An Unusual Relationship Ch. 01

I think she was probably the most beautiful bride ever.

Of course, some might say I was biased.

I was in the narthex, waiting, when the door to the bride's room opened and there she was. Her mother, Virginia, was just behind her, also exquisitely dressed, but allowing Jessica to be the center of attention even before she entered the church and walked between the pews to her waiting groom. Several of those observing obviously had the same opinion as I did, an observation elicited from their combined "Ohhh's" of appreciation at the beautiful and sexy apparition that she was.

She'd chosen a somewhat traditional wedding dress; white lace trimmed her bodice, attached to a collar around her neck, leaving her neck and the tops of her breasts visible through the open weave as there was nothing on her shoulders. The silky body of the dress dropped down in back, leaving her back bare, but hugged her body to the waist in front where the skirt opened up, the train being held up by her five-year-old cousin. Jessica looked up at me and I smiled.

"Are you ready?" I mouthed to her, not needing to say it out loud. Her nod told me she'd understood. I winked and turned, putting my arm out for her to take, her mother stepping up to her other side, taking her other arm. We stepped to the door, and stopped as the music transitioned to the wedding march that has been heard so often. As one, the entire room stood and turned to watch the three of us enter the church.

"Dearly beloved..." the minister started as they always do, finally breaking to the presentation of the bride and groom after droning on for several unnecessary minutes as ministers are also want to do, until they reached the part about "who presents this woman..."

"Her mother and I do," I answered as we'd rehearsed. She smiled and winked at me before turning to her mother who smiled and leaned in and kissed her on the cheek before turning and stepping over to the pew.

"And who presents this man..." the minister intoned next.

"I do, his father," I replied. And so it was that I presented both the bride and groom at my son's wedding. My mind couldn't help but drift naughty at the sexy sight of my about to be daughter-in-law and wondered if any other about to be father-in-law had ever had their future daughter-in-law suck their cock.

Jessica's family moved in beside us about a year after we bought our house. Her dad, Jerry, worked for the military and spent a lot of time on the road, always with the inability to tell his family where he was going and often unable to predict when he'd be back. When he didn't come back, one thing they got was a very large life insurance policy and the ability for Jessica to attend any public university on the governments expense. They'd been able to buy the house originally when they were gifted a huge down payment for the house from his parents, and then the insurance paid for the remainder of the house, with quite a bit left over. But, as Virginia was still working, they weren't hurting by any means.

Jessica was four when our families met. My son David was five years older than her at 9, and my wife Marilyn was my age. Virginia, Jessica's mother, was twenty-six, five years younger than my wife and me. My wife, Marilyn, and Virginia hit it off, almost immediately becoming best of friends, for a few years at least.

I later found out that Jessica had not been Virginia and Jerry's first child. Four years before they had her, just after they'd gotten married, Virginia miscarried. It didn't take a whole lot of math to calculate back and realize that Jerry and Virginia had been high school lovers, and that first pregnancy had most likely been an instigator for their early marriage. It wasn't a question I ever asked; that Virginia and Jerry loved each other seemed quite apparent from their public interactions.

The first time I saw Virginia was standing outside their new house watching things being unloaded by workers from the moving van. Slightly shorter than my wife, at 26, she was still the epitome of the "girl-next-door" attractive. Wearing shorts and a halter top on that hot summer day, I'd noticed virtually every mover looking sideways at her at least once. Can't say that my eyes didn't catch and follow her a time or two either. And, in one instance, I found her looking at me, sizing me up, appraising me. Just that once, but just in meeting her eyes, there had been this flash that, somehow, I'd passed her appraisal. She had certainly passed mine. I never thought about what that meant, just that I had noticed it.

Virginia and Jerry's house had a swimming pool and, unusually, we had a gate through the fence from our yard to theirs. The gate had been there before we moved in, and we hadn't been all "that" friendly with the family that had lived there before them and had seldom used it, although it had never been locked; it was just there. I surmised that the previous homeowners who had installed the gate had been friends and it was not uncommon for them to use the pool -- as essentially from then on, that's what we did also.

