The Granduncle Inheritance

Our relationship changed dramatically from then on; we were no more siblings, companions, and accomplices; something had broken inside me that day. I didn't know what or why, I only wanted to have nothing to do with Ian, I went back home and entered a stage of alternating rebellion and depression that my parents didn't understand. When my brother came back home at the request of my parents, who didn't know was wrong with me and didn't know what to do, and he asked me what was happening with me, I just told him to fuck off and never talk me again. Silly of me. I went back to college, where I had lost a semester, and my mind was made up. If he could fuck, so could I, and it was then that my short wild spree started. Everything went wrong, and I now didn't have a big brother to advise me or keep me out of trouble. It was a short spree, because when Richard, a student I knew from our hometown who was a jerk, asked me to go drinking and dancing at a place where I would see and be seen by Ian, I told him yes to annoy my brother.

That party was a nightmare. Ian was there with a couple of his friends and girls, and his expression went sour when he saw me with Richard, and he didn't remove his eyes off me all night. I acted very crazy, and the more he looked at me, the crazier my behavior became. Not being accustomed to hard drinking, I was completely drunk by midnight, making a spectacle of myself to the screaming and cheering of the place crowded with students. My brother had left the place before midnight, so he didn't see me at my worst; but I'm sure the people he was there with and who didn't leave with him had to tell him everything with plenty of details.

My head was throbbing like mad, and my headache was so painful that it could be registered in the Guinness Book of Records the next morning. It was the same the next Saturday, only this time my brother got up and left the premises as soon as I got in the club. It was a rowdy night again and I was considered a slut by the end of the month.

I lost my virginity to Richard, and as luck would have it, my period went missing after only three copulations. That sobered me up in a hurry, and I knew I was in deep shit when my period didn't arrive for the second month in a row. I was so afraid of what Ian would do, tell, or think of me, that I didn't even think of asking him to help or to advise me. I didn't and our lives were tattered.

I went home and confessed to my parents what their stupid daughter had done with her life. My father went to talk with Richard's parents and explained the hard facts of their son's and his daughter's life in college to them. Richard's parents went to talk to him and asked him to get married and give a name to their grandson. Richard adamantly refused to throw his life away—his own words—for a stupid girl who didn't even know how to take care precautions not to get pregnant with a brat. It wasn't his problem, he said; he wasn't in love, wouldn't marry me, and that was all.

My father didn't agree with Richard; he was old school and he had always thought that if you put your dick in any woman's pussy and she becomes pregnant, that it's your obligation to take care of the mother and child. So he took his twelve gauge two barreled shotgun, put it in his truck, went to the town where the college is, waited for him, and convinced him to marry me or else, one late evening. We married and I wished I had remained a single mother after a few months.

C---The gap between siblings widens

Ellen, my husband's sister and double sister-in-law is one year younger than me, so I have known her well since before school. She had had always a streak of envy towards me. Everyone knew her as we grew up together in a small town before and after we left for college. Well, everyone knew everyone else in town. Ellen worked at the ice cream shop in town after class and during summers. It was one of those old-time family-run establishments, and in her case, served her parents as a way to keep her lazy self-occupied.

I always thought she hated me because my big brother was always there for me, while hers didn't give a damn what happened to her. It had always been like that. She was a quiet enough, cute girl, if you like insipid blondes with insipid faces; those kinds of faces that don't say anything to you when you see them. She later became colorful and showy, without being beautiful when she was growing up through her teens and afterward; the kind of woman most men like to marry. I didn't think my brother would be one of them, and knowing what I know now, I see that I was right and he was wrong.

With my reckless behavior in college and my foul ways with my brother, I ruined not only my life, but his also. I got pregnant and it was only my ego that was bruised at first, and my whole body was bruised after a few months into my marriage. My soul sank when he, my brother, married the little tramp. I just couldn't forgive him his betrayal but then, betrayal to whom? I was his sister, married to his brother-in-law, whom was he betraying by marrying Ellen? I thought it was my hormones taking possession of my mind and driving me insane at that moment.

