Brashey Family Story Ch. 01

NOTE: This starts slow...

MOTHER DAUGHTER CHAT

"Shake it, baby!" came the catcall from the construction worker, having their lunch in a local outdoor café. Whistles and other comments came as well, and Sarah glared at them for a moment before turning to continue regally on her way, a grin playing at the corners of her mouth. She didn't really mind the catcalls, heck, at 47 it was kind of nice to get catcalls from guys in their 20s. In contrast to her pretend outrage, she put a little more swing in her step as she walked.

Sarah was by no means unused to admiring glances and the occasional crude comment, she worked out regularly at the local health club, and nature had been kind to her when the genes for looks were passed out. She stood 5'10" in her bare feet, with blonde (well, blonde and some gray, but thanks to Ms. Clairol she might as well have been all blonde) hair that she wore down past her shoulders, and a figure that she knew how dress to show of without looking slutty. Just then she was dressed in a maroon skirt that stopped just above the knee, snug but demure white blouse, dark hose and heels, with her makeup and jewelry all just so.

She glanced down at herself as she returned to her office from lunch, and sighed. Her figure was good, but she did wish her boobs didn't droop quite as much as they did. Oh, she was repeatedly told by her boyfriends that they were fine, but she just weren't as perky as they had been when she was twenty, and that was just a fact that her mirror refused to compromise about. Maybe they looked OK for having nursed three kids, but she still couldn't help wishing they stood out as proud as they had in her teens.

Returning to her desk in private office, the 45 year old stock broker sat down to review her work for the afternoon. She was just getting into the latest information about the ongoing bear market when the phone rang, and she picked it up and idly said, most of her attention on her work, "Hello, Sarah Brashey speaking, may I help you?"

Then her face lit up as she heard a familiar voice saying, "Hi, Mom, it's Leanne!"

"Honey!" Sarah exclaimed, putting down her paper work to give all her attention to her oldest daughter. "It's so good to hear your voice! Where are you? Are in town? I thought you were with your husband in Miami!"

"I was, Mom," Leanne replied, her sunny grin somehow coming through the land line. "But plans changed at the last minute, so I was kind of left at loose ends. I don't really want to go back to Peoria yet, and I was wondering if you'd be interested in letting your poor, lonely little girl stay with you for a few days."

"Oh shut up, you!" Sarah laughed. "You know I'm always eager to see you! Where are you right now?"

"Actually, Mom, I'm kinda in the lobby of your building. I was sorta hoping you'd say that, so I came by as soon as I got into town and-

"I'm coming down, stay where are, girl!"

Five minutes later, Sarah entered the ground-floor lobby of the 23 story office building where her business rented space, and looked around eagerly for her eldest. After a moment she spotted Leanne, standing over by the plate-glass front still holding her cell phone and looking out at the street. Sarah's heart swelled, she hadn't seen Leanne in person in over a year, and her daughter was a feast for a mother's eager eyes.

"Lee!" Sarah called, and the younger woman turned and saw her and a moment later the two blondes were hugging each other tightly, Leanne's head on her mother's shoulder and Sarah almost rocking her grown daughter in her delight at seeing her again. "It's been so long, Baby! So long!"

"I know, Mommy," the 31 year old said. "Not since the reunion last February. And wasn't that fun!"

Sarah sighed as she stepped back, though her memories of that fiasco were not much different than those of her daughter. "Do you have your bags with you, Lee?"

"Yeah, Mom," she said, gesturing at the single suitcase. "Such as they are!"

"Good," Sarah replied. "I'll call us a taxi, and we'll get you over to my place."

"But it's only 2 in the afternoon, Mom," Leanne protested as Sarah went outside to wave down transportation. "Don't you have work to do?"

"RHIP." Sarah said, spelling out the letters, as a taxi pulled up.

"Huh?" Leanne replied, as she and her mother led her out the door with the single suitcase. "What's that mean?"

"Rank Hath Its Privileges," Sarah grinned. "My company, I own it, I can come and go as I please! Which means I can take you home and get you settled in right now if I want."

"Must be nice," Leanne grinned at her mother. Leanne was not as tall as Sarah at 5'8", though she was otherwise built much like her in a younger version. Dressed in snug blue jeans, a tight sleeveless top, and flip-flops, Leanne was a casual contrast to her mother's elegance. Neither woman paid the slightest attention to the interested male glances as they walked out to the cab, their blood relationship was obvious at a glance, and both women were beauties.