Jessica was 7 when her dad died, and it was also the month of the beginning of the end for my wife Marilyn. We'd decided to stop with a single child, so I had a vasectomy after David was born. The first inclination that something was wrong was that Marilyn's period became out of whack. Her "like clockwork" monthly period gained a day or two, or lost a day or two, so she began to vary from nearly three to nearly 5 weeks. She didn't admit to thinking anything of it until later.

The clue that made her go see the doctor was when we were making love. She was on her hands and knees while I entered her from behind, doggy style, facing the closet door mirror where we could both see her breasts swinging free, one of both of ours favorite positions. When I bottomed out, she said "OW!", something that had never happened before. When I asked what happened, she just said not to go so deep, it had hurt for some reason. We changed up a bit later, she climbed on me in a cowgirl, another favorite position, and this time when she bottomed out, she winced again. I asked what was wrong, and she said she didn't know, but perhaps she should make a doctor's appointment.

The uterine cancer that she was diagnosed with was quite aggressive, and required a hysterectomy and chemotherapy. The doctors were fairly sure that they'd caught and arrested it, but despite several interim checkups, just a year later when she developed a nagging cough, x-rays showed it had metastasized throughout her body. The end was quite rapid after that. Suddenly I was a widower, and a single parent, just a year or so after Virginia had become a widow.

When Jerry was away, and again after he disappeared, whenever Virginia needed some help, Marilyn made sure that I was volunteered. As a rug rat, Jessica had always called me "Mr. Danny" but with our families doing everything together, I went from being "Mister Danny" to "Uncle Danny" and became the father figure to her for most of her growing up years.

My son David was virtually always out of the picture for Jessica. Being 5 years older, he was in high school before she left elementary; he was in college before she entered high school, and he was in grad school, out of state and out of the home, when she entered college. They never seemed to have any relationship at all through their teen years except to know that the other existed.

Being a father figure to Jessica, and having had no sisters myself, nor a daughter of my own, I wasn't always quite sure of how to act with a young girl. When we ate together and settled in after dinner, she would often crawl up in my lap. I never failed to cuddle her as a daughter; she truly felt like my own.

When she was really little, Jessica was often out and running around the back yard and swimming naked. I knew that bathing suits weren't necessarily "required" by her mother in their pool unless others were around. My wife Marilyn often went over, swimming naked with the two of them. If I came home and she wasn't there and could hear swimming going on next door, I had a standing order to not come over unless I called and she gave the all clear as they would all be swimming naked. I always teased that I wouldn't mind that, but her retort of "over my dead body," always elicited a laugh from both of us.

When it was just Jess and her mother, I was pretty sure neither wore suits in their otherwise private backyard, and although I heard them swimming in the evenings, I never went over. One afternoon when Jessica was probably 8 or 9, my wife Marilyn had gone over to swim with them while I was away, knowing that I was going to come join them as soon as I returned. When I went over to join them and go swimming Jessica was naked in the pool. Her mother called her out and told her to go put on her swimsuit, reminding her that when Uncle Danny, or David, or any other males, were over she needed to not swim naked, and from that time on whenever we were invited over, she did. But on the other hand, we always had an open invitation, and if we came over and she was already in the pool, Jessica wasn't always quick about needing to get out and go put a swimsuit on. Many was the time I could tell Virginia was reminding her that she needed to go put a suit on, only to hear a "That's stupid. You didn't make me wear a dumb swimsuit when Daddy was around," or similar, in return. Despite her arguments, and her mother's response that "Uncle Danny isn't your father," she always reluctantly did as she was told.

With our families doing so much together, there didn't seem to be many secrets between us. Virginia believed in honesty, and Jessica never learned anything but the truth about anything, including sex. Apparently at one time, before her father disappeared, Jessica woke and found her parents naked and getting amorous in the living room, and asked how come her daddy's penis was so big. The birds and the bees were explained, at least a little to begin at that time, and curiosity was dissolved, at least for that moment. I never really heard that entire story.

We were all heartbroken when we lost Jerry. Although he'd often been gone before for weeks and sometimes months at a time, there was always that knowledge that it was only a temporary away, and he was coming back -- until he didn't. But with Marilyn being diagnosed with the "Big C" at almost the same time, I didn't have much time for sympathizing with a heartbroken little girl, or her heartbroken mother, absorbed with our own problems as we were.