As I said, after my brother graduated, got a job with a big agribusiness, and immediately married the big slut, the vixen, the bitch, and went west to work, she went with him of course, not to work as she was the lazy one, but to live off and ruin him. How do I know most of this if we hardly talked to each other; by hearing my parents talk about it, or directly asking my mother about my brother's life.

Now that I think things through the passing of time, I never even loved my husband; I mean I was never 'in love' with him. He was only an accomplice on my short wild days at first, and that was because I knew him from our hometown since we were kids. I had never suspected him to have such a nasty, violent, unpleasant, and dangerous nature.

I always knew something was missing in our lives, Ian's and mine. We were both married, we both have children, and no matter how rough the times at our homes were, we never discussed divorce, not with each other, of course, as we were on just civilized speaking terms, but also not with our respective spouses, or even in a whispered comment to our parents.

Now that I know we never were 'in love' with our spouses, worst of all, we apparently never ever loved them, not even as a friend. We not in love and I force myself to ask the question 'why did we continue to be married for so many years?' I know my own answer; I was afraid, deadly afraid of my husband, but Ian? What made him live with a woman who only wanted his money and all that that money brings, and foremost, make his life as miserable as she could.

I had seen her doing that to Ian in front of the whole family; I can't even say her given name, that shrew, that harpy woman who always had something to complain about, making her own son blush with shame at family gatherings. My brother always looked at her with grief and disregard at those times, and I had seen her own son tell her to shut the fuck up and take his father by the shoulders and take him out of his mother's whining presence. I felt embarrassed when seeing and hearing how that mare, that whore, that shameless hussy, disparaged my brother during those times.

We didn't know it at the time, but things were on their way to getting resolved; not from one day to the next, but they would be resolved, and the solution was to come from the old country, one of our ancestor's countries. It had been a long time since the whole family was reunited, but it was a special occasion; a lawyer had come to our parents' home with a request from a Scottish solicitor. This is the beginning of our new story.

##########

All my parents' offspring, their respective spouses, small and adult children, were coming to our parents' home during Thanksgiving week. Before dinner one night, my father asked us to gather in the dining room. Once there, he told us he had received a call from a lawyer who had received a letter from a solicitor in Scotland, the old country.

In the letter, father said, the Scottish lawyer made a request on behalf of his sick and with little time to live client, one Sean McIllroy, that some family from America, the only one he has, go to his town and distribute his belongings according to he law and the terms of his last will, as soon as possible. Mr. McIllroy was ninety four years old, so time was short.

Father broke the silence, "OK, boys and girls, what do you say, what do we do?"

We suddenly started talking all at once, and instead of having a civilized conversation, there was a cacophony of noises where no one understood anything that the others were saying or trying to say. I swiftly looked over to where Ian stood, separated from the rest of us with a drink in his hand and a sardonic look on his eyes.

"Boys, girls; please speak one at a time, so that we know where everyone stands on this matter," Father said, trying to put some semblance of order in the discussion.

My husband, Richard, was the first to talk, "First of all, who's the old fellow; I mean I know he's family, but I have never heard of him before."

"OK, Mom, you tell them, he's family on your side," said my father.

"Well, he's the son of my mother's cousin. My grandparents and my parents kept contact with their family in the old country for a while, but then, with things being what they are, they all lost touch."

"Well, that's enough for me; we're not interested in going to some God forsaken place." Richard was as delicate as ever, meaning he was as gross as ever.

The other boys, my younger siblings, the twins, wouldn't go to a long trip alone and they wouldn't go without their families; so they decided then and there for them to put an end to the issue.

I asked Mother and Father what would they do, and they answered not only me, but all of us, that they wouldn't go, not because they hadn't the money or the desire. Simply put, they wouldn't go because mother's arthritis had flared up recently and he wouldn't leave her home alone.

Father, then looking around, said, "Well that fixes things, I'll let know the lawyer we're not interested so he..."

