“Just before she died, Mom gave me the photo album that’s sitting in front of you. She, however, didn’t give me any kind of explanation. She was too weak at the time and I was probably too young to really understand anyway. At the time, all I saw were just some old pictures of what I guessed were family members. It wasn’t until my eighteenth birthday that I found myself looking back through that album and started noticing… peculiarities. So, finally, I asked Dad about them, about the people in them. And, a lot like the conversation you and I are having now, Dad told me HIS story. And the story of his twin sister, whom he loved more than the moon and the stars, the sister that he would eventually take as his wife and have a beautiful daughter with.”
And that caused my mouth to drop open. “You mean… wait, let me get this straight… your mother and father were actually brother and sister. They had you. Then your mother died, leaving you and your father alone. Then you and your father had ME? So that makes you, what? My mother AND my sister?”
Mother stared at me with a bland look. “Well, yes. That about sums it up.”
“But he was your father!”
Mother smiled sweetly, almost wistfully. “Oh, honey, no. He was so much more than that. Son, he was the love of my life. Like you are, now.”
“But you’re not having sex with me!”
Mother shrugged indifferently. “It’s not like I hadn’t given the idea some thought,” she said casually.
And that brought me up short. My mouth worked up and down as I fought for logic to settle back into my head. Her words had jarred me completely. When I got my mental balance back, my brilliant reply was, “What?”
“Conrad, have you not been paying attention to what I’ve said, after all? Let me recap: my father and I fell into a loving relationship that brought you into this world. Since his passing, I haven’t been with another man. YOU have been the only man in my life, since your- OUR father died. You look, walk, talk and act every bit like he did. You are, practically speaking, his clone. You’ve seen the pictures yourself. You could be him, at the age of nineteen, maybe twenty-one. Have I thought about seducing you? Certainly! But I haven’t. Because no matter how much you may look like your- dammit, OUR father, you are NOT him. You never will be. And it would be unfair for me to try and seduce you just so that I could satisfy my own selfish desires. And, make no mistake, son, a woman has needs every bit as much as a man does. I haven’t been with another man in the fourteen years since our father’s death, but it has been by no means easy.”
“But it’s incest,” was my lame comeback. And it didn’t come out in the heated, impassioned and disgusted manner most others would say it. Coming out of my mouth, it sounded more like confused recognition of a fact. Like someone would see something astounding and then say, “But it’s science.”
Mother was unflappable. “That’s the word, yes.”
“Isn’t it against the law?”
“In most states, yes,” she answered. “It is in this one. Which is part of the reason you were raised as you were. Our father was no fool. He knew that what we were doing, what our family has been doing going back for several generations, would have Society running at us with torches and pitchforks. Your great-grandfather’s wealth has made it possible for us to hide from Society, to carry on as we always have without intrusion or interference.”
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