Third Year After Ch. 05

"Hi, Dr. Carpenter. Happy Labor Day!" I said, taking the bottles from her.

She smiled, saying, "Please, Drew, you can call me Ginger. I'm sorry that I'm early, but I wanted to touch base with Henry before things get hectic. Is he here?"

Toni walked out of the kitchen, and said, "Hi, Ginger, I'm Toni," and shook Ginger's hand.

Ginger got a puzzled look on her face, and asked, "Have we met somewhere before? You look familiar, but I can't quite place you."

Toni said, "I don't think so. I think I'd remember a knockout redhead like you."

Ginger raised an eyebrow in response, then said, "Maybe I know someone in your family, instead? What's your last name? Henry didn't mention it the other day."

"Kannady," Toni said. "Like the President, but with As instead of Es."

Ginger's eyes popped wide, and she gulped. "You're Antonia Kannady?"

Toni said, "Yes, how did you know that's what Toni stood for?"

"I... I delivered your sister Mona's daughter. That's who you look like. She mentioned you several times during her labor, but we never actually met, because you were in college."

Toni staggered, and I caught her before she fell. I helped her to the couch, and Ginger followed us, and began taking Toni's pulse. When Toni roused, Ginger said, "I truly didn't mean to upset you. I understand why that time might be traumatic for you. Considering what got revealed afterwards, that your father was molesting your sister."

Toni straightened up, pulled her wrist from Ginger's grasp and slapped Ginger hard across the face with the other hand. "Don't you fucking dare say that to me! My Dadnevermolested Mona. What happened between them was consensual, and didn't start until after she was 18, and she initiated it, for that matter."

"I'm... I'm sorry," Ginger said, one tear rolling down her cheek, as she rubbed it. "That was the scuttlebutt around the hospital. I was off duty when Mona named your Dad as her baby's father, and she was discharged before I heard about it. I'm so sorry for everything that happened after that, both of them dying. I only wish she had confided in me. I've always wondered whether I could have changed the outcome, if only I had known the whole story. Whether that meant protecting her from your father, or protecting her and your niece from CPS, I would have tried. She was the kind of patient you never forget."

Toni said, "I'm sorry for slapping you," then asked, "Do you... do you know where my niece is, today?"

Ginger answered, "No. I know CPS placed her somewhere, but I don't know who the foster parents were, or whether she was eventually adopted. Sorry."

Toni began to sob, and I pulled her into my arms. The rest of the family walked in, carrying all of the kids. Henry put Gavin down, and rushed over to us, kneeling in front of Toni, saying, "What's wrong, honey?"

Ginger kept silent, while Toni took a deep breath, took Henry's hand and said, "Ginger was Mona's doctor 17 years ago. She delivered my niece." She looked Ginger in the eyes, and said, "The people you see in this room all know the whole story. But they're the only ones who do. None of the other guests who will be here today do, though, and I'd like to keep it that way."

Ginger asked, "Why?" and almost immediately said, "Oh. Mona wasn't the only one who loved her Dad, was she? You're still protecting your own secret."

Toni calmly said, "Yes, I am. I know I'm not your patient, so I don't have any expectations of confidentiality from you, but please keep quiet."

Ginger smiled. "I may not be your doctor, Toni, but I do want to be your friend. You too, Tina. I... I love this husband of yours, with all my heart. He's why I came back to Dallas after my Mom passed. If I hadn't run into him at the store, I would have been tracking him down sooner rather than later. I want you both to know that I'm not going to try to take him away from you, but I am going to try and join you, if you'll let me."

Mom and Toni were both speechless. Henry turned to Ginger and said, "Let's take things slow and see how things go between us all, okay? We're a long way from making any marriage proposals."

Gavin chose that moment to crawl over to the couch, and pulling himself upright, reached for me, saying, "Dada." I picked him up, and held him on my arm.

"Your son, Drew?" Ginger asked.

"My little brother, actually," I answered. "He calls both Henry and I Dada, though. Just like he calls all the women here Mama. All the babies spend so much time with all of us, I don't think they have it sorted out yet." I pointed towards Patti, and said, "This is my wife Patti, holding our daughter Sharon. You know my Mom. Amber is my other wife and the mother to our daughter Kyra, and my stepson KJ, short for Kenny Jr. Kenny Sr. is a friend of mine."