Then the bomb exploded. Ian, without separating from the wall where he was leaning against and listening to the conversation in which had not intervened until then, suddenly softly said, "I'll go to Scotland."

"What, are you insane?" shrieked the good for nothing hussy that was his wife.

"Nope"

"What about me, your son, YOUR WORK?" she was still shrieking.

"Well, I have some vacation time due me, at least a couple months, in regard to my work. About my son...what do you say, Son, could you be without your father a couple weeks?"

"Yeah sure, Dad, go and enjoy yourself. You need it and don't worry about me. I'm not a baby; I'm nineteen." I looked my quiet nephew with new respect.

Ian then turned to his wife and said, "As for you, you do as you have been doing for the last twenty years, whatever you want, and spending the money I earn. If that's not enough for you, you can get a job, get to work, and earn your money."

Addressing Father, "Please call the lawyer tomorrow and tell him I'll leave on the first flight to London," now if you all will excuse me...

With that, Ian left his glass on the table and exited the familiar dining room and the house. His footsteps were lost in the silence of the night.

A blanket of silence fell over the house which was broken by the rude laughter of my husband to his sister, "Ha, ha, ha, ha, huah, huah, huah, that's for you, your spineless husband, ha, ha, ha." And while he laughed at his sister, tears of laughter were falling from his eyes.

That's when I spoke, "Father, would you tell the lawyer hat there will be two of us going to Scotland."

D---The trip

The trip began with in ominous silence. Seated in the plane one next to each other, I hardly spoke to my brother at first; I was as angry with him as I had been for the last twenty one years, and the worst thing is that I shouldn't be. I was thinking about what he had done to me to make me angry? Nothing, then why was I so pissed at him all these years, if the first name to come to my head when the twins were born and one of them was a boy, was to name him Ian.

He was morose, glum, and uncommunicative, as if traveling with me and sharing something of our lives, even a trip, was distasteful to him; I had asked for the window seat, and he said no when the stewardess offered him a drink after takeoff, took a magazine that he had bought at an airport newsstand from his bag and acted as if he was reading for several minutes, then closed the magazine, leaned the seat back, closed his eyes, and made believe he was sleeping.

I wanted to cry in mourning as I looked to the sky outside through the plane's small window; here we were, what you should be considered as two mature people, and siblings above everything else no less, barely speaking to the other and both hurting inside. I was, and am sure he was hurting, because I was hurting too, and because I could see the hurt in him, in the expression on his face, and in his eyes the few times we got together in our parents' home. The reflection of his suffering soul was in the back of his eyes. How could have we reached this point? I fleetingly looked at him by my side, his elbow touching mine in the cramped space, and I intuitively knew that he wasn't sleeping; his eyelids didn't have the rest a really sleeping person has; they had the subtle flickering of someone pretending to sleep, and the muscles of his jaw were clenching and unclenching at the same time. As much I love him, I knew in that instant that it has to be me who broke the ice if we're going to bond again after so many years.

I know it is always we women who try to mend things with our men; even the best of them can't budge. It's a macho thing with them not to ask for forgiveness, admit they were wrong, or say 'excuse me'; they only relent when they're in need of sex, and need their wife or girlfriend to relieve them of blue balls. That's when they are nice and good men. Beware of them, women, when they are the other way.

Ian, besides being a good person, unhappy maybe, but a good person, is also my big brother, so it all boils down to a case of hardheaded stubbornness in our case. I got the idea to approach him with this when dinnertime came. The transatlantic flight was over the ocean, when the stewardesses went from row to row offering drinks and asking for food preferences around 10 PM, and Ian made it look like he was waking up. I couldn't resist the temptation to molest him a little, in a kind way, of course, and said to him, "Oh, big brother, how lucky that you're awake; would you let me pass so I could go to the toilet and empty my bursting bladder?"

