Chapter Eleven
Debbie looked at Robby. "What do you think she's going to do?"
"I don't know. She said she'd be right back. Probably nothing," he said.
"I don't mean with him," said Debbie, rolling her eyes. "I meant about us!"
Robby looked at her miserably. "I don't know that either. Sounds like she doesn't like the idea of us doing ... things."
"That's not fair," said Debbie, her stubbornness coming out in her voice. "They do things."
"Deb, they do a whole lot more than we do," said her brother.
"Yeah, but not that much more," she said, still wanting to argue.
"Deb, I never thought of actually ... doing what they do," he said. "I mean I thought about it, but not like I was really going to try to get you to do that," he said. "Did you think about doing that? With me?"
Debbie felt another rush of emotion. "Not really," she said. "I like what we do just fine. I mean I've wondered what it might feel like. You know? But seeing them ... and knowing who they are ... I don't know how I feel any more."
"Well you better figure out how you feel, 'cause Mom said she wasn't going to be long," he said.
As if to punctuate his sentence they heard a car door slam outside. They waited and then tensed as their mother came through the door. She did, in fact, look unhappy.
"Sorry Mom," said Robby automatically.
"What, exactly, are you sorry for Robby?" asked Ramona. She was in full parent mode and wanted her children to articulate their errors in a way that would convince her that their breach of behavioral rules would not be repeated. It was something she'd done with them for years.
"I'm sorry you didn't get to spend more time with Uncle Robert," he said sincerely.
"What?" asked Ramona, surprised by his statement.
"Well we kind of ruined your evening with him," said Robby. "And we're sorry. Aren't we?" he hinted to his sister, who was also looking at him strangely.
"I guess so," she said honestly.
The overwhelming nature of everything that had happened settled on Ramona like thickly falling snow. She had gone from being inflamed with passion for her brother's touch, to horrified and ashamed that her children had seen it, followed by absolute joy that her children still loved her. Upon the heels of that was her anger that they had lied to her all these years and her astonishment that they were having sex. She knew how she was supposed to feel about that, her own behavior notwithstanding - that was different ... wasn't it? - and she had planned on laying down the law to them when she came in the door. Piled on top of that was the warm safe feeling she had enjoyed for most of the evening as they talked, like a real family, which was upset by her brother's completely tactless invitation for her children to watch him ravish her. It didn't help that he had begged for forgiveness, claiming that he was kidding ... trying to shock the children further out of the opinion they had formed already about him.
It was all too much to think about ... to deal with. She felt a need to just get away from it all, but she knew she couldn't. It left her feeling a little shell shocked. She sat down heavily on the couch and stared at her children.
"Mom?" asked her daughter. "Are you okay?"
"No," said Ramona. "I don't think I am. This is all so confusing."
Debbie, unfettered by all but her own concerns about how this was going to affect herself and her brother, spoke with typical teenaged innocence.
"What's to be confused about?" she asked. "Uncle Robert came back, and you're glad. It's true that you have bad memories about the manor, but he's fixing it up really nice and everything, and we can go visit him whenever we want to. I mean what's changed all that much?"
Ramona gave a strangled sound that was half laugh and have groan.
"How I wish it were all that simple," she said.
"Isn't it?" asked Debbie.
"Well, let's see," said Ramona. She ticked things off on her fingers. "The house I hoped would fall down into a pile of rubble is being rebuilt so it will never fall down. My brother, against whom I have no defenses whatsoever, is bound and determined to father a child on me! Meanwhile my children are busy trying to make babies of their own ... together! People in town are going to just go nuts when they find out that the meek little woman at the bank is, in actuality, Elizabeth Nettleton, the rich heiress of the Nettleton fortune. I'll probably be fired. My children are much too interested in money that I have, but don't want. Have I missed anything? Isn't there something else I've forgotten that can ruin our lives?"
Debbie looked startled as she realized that there were a lot of things she hadn't thought about.
Robby, perhaps because he was male, but not necessarily so, took a more pragmatic view of things. He too, ticked things off on his fingers.
"First of all, you don't ever have to go in the house next door again at all if you don't want to. Second, there are lots of ways to keep from having babies. If you don't want to have Uncle Robert's baby then just tell him so. Third, nobody in town has to know who you are now any more than they did last week. Everybody will know about Uncle Robert, but unless the two of you announce who you are, everybody in town will still think you're the ... what did you call it? ... nice little woman at the bank? And you have the wrong idea about Debbie and me. We fool around a little bit, because we love each other, but we're not trying to make babies. We haven't done that at all. And they can't fire you just because you're Elizabeth Nettleton. It's not against the law to be Elizabeth Nettleton. And if the money is that horrible, then I agree with you that we don't need it. Give it away or something. I don't care."