"It is," Sarah agreed, as the taxi started off toward her home. She leaned back, turned her head to look at her daughter, and grinned again, letting her eyes drink in Leanne's simple presence. Sarah loved her three children, and she saw them all too seldom anymore, even her youngest son. When she with one of them with her she tended to want to just revel in the fact that they were there.

Even when she knew perfectly well that something was wrong, which was definitely the case now.

Mother and daughter chatted about nothing throughout most of the trip home, but Sarah's attention, and her maternal instincts, were focused on little else but her daughter's face, tone of voice, and body language. She hadn't raised three kids without learning how to read them, and she could tell that under her daughter's forced cheer, something was very wrong. She saw it in the slight tension in her daughter's body, in the way she couldn't quite bring herself to relax. She heard in her voice, a hint of nervousness. She could practically feel it in the air.

If I didn't know better, Sarah thought to herself in a maternal worry, I'd say she's about to break down crying!

They arrived at Sarah's house, and it suddenly hit the older woman with a certain amount of dismay that this was the first time any of her kids had actually seen it! She'd lived there since shortly after the divorce, and none of her kids had ever actually visited it, though a standing invitation was open to them all. Between Leanne and Amy's own lives, and her son's military assignments, they just hadn't been there. She'd visited both her daughters' homes, but the last few times she'd seen Kyle had been either at his father's apartment or some other relative's place. It wasn't any specific reason her kids hadn't been there until now...just life working out that way.

It still left Sarah feeling as if she might cry herself for a moment, but she shook it off as her daughter got out of the taxi.

"Wow!" she said softly, "Mom, this isn't a house, it's a mansion!"

That was exaggerating things, Sarah thought, but it was a nice place. Two stories, a large wrap-around front porch with ceiling fans, a high fence on three sides for privacy around a huge yard with trees, and the open side of the yard facing a lake. They were about fifteen minutes outside the city...and it was quiet and peaceful enough that they could have been in another country.

"Not quite a mansion, dear," she laughed. "Just the fruits of my hard work, I like to tell myself. But no, it's not a mansion. Mansions have servants, but this place just has you and me! So let me get you bag, Madam!" Sarah added with a teasing laugh as she picked up the suitcase.

"No, Mom, let me carry that, please-"

"Nothing doing," Sarah said. "I'm not feeble yet...and this thing barely weighs anything! What do you have in here, just a change of underwear?"

"Well...actually that's about all I do have in there, Mom," Leanne admitted as mother and daughter stepped through the front door into the expansive and well-appointed living room. "A second pair of jeans, a clean shirt, two pairs of socks, and two panties. And that's all I have left."

Suddenly the chipper, cheery expression was gone, and there were tears running down her face as she said, "Mom, Gary and I are over!"

Then Leanne broke down sobbing and Sarah hugged her close, rocking her in her arms and whispering in her ear, "Oh, Honey, I'm so sorry, so sorry."

"It's his fault, not mine!" Leanne sobbed, "he's the one who's a bastard, he's the one who cheated on me, how come I feel like it's all my fault?!"

"I know, Baby," Leanne sighed. "It's not something you can think through, your heart feels what it feels, believe me I know."

An hour later, Sarah and Leanne were sitting at Sarah's little kitchen table, sitting hot coffee, and Leanne was haltingly explaining what had happened to her mother. She wasn't crying now, she'd cried herself out earlier, and now she sat, red-eyed, holding the coffee mug in her hands as she spoke. Sarah sat around the corner from her, facing her, wishing Leanne were still a 5 year old with a scraped knee that she could easily fix for her. She knew all too well, from her own acrimonious divorce ten years before, that there was no easy way to fix something like this, even if her maternal instincts screamed for some way to make it better, to make her daughter stop hurting.

It seemed that Sarah had discovered that Gary was cheating on her...again. From what Leanne told her surprised mother, Gary had cheated with two other women during the course of their marriage, that she knew about, and she'd taken him back both times. The third one, though, had been the last straw, both because it was the third one, and because he'd been so blatant about it, doing her in their own house and bed, and most of all because the other woman in question had been a good friend of Leanne's...or so she had believed up until she caught them together. Apparently Leanne had stormed out of the house, taking only time enough to throw a handful of clothes in the suitcase, and gone off without really thinking about where she was going or why.

