was already on the table ... um ... naked ... when I got there to tell him you couldn't come."

Beth felt immeasurably better already. Neither of her family members had shown disgust that she'd had engaged in incest when she was Carly's age. That her husband hadn't blown up had astonished her at first. But clearly he wasn't as off-put as she had expected him to be. So she took another chance.

"So you made him cum instead."

Tom's head jerked up. He'd been looking down, thinking. His mind was moving a mile a minute. He'd always known that his bride was free and open about sex. He'd felt almost handicapped as she brought him out of the cave his parents had stuffed his sexual emotions into. It was like coming into the sunlight for the first time in his life, and he had been scared some of the time. But everything she'd done with him had made their lives only better, closer, more fulfilling.

So he had accepted that what she wanted ... was a good thing. A precious thing.

Now, though, she had been vulgar, and it rubbed him the wrong way.

"This isn't a joke!" he snapped.

Beth was immediately contrite. "You're right. I'm just trying to keep things light, I guess."

"Why?" he asked. "That's what I don't understand."

Beth leaned back. She looked at both of them, across the table.

"I'm just going to tell you what happened," she said. "Back then, I mean. Then we can talk about what happened today." She didn't wait for them to approve. She just started.

"What happened to me back then wasn't a bad thing. It didn't hurt me. If anything, he helped me grow up and figure things out. He was very caring. I wasn't afraid of him, and I got to satisfy my curiosity about some things that had been bothering me. He was a man I could be honest with, and ask questions of. He was a man I didn't have to be worried about, or afraid of."

She stopped and got up to take the biscuits out of the oven. As she did so, the timer dinged. She set them on top of the stove to cool, and sat back down.

"I knew that nobody would approve of what we were doing. I knew it was called incest. And I knew it wouldn't last forever. I knew I wasn't going to marry him or any of that. It was just a way to explore and grow that I felt good about."

She stood up. Her plan was to start making the cream gravy to go with the biscuits.

"So I don't see what happened today as something that should be bad, or tear our family apart. I love you both. I understand a little bit of how you felt, Carly. And I believe that you thought it was me," she finished, looking at her husband.

She turned and got the gravy mix from the cupboard. With her back to them, she started working on that.

"That's it?" Tom sounded confused.

Beth looked over her shoulder. "Of course that's not it. You and Carly need to talk about this, and decide what to do. I don't want this to make things tense between the two of you either." She turned back to the gravy, her eyes tightly closed ... hoping that things were going to work out.

"How can I talk to my daughter about..."

It was quiet for long enough that Beth had to turn and speak again.

"About sucking your cock? Just talk to her. Ask her what she was thinking about and why she did it. I wasn't there for the whole thing, but I assume you didn't ask her to."

"He did!" said Carly, suddenly and loudly. But immediately her voice softened. "Except I knew he thought it was you."

"Let me ask you this," said Beth, still looking over her shoulder at her daughter. "Are you sorry you did that?"

Carly suddenly looked nervous.

"Just tell the truth," said her mother. "For any of this to work out, we have to tell each other the truth. That's why I told you what I told you. You both needed to know ... to understand where I'm coming from.

Carly darted a look at her father, who was looking sideways at her.

"No," she said, her voice small. Her eyes moved frantically from her father to her mother, expecting censure.

"Really?" Tom sounded incredulous. He was clearly not irate.

"Yes," said Carly more firmly. "It was weird ... but I'm not sorry."

"Why don't you just tell him what you were thinking about," said Beth. "Start from when you got to the room."

Looking a bit incredulous herself, the teenager nodded.

"Okay," she said.

" ... and it was just too cool not to touch ... so I did ... and it felt so interesting in my hand ... and then I got excited and when you said to suck it ... I just had to try that too."