"Another poly triad?" Ginger said. "And both are living together?"

I said, "Almost. We try to have dinner together, and sometimes breakfast, but we actually live in separate houses, to either side of this one. This was my parents' house, originally, but has the smallest number of bedrooms because one was converted to an office. This is more of a guest house now, except when we're hosting pool parties like today."

"Let me guess," Ginger said. "Another long story?"

"Not the only one," Amber said. "And we'll tell them all as we have time. But I just heard a car door slam, so we're about to have more guests. Are you ready for them, Toni?"

Toni wiped away some remaining tears, and said, "I must look a mess. Let me hit the bathroom, and I'll be out in a minute."

~~~~~

The new arrivals were the Barnes clan, from my grandparents down to my cousin Angie, Carrie having left for college the same time Sandy did.

As they had all year, they paid attention to Sharon and Kyra, so Angie was the only one who interacted with the boys. She gave me a hug, but shied away from Patti and Amber, seemingly because Mimi was watching closely.

Patti's family and Mom's arrived soon after, and the party got under way. Everyone got introduced to Ginger as Henry's old friend and colleague. Maria and Ginger hit it off. After hearing about my Uncle Dave from both Toni and Maria, Ginger brushed off his eventual attempts to hit on her. Not that I blamed him for trying. Ginger in a bikini would be a traffic hazard, if she were walking down the road. Even my granddads were giving her a second look.

All of the babies got to play in the pool, assisted by one of the adults, and each enjoyed it immensely. KJ seemed to take to the water instinctively, and was almost swimming on his own, even better than he crawled.

Later in the afternoon, I came inside through the slider to grab some more drinks from the refrigerator to replenish the cooler outside, and noticed Ginger standing in the living room, looking intently at the pictures on the wall, particularly the portrait of my Dad. "Hi, Ginger," I said. "What's caught your interest?"

She turned to me, and said, "You have your father's eyes. Just like your grandfather's. And, if I'm not being crazy, so does... your son. Or are you going to deny that Gavin is actually yours and not Henry's?"

I took a deep breath, before saying, "You're not the first to see that resemblance, and reach that conclusion."

"You're not denying it?" Ginger asked.

"Would you believe me if I did? Can we talk about this later, though?" I countered. "This really isn't the right time."

"I'm not leaving until we do, Drew." With that, she turned and went back outside.

I filled a tray with the drinks I came in for, and took them out to the coolers, and warned both Mom and Henry that Ginger had guessed Gavin's true parentage. As the picnic wound down, and our families left, Ginger remained, until she was the last guest left, and we all gathered around the picnic table. The babies were all up in the nursery, a monitor on the table.

Henry kicked off the conversation with, "I hear you have questions, Ginger?"

Ginger chortled and said, "A few. Am I going to get honest answers to them?"

Henry sighed. "I don't think we could possibly move forward with anything less, do you?"

Ginger nodded, then asked, "Okay, question 1: Are you Gavin's father? You told me years ago you had a vasectomy."

Henry answered, "Biologically, I'm not. I'm the father listed on his birth certificate, though, and I emotionally consider him more than just my stepson or step-grandson."

Ginger asked, "Question 2: Are you intimate with your daughters? I had suspicions about you and Amber when we were dating, but thought I was imagining things. Now, I don't think I was."

Henry made eye contact with Amber, who nodded consent to him. "Yes, I am intimate with both of my daughters, but only once they were 18, and it was consensual. When I was dating you, I was only involved with Amber, and Sandy didn't discover us until later, and asked to be included when she turned 18."

"Question 3: Was Amber the reason you seemed hesitant to commit to me back then?"

Henry sighed, then nodded. "Amber and I had already committed to each other as husband and wife at that point, so I dated you mainly to hide that, and didn't see a way to add you to our relationship, before I learned from this group that I could love more than one person at a time. I'm sorry that I had to lie back then. I don't want to lie now, except in protection of my family."

"Question 4: Is this really two marriages, or one?"

Amber answered this, "One polyamorous family, with two legal marriages in it. Sandy's not part of it, though. Henry and Tina, and Patti and Drew were legally married last year. When Kyra proved to be Drew's daughter, and I had to admit that I was involved with both of them, Drew, Patti and I declared ourselves a polyamorous triad. Tina followed suit by declaring herself, Toni and Henry as another one, so those are the public-facing attempts to obscure the incest among the larger group. At least, we thought we hid it. What clued you in?"