"He didn't even have the grace to be embarrassed, Mom," Leanne complained. "I mean, I caught them in the act, he was fucking her, and he told me it was my fault, and that he wanted a divorce!"

Sarah sucked in her breath at the rage and pain in her daughter's voice. She'd never heard Leanne sound so hurt. She was pretty sure her daughter didn't even entirely realize she was still there, much of the outrage pouring out of her was self-absorbed, in her mind Leanne was back in that scene.

"I mean, yes, I know we'd been having out problems," Leanne was saying in a rush of words, "yeah, I know he thought I was sick, but I'd been trying, I was ready to meet him halfway, heck, I'd have met him 3/4s of the way, but no he had to get that dumb slut from his office. I mean he couldn't at last have asked me for a divorce first, could he? At least that would have been the respectful thing to do! Most men would have been happy to have a woman who-"

Leanne suddenly blushed scarlet and seemed to remember that her mother was sitting there.

"Most men would have been happy to have a woman who what, Lee?" Sarah pressed, very gently.

"I-ah, Mom you see-I kinda-Mom, I can't talk about it now!"

No matter how hard Sarah tried, she couldn't get anything more on that subject out of her daughter, though she had the distinct feeling that Leanne wanted to tell her. It puzzled the older woman no end, especially since Leanne kept blushing every time the discussion veered that direction, but she knew from experience that Leanne had to be ready before she'd say something she wasn't sure she wanted to say.

Eventually, after hours of talking, sometimes about Leanne's troubles, sometimes just about their lives in general, Leanne began to yawn, and her eyelids were heavy.

"Honey, I think it's time you got some sleep," Sarah finally said.

"Well...I am tired, Mom," the younger woman admitted. "I've been awake for almost 24 hours."

Sarah led her daughter up to the guest room directly beside her own bedroom, connected to it by an adjoining door, and Leanne grinned as she saw it and said, as she went into the attached bathroom to change, "Your guest room is way nicer than Gary and my bedroom, Mom."

"Go ahead and get in bed, Sweetheart," Sarah said, "and I'll find some stuff of mind that'll fit you until we can go shopping."

"I hate to be this much troubl-" Leanne's yawn cut off her words, as she emerged from the bathroom in her pajamas. "Sorry."

Sarah took Leanne's face between her hands, gently, and said, "Honey, you are my daughter. We're going to get through this, and until we do you can stay with me and I'll be happy to have you here. If you want, I'll be more than happy to have you move back in with me on a permanent basis. Don't ever think you're trouble to me, please, Baby."

"Oh, Mom," the younger woman said, sinking into another hug and letting her mother hold the way she had when she was a teenager in the throes of some crisis. Sarah hugged her tightly, wishing as she did that this problem was as easy to deal with.

Sarah actually tucked her 31 year old daughter into bed, ignoring her laughing protests, and kissed her good night. She turned out the light as she went to the door, and looking back she saw that her exhausted daughter was already mostly asleep.

"Sleep well, Baby," she whispered.

Sarah went next door to her own larger bedroom, and picked up the suitcase her daughter had brought. Popping it open, she examined the very limited supply of clothes she'd brought, and sighed. She was just enough taller than Leanne that most of her clothes wouldn't fit the younger woman right, but she was able to run through her wardrobe and pick out a few things that she might be able to wear. They'd have to hit the stores tomorrow, Sarah decided, and make sure Leanne had some clothes. It was 500 miles from her daughter's home, or former home, so going back there to get things didn't seem practical...and Sarah was sure Leanne wasn't ready to face her husband or her husband's mistress just yet.

She put some of the items she found in a stack on her bed, planning to put them in the suitcase and leave it on the floor of the guest room for her daughter to pick from in the morning. As she was about to put the items in, though, her eyes fall on something odd. There was a squarish shape in the lining of the top of the suitcase, not very thick but wide and flat, as if something had been stuffed into the lining. Sarah ran her fingers over it, and felt what seemed to be some kind of large thin book. A moment later she found the slit where the lining had been cut to permit the item to be inserted there.