He crossed his arms over his chest.
Debbie had been nodding her head ... until he got to the part about giving away all the money. She wanted to complain about that, but she really felt her mother's distress, so she bit her lip. She could suggest some alternatives to that later.
Of it all, Ramona had zeroed in the most on his statement that he and Debbie "hadn't done that".
"You two haven't had sex?" she asked, tentatively.
Debbie thought to reassure her mother. "Well, we have sex, but not like you and Uncle Robert."
Ramona didn't know what that meant. "Let's just talk about that," she said, glad to have picked one topic that could be explored, and which might be less unsettling than she had previously thought.
So they did, disregarding the fact that it was getting later and later. Ramona wasn't tired, and she was fascinated by what she was hearing from her children. It sounded to her like a carbon copy of what she and Robert had done when they were young ... younger even than these two.
For their part, as the children realized she wasn't going to fly off in a rage every time they added something to their story, they felt much more comfortable telling it. They were amazed at how they got a sense of freedom out of giving up the secrets they had been so careful to keep. They had to include the things they had done in the house too ... the dressing up ... the fantasies they had acted out ... basically a description of the childhood in the manor that Ramona had been robbed of.
When they were finished, Ramona sighed. She had heard a love story. That much was plain. What her children had done with each other was clearly based on their love for each other. She understood that. That understanding was the core of her own personality, based on the same kind of love she had for Robert. She found herself unable to judge their actions harshly ... and she knew it.
She looked at her watch and groaned. "It's very late," she said. "Unlike you two, who are carefree and able to sleep in, I have to get up and go to work. Off to bed."
Debbie looked at her mother slyly. "If you used your money you wouldn't have to work any more at all," she said. "You could sleep in too, if you wanted to."
Ramona tried to glare at her daughter, but it just seemed to take too much energy. "I like my job," she said shortly.
"We've seen how much you like your job," said Debbie innocently. "Several times. Like Robby said, sorry your job got messed up tonight." Her voice was so innocent that Ramona had to laugh.
"Go on. Off to bed. Separate beds, my darlings," she said.
"We've never slept in the same bed," said Robby, trying to sound injured.
"Thank goodness for small miracles," said Ramona under her breath.
No one got to sleep easily in the Franklin household that night. Ramona thought about everything she'd heard her children telling her, and it brought out her love and affection for her brother, who was a few hundred yards away ... quite possibly naked ... quite possibly wasting perfectly good seed. That led her to think about what she'd said about him fathering a child on her, and she examined that from several different angles, trying to decide exactly how she felt about it while his prick wasn't buried in her. She already knew how she felt about it then.
Debbie lay in her bed, idly flicking her clitoris, also thinking about all that had happened. Even though her mother had specified separate beds, there had been no real heat in that order. Debbie clung to the hope that her mother could understand how she felt about Robby, not knowing her mother knew even better than she did herself. Debbie thought about what her mother had thought Debbie and Robby had been doing. She looked at that scenario from several different points of view, wondering again, what that might be like.
Robby also lay in his bed. The thing that kept coming back to his mind was his hand on his mother's naked shoulder, telling her that he loved her. He felt a distinctly un-son-like feeling in is groin for his mother ... the same kind of thing he felt for his sister when they played. He examined that from several angles, trying to figure out whether it was good, bad, or indifferent. He found his answer when he suddenly realized his hand was firmly wrapped around his stiff cock, and that he was stroking it.
Next door, in the Nettleton mansion, Robert Nettleton lay in his bed too, also thinking about what had happened that evening. Neither his niece or nephew had screamed hate at him. Their love for each other, something he too understood completely, was now out in the open. He knew it could not be quashed, no matter what his more conservative sister thought. He wasn't too upset about how Rami had berated him as a pervert for offering to let the children watch him love their mother. He had noticed that the points of her nipples had pressed firmly through her blouse. She might not know it, but that "perversion" had appealed to something in her. "Methinks thou dost protest too much," he said out loud ito the darkness of his room. Then he thought about how much turmoil he had caused in his lovely sister's life, and examined that from several directions, trying to see if he had covered everything in his plan. He smiled.
He had big plans for his sister. She didn't know them all. It would take time, but he was sure he could bring his plan to fruition. Perhaps, at last, the Nettleton curse could be broken. Thinking about his plan made him stiff, and he considered masturbating. Instead he rolled over and tried to find sleep. He would not waste his seed.
TBC