"Your Dad getting a vasectomy reversed to have another baby didn't quite make sense, and Gavin's eyes are obviously inherited from the Barnes family. I already said I had suspicions about you and your Dad," Ginger responded. "Drew, you mentioned that others have reached the same conclusion?"

"My Cooper grandparents, Mom's side of my family," I answered. "They apparently suspected Mom and me before Gavin was born and the incest didn't bother them, but they said the eyes confirmed it for them, and predicted others would notice, and you did."

Ginger asked, "But not your Barnes relatives? I would think they'd pick up on it right away."

I answered, "With the exception of my two teen cousins, nobody on the Barnes side pays much attention to Gavin, because they don't think of him as their family. They treat KJ the same way. Plus, because the green eyes are common in the family, I don't think they consider them to be exceptional, so they could be overlooking Gavin having them. If they've noticed, they haven't said anything. Not even my cousins."

Ginger nodded, "Taken by themselves, Gavin's eyes are not much of a hint. But I was already thinking about family resemblances today because of Toni and her sister, so I was looking for more resemblances between your families as I got introduced to them, and noticed the green eyes in your grandfather right away, plus your cousin Angie, then went and checked your Dad's portrait and his eyes are the same, while Tina and her family don't have green eyes. Plus, I was looking for further signs of intimacy between Henry and Amber, so it all kind of clicked together that you and your Mom could be another such couple."

Henry asked, "So, where do we go from here? You now know about what this family really is. Does this change your desire to reconnect with me?"

"I don't know, Henry," Ginger replied. "I've always had this image of incest being this horrible thing that destroys families. With the exception of Toni still grieving her loss, none of you seem damaged to me in the least. In fact, I've never met a group of parents and kids that seem to get along so well. Patti, I am assuming you haven't had sex with either of your parents, because they seem too uptight by comparison. How do you deal with all of the incest going on around you?"

"Does seducing my boyfriend's mother count as incest?" Patti joked.

"One of those long stories Amber alluded to?"

"Yeah." Patti told the story of how Mom had seen Patti and me on that New Year's Eve, and how that had led to the two of them becoming intimate first, and in turn I related how that contributed to Mom and I being intimate in California, and how we then formed the initial triad a year before officially marrying Patti.

Ginger asked, "How did the Kilsons get involved?"

Patti related her role in knowing both families, having been Amber's lover in high school and how her reunion with Amber led to the joint revelations of incest, and the beginning of intimacy between the two families. Then how the marriage between Henry and Amber combined with ours after the babies were born.

Mom added, "After I wound up pregnant with Gavin, Henry married me, legally, to provide me with a solid cover story and claimed he reversed the vasectomy to anyone who asked, which hasn't been many people. The families who were here today never knew he'd even had the vasectomy in the first place. Gradually, what was a paper marriage became more and more real, until the time was right for Henry and Amber to join into the group."

Henry said, "It took me that much time to get used to the idea of being intimate with two or more people, particularly with Drew present. I went through some trauma when I was in the Army that I thought I had recovered from by the time I married Tonya, which affected my ability to be with more than one lover at a time. It really took the love of everyone here to help me get past the parts of it that earlier counseling hadn't eliminated."

"Toni, how did you wind up in this?" Ginger asked.

Toni smiled, "I accidentally discovered Drew, Patti and Tina making love together during a Barnes family trip to Galveston Beach, when the whole family was scattering part of Tom's ashes. That triggered memories of my own family's incest, which I revealed to them, and they accepted it and me fully. That weekend in Galveston also led to my breakup with Drew's uncle Dave, and I initially only planned to stay here briefly, until I could find a new place. At that point, I became intimate with the three of them. Afterwards, Drew and Patti offered to let me stay in their house next door while they finished college. At first, I resisted the idea of marrying the three of them, and dated someone new, while still being intimate with them, and later on with Henry and his girls. That boyfriend broke up with me during the Spring Break week that also featured Drew and Patti's wedding, and Patti's reunion with the Kilsons, and I realized I wanted to be part of them, that they had become my family, my home, the only ones who accepted my past."