I don't know when it was, somewhere about a year after Marilyn's first diagnosis, after we thought she'd been 'cured' and before her cough developed when Marilyn and I were just talking and I wondered aloud if Virginia was seeing someone, or when she might start dating again. "You don't know?" Her question caught me by surprise.

"Know what?" I responded, befuddled.

"About Virginia?"

"What about Virginia?" I responded, totally lost on the line of the discussion.

"I guess you wouldn't."

"Wouldn't know what?" I said, a bit frustrated about what she was hinting that I should know, but obviously didn't.

"Virginia... uhm, she's not really all that interested in men?"

"What?" I spewed out, suddenly several things clicking that I'd seen, but never had a need to know about. Virginia's good friend, Christine, a gorgeous brunette who seemed to be a friend of both Virginia and Jerry had seemingly been over every weekend as long as we'd known them, and had continued to be there virtually every weekend since Jerry passed. I just knew that Virginia had said it was her old friend, from way, way, back and had never questioned anything else about her. "You mean she's lesbian?"

Marilyn shrugged her shoulders. "Bi, I guess, but more interested in women."

"But she was married!"

"It happens. She and Jerry dated, although he knew she'd dated women before too. When she got pregnant, they decided to get married anyway, although she and Christine have been together even longer."

"When she came to visit..." I said aloud, sort of running through my mind what she was telling me.

"Jerry slept in the guest room."

"Oh my God! But she and Jerry had sex?"

"Of course."

"And Virginia and Christine?"

"Yes."

"So, they were a threesome?"

"No, Christine and Jerry didn't have sex, Christine's not interested in men."

I thought about it for a few moments, "So then why'd they get married?" Again, she shrugged her shoulders.

"You'd have to ask her. Certainly, it was more convenient, and it gave a stable home for Jessica. She said she loved Jerry, but apparently they weren't an exclusive relationship."

Marilyn's cough developed shortly after that, and despite the best efforts, when the doctors finally told us it was only a month or two more at the most, we weren't surprised. We weren't ready, I don't think we can ever be ready for a premature death, but we weren't surprised.

Jessica was 10 when Marilyn passed.

Virginia had Jessica all the time, and Christine lived with them every weekend as her job and home were just too far away to easily commute back and forth daily and it was much more convenient to let Jessica stay in her own home and bedroom. During the week, Jessie and Virginia were alone.

And, I became a widower, alone and by myself all the time.

Perhaps I should take you back even further. Multiple years earlier to be precise.

The wail of my 6-month pregnant wife, Marilyn, from the bathroom, of "Danny!" awoke me from a sound sleep. I remember seeing the clock, 2:01 am, now frozen forever in my memory, knowing immediately that something critical was wrong. Leaping out of bed, I hit the floor and was in the bathroom with her instantly, my "What's wrong?" and pounding heart mixed with adrenaline gradually putting sense to the world.

"I think I just miscarried," she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. Glancing into the toilet a large mass of red "something" was visible, later identified as part of her placenta. Something had started happening a week earlier, resulting in a week-long hospital stay. Just today, 14 hours earlier, she'd been discharged to home, with instructions that she was staying in bed for the duration of the pregnancy. That the pregnancy was only going to last another 14 hours and 35 minutes, no one knew at the time.

It was normally about a 25-minute drive to the hospital from our house. For me, there were no stop lights, only "slow and look -- and go" lights. I ran every red light for miles; at 2:15 am seldom even seeing another car on the road. Traveling at two and three times the posted speed limit, I did it in 15. The doctor had called ahead after I'd woken him at 2:03 and the hospital staff were outside waiting for us at the ER door with gurney ready when I flew into the hospital entrance. By the time I parked the car and got inside, it was 2:33. They immediately directed me to the OR, and by the time I got there, I found I already had a newborn son. Officially born via an emergency C-section at 2:25, 24 minutes after I'd been awoken by Marilyn's scream for help.