What on Earth?! Sarah thought, debating whether she should look at it. Her curiosity got the better of her, and she slid the item out, discovering that it was a flat pad of drawing paper, the kind artists used. That wasn't a bit surprising to Sarah, Leanne had been an amateur sketch artist since she was in her early teens, and she was quite good at it. There was a hand-drawn, and very true-to-life, framed sketch of her ex-husband and herself sitting on her entertainment center. Leanne had drawn it when she was fifteen, and she'd only improved since then. But why had she hidden these sketches? Why take them with her when she fled her husband and his new mistress?

Sarah flipped open the cover, to the first page, and gasped.

The sketch was superb, Leanne's skill was of professional quality now, Sarah realized with one part of her stunned brain. The rest of her was in shock, not at the quality but at the subject matter. The drawing was of a nude woman, superbly rendered, on her hands and knees, and the bare legs and feet of another woman were visible in the picture. The kneeling woman was kissing those feet! The work was done in colored pencil, and red pencil strokes showed the marks of a beating on the nude woman's bottom and back!

Sarah flipped the page, to see another kinky scene: a woman in a skirt and sweater was sitting on a stool, with a man over her lap, she was spanking him! His pants and underwear were down around his knees, again Sarah found herself torn between shock at the subject and amazement at the skill. She flipped the page again, to see several women, nude and kneeling, and a man standing in front of them, naked as they were, peeing on them! The women didn't look as if they minded, to judge by the facial expressions Leanne had put into the drawings!

Sarah flipped through the book, finding about 20 scenes of kinky sex or just plain kinkiness, the rest of the sketchbook was blank.

What on Earth? Why is Leanne drawing stuff like...this?!

Sarah flipped back through it again, looking more closely...and realized something else: her crotch was getting wet! Seeing the her daughter had made was getting her hot!

She snapped the book shut and started to return it to its hiding place, but a shuffling sound at the adjoining door caused her to look up to see Leanne standing there in her pajamas, eyes wide and hand over her open mouth, blushing to a shade of red one rarely saw outside of a glorious sunset.

"Honey, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

Leanne didn't wait for her mother to finish, she slammed the door shut and Sarah found it locked. On the other side, she could hear her daughter sobbing.

Getting no response to her pleas for Leanne to unlock the door, Sarah pulled out her key ring and used the master key to unlock the door. She found Leanne, still in her pajamas, lying face-down on her bed and sobbing. She made no response as Sarah approached, and continued to sob, her face buried in her pillow, as Sarah sat down beside her and put her arm over her daughter. Leanne tensed, but Sarah didn't back off, instead she hugged her close.

"It's OK, Lee, I'm sorry, I had no business snooping in your drawings," Sarah apologized. "It's OK, please, Honey, I'm sorry."

"Yo-you're not mad at me?" Leanne asked softly, tears still running down her face. "You don't think I'm some kind of sicko?"

"What?! Lee, I wasn't born yesterday! This isn't the first time I've seen such things! Granted, I was surprised to see them from you, but no, I'm not mad at you! Why would I be?"

"Gary says that only si-sickos think about such things," Leanne burbled, close to breaking down again. "He said that's why he had to cheat on me, because I was so sick and demented! He wanted a real, normal woman, he said, not some pervert!"

Suddenly Sarah saw it, what Leanne had been about to say earlier in the evening, and why she couldn't finish it. Her daughter's words came back to her: '...most men would have been happy to have a woman who-'.

"Honey," Sarah asked softly as she and Leanne sat on the bed, "how long have you had these fantasies?"

"A long time, Mom," she confessed. "Ever since I was a teenager, I don't remember just how long it's been, but way back. I don't know why, I just have them, I never wanted you to know about it!"

"And Gary knew about it...?"

"Not when we got married," Leanne admitted. "I was too nervous and scared to tell him, and I figured it would go away after we got together and I had a normal marriage, but it didn't! I told him, one night after we'd been married for a couple of years, I hated keeping that part of me secret from my husband...and things were never the same after that. He told me I was a pervert, that he would never have married me if he'd know how bad I was-"

Leanne broke down again at the memory. As she hugged her miserable daughter, Sarah thought back, two years after they got married, that would have been about five years before...Sarah remembered that for a while, every time she'd seen Gary and Leanne, her daughter seemed to be on eggshells, nervous, and she'd wondered then if they were having problems.