Ginger said, "So, I'm back to my original question to you, Patti. You're apparently the only person in this marriage who has never committed incest. How do you handle being around it?"

Patti smirked a little, before saying, "Ginger, I feel that love is mainly wanting someone else's happiness more than your own, while lust is more selfishly oriented to ones own pleasure. Sex can express either or both, but we mainly focus on the love. All of us love each other enough to make it work. I don't think being family members makes expressing that love sexually into something immoral. If anything, the bonds between family actually have to be stronger, the desire unquestionable, to put up with how the public could react if they were discovered. It has to be worth that risk. So long as it's all consensual, and efforts taken to avoid procreation."

Ginger snorted. "That doesn't appear to have worked, here. Gavin exists."

Mom answered, "I'm at fault for that. I missed a dose of my birth control pills the day of Drew and Patti's wedding and ovulated. While I immediately had Drew start using condoms, his sperm was already in me from the nights before that."

Amber added, "And I had an IUD that was out of position, resulting in two babies from two fathers who both had sex with me the same day. Not what I had planned, but sometimes the universe has bigger plans for you."

Ginger asked, "So where is this other father?"

Amber replied, "Working in L.A. Kenny went to the same university I did, but in a different college, so we recognized each other from campus, but hadn't talked. After I caught the bouquet and he caught the garter at Drew and Patti's wedding, we hooked up that night and started dating on campus, without my telling him that I had sex with Drew before him, that morning in fact. I saw my relationship with Patti and Drew as part of the same secret as my relationship with my Dad, so I was using Kenny to camouflage all of it. Once I found out I was pregnant, my ovulation date made it more likely that Kenny was the father and I let Kenny assume that there was no doubt. When it turned out that it was twins, I still stayed quiet, even though the chance of Drew being a father had almost doubled, because Kenny's chances of being a Dad were almost certain, and his chance of being the father to both babies was about two thirds. When he proposed, I accepted, but kept hesitating about moving in with him or setting a date, because I was waiting to fall in love with him, and just didn't. When Kyra was born, Kenny realized she wasn't his daughter because of her Rh factor being positive, when Kenny and I are both negatives."

I jumped in, saying, "In the resulting blow up, I admitted to being Kyra's father and accidentally let slip enough information for Kenny to realize I was Gavin's father, too. When he insulted Henry for tolerating what Kenny saw as my cuckolding Henry, it led to Amber saying enough for him to guess about Amber and Henry's incest as well. We were afraid he'd report us, he was so angry. Instead, he accepted a job transfer to L.A. as much as a way to get away from the situation as because it was a good career move. He's only been back to visit K.J. once this year, so far, although he's supposed to be coming for another visit at the end of the month, and again at Christmas. He's declining to fight for custody, to keep KJ and Kyra together. My friendship with him might never recover, but he's staying quiet."

The conversation petered out, and we sat looking at each other, before Ginger sighed, saying, "I don't know if I can handle this. I thought I was accepting that Henry had two other women in his life, but instead I'm looking at four, no, five women and another man in the mix, some of whom are family relationships to him and each other."

Henry took her hand atop the table. "There isn't any requirement for you to join our marriage, if you only want to be involved with one of us, or more than one, at whatever frequency you're comfortable with. We may have to be extra careful to protect our secrets, but we do consider this an open marriage. So if you only want to resume being intimate with me, that can happen outside of the marriage." With a smirk on his face, he added, "I'm sure Drew would recover from the rejection. Eventually."

"Thanks a lot, Dad," I said, chuckling.

Henry continued, "Also keep in mind that the women here are all bisexual, so I'm not the only person who might want to make love to you. I don't even know how you feel about that."

Ginger blushed under her freckles, then said, "I've been attracted to a number of women over the years, but I've never actually had sex with any of them." She turned to Mom, and said, "Tina, you were actually one of those women, but you were married, and I didn't know you swung both ways."