3 months premature, David weighed just 769 grams or 1 and a half pounds in American measures. He would later be named Sean David, after his grandfathers, however we hadn't yet even discussed a possible name for him (or her as we hadn't yet known whether David was a boy or girl) as he was three months early. Later, trying to judge his size, I stretched my hands out side by side, pinkie to pinkie, thumbs out -- and the span from my thumb tip to thumb tip was greater than my son's overall length. Looking at him in the incubator, I realized that I could see light through his limbs, a faint shadow where a cartilaginous bone was developing. His skin, what there was of it, was so thin that I could see through it.

"Come with me, I've got to go down to the pharmacy," the NICU doctor had said, perhaps an hour and a half later, after they had him stabilized. "We've got a pretty sick kid, there" he said in the elevator, thankfully indicating with his words that we were a team. Later I realized there was really no reason for him to go to the pharmacy; he had nurses and other helpers who could do that, nor was there a reason for me to go with him -- except that this was his way of getting me away from the crowd attending to my wife and son. "It's much too early to tell what he will be like, or even if he'll live. Typically, in preemie cases as early as this, we may see blindness, brain damage, physical abnormalities, and that's just to start. Later on, as he gets older, abnormalities may show up that we can't see yet such as being sterile, but it's just too early to say. Luckily with your wife having problems earlier this week we were able to provide some surfactants to help him develop, particularly his lungs, and hopefully they'll give him a good chance. Right now, we're looking at maybe an 80/20 chance."

80% chance of him making it? Sounded pretty good to me.

Three months later as we were taking him home, on his expected due date, the NICU nurses clarified when I reiterated to them what the doc had told me, that it was a 20% chance of living at all -- let alone being "normal". He'd been put in the 80% "won't make it" category. One of the nurses told me: "You know, we see them all in here. We know, from the outset, which ones will live, and which ones will die and what you have is truly a miracle baby. We know, and Sean was definitely in the won't make it category."

Sometimes 20% is enough. The day we took him home he weighed in at a miniscule 2.5 kilograms; 5 and a half pounds.

Although he had some physical problems, which were mostly minor or easy to deal with, mentally David was totally the opposite of expectations. While preemies often are behind their peers cognitively, by the time he was in 6th grade David was routed to a "gifted" program. He graduated High School early at 16 and received his Master's just 8 years later.

With David's physical problems we knew he would never be a sports star, but gave him every opportunity to play childhood sports. It rapidly became obvious that he couldn't exert himself like "normal" kids, it wasn't long of not excelling at anything physical before his interests morphed into academic pursuits. Still, Chess Club, Debate Society, Advanced Physics and Mathematics camps and clinics and other academic pursuits took just as much time as did sports activities.

At first without Marilyn, and David not yet driving, life for me became the life of a teenager's chauffeur service. Once David went away to college, I found myself being alone most weekends, and many weekdays found Virginia and me spending a lot more time together. She'd call me and ask if I had dinner plans; "Spaghetti at 7;" or I'd call her with an "I'm making burgers and brats; you and Jessica (and Chris if it was a weekend) up for it?" It was much easier to cook for three or four or five than it was one -- and it wasn't long before we were planning dinners ahead of time.

Once Marilyn told me about Virg and Christine's relationship, I saw things that I had seen, but not paid any attention to before. Small touches and pats of lovers; Chris caressing or patting Virg's bottom; Virg affectionately caressing Chris's arm. Christine momentarily standing behind Virginia with her arms around her, or vice versa. I never saw it, but also knew that when I put my arms around my wife and pulled her to me, my hands naturally went to her breasts and often wondered if Chris and Virg did the same. What I saw wasn't much, just the comfort of lovers rather than acquaintances -- nothing more than I had ever done with Marilyn.

It wasn't long after my wife's passing that I walked in on Virginia and Christine and Jessica all swimming naked. If I had thought about it, I would have realized that if Virg and Jessie were swimming naked, that Christine probably was too -- but I just hadn't thought about it. It was a weekend that David had a chess tournament out of town, and although I'd gone along to begin with, their coach had multiple parent chaperones along, with lots of seats to come back, and I spent just one day before deciding to come home early. I loved my son, but watching a Chess Tournament, to me, was slightly akin to watching paint dry. When one of the other parents said she needed to come back for some reason, I asked if she minded a hitch hiker -- and so I arrived just before midnight. That late, I just went in and went to bed, and Virg never knew I was home.