Oh my God, as a kid with the hand in the proverbial cookie jar, his face suddenly went a deep red and his behavior showed different emotions. He rapidly stood up against the backrest and murmured something I didn't understand, but it was something about being sorry, you could have awakened me, not wait, blah, blah, blah. I put my back toward him, and making as if I was stuck passing by his front, made my bottom rub against his pubis. If he was red before, he was now a red purple when I threw a look at him after I was in the aisle. My heart was pounding madly.

When I came back to my row, Ian stood up and quickly stepped into the aisle to let me pass and take my seat. I couldn't stop smiling, and when I entered between the seats, I turned and softly said, 'Thank you, big brother'.

That's when the steward came to our row and asked what we wanted. Ian, who knows my likes, ordered for the both of us as if we were an old couple together. He turned to me when the steward left and, red as a tomato again, said, "Sorry, Sis, I had no right to ask..."

My eyes were full of tears and I told him, "That's alright, big brother, you have all the rights with me."

He looked at my face strangely, and I thought 'where did that come from?'. I had never said the likes of this, not even to my husband of more than twenty years.

When the stewardess brought the tray with the food on it, we started to eat in silence, locked up in our own thoughts; I was thinking that this was the perfect opportunity to get our rapport back; we were alone and together for the first time in what, eons? We were getting ourselves out, at least for the moment, from our everyday lives, from bed companions that were only that, didn't even make love with, and who we didn't want to live with anymore, so why not take the opportunity by the nose and at least become the siblings that we were during our early years.

We ate in complete silence, both absorbed in our own thoughts. When the stewardess took the used trays and asked us if we needed anything else, we answered in unison, "No, thank you."

Then she commented, "Just let us now if you or your wife need anything. We're at your disposal. Good night."

We looked at each other, our eyes telling the other things the mouths wouldn't let out, and when the cabin lights went out and only the reading lights were dimly shining, darkness became almost total as I took my brother's hand in mine and touched his fingers with mine for the first time in years. His body stiffened at first, then relaxed with a sigh at the same time he squeezed my hand with his.

I gave a sigh and leaned my head on his shoulder, softly asking, "May I, Husband."

He squeezed harder my hand in his and I felt something wet on my forehead, and when I touched it with my right hand, it felt like a river was falling on me. My hand then went up, and I could feel tears all over his cheeks as I touched his face. He was silently crying like a baby.

Here we were, two mature people, well advanced in our forties and crying together like the two lost souls that we were in some way, who had met up again. We overcame our emotional display after a few minutes and dried each other's tears.

"You know I had always loved you, don't you, big brother?" I very quietly said.

"Did you?" he teased me under his breath.

"You know I did; you know I do." It was a whisper this time.

"Then why we didn't even speak to the other for ages; why were you always so angry with me?" His voice was soft.

"I don't know; I was young, stupid, and inexperienced; didn't know even how to wash my panties or clean my nose, metaphorically speaking, of course, then my own issues at home... I'm so sorry, Ian."

"That's OK now; we're together again, at least for a while," he whispered so softly that I almost didn't hear him.

"What I couldn't understand all these years was why you had to marry Richard; I know, I know, he knocked you up, and Dad used his persuasive methods, but you had lots of good fellows to choose from, even going wild, why that jerk?"

He didn't know how that question made me feel. I felt so cheap and hurt, and I couldn't tell him that it was because of him, could I? But I wanted retribution; his words were salt in my wounds, my shattered ego, as well as other parts of my body, claiming vengeance; I couldn't keep quiet and let the wounds heal. It seemed as if I had learned nothing in the last twenty years.

"Yeah, I married a jerk, and you don't know half of it, but you quickly went and married his good for nothing of a sister." I was seething, my jealousy evident, but not to him.

"I married your husband's sister because..."

"Your wife, you mean," I said, with sarcasm.

"Please, don't fight with me again," he said, with a tired voice, he looked 60 not 45. "No, I mean your husband's sister, and if I could she wouldn't even be my ex-wife in the future."

"Don't talk nonsense, you aren't even divorced." I was uncontrollably happy.