Charlie and Mindy Bk. 04 Ch. 08

"Steph," I began, during a lull in the conversation, "I think I'm going to take you up on your offer. You and I should get married."

"And so should we," Mindy chimed in, looking directly at Buck.

It took them a bit to realize that Mindy and I were dead serious. Of course, we'd taken them both completely unawares, and neither of them saw what Mindy and I had seen. That's no surprise, because it'd taken Mindy and me a while to work through the idea ourselves.

We made our case. We loved the two of them almost as much as we loved each other. They loved us almost as much as they loved each other. We'd already agreed that we wanted to remain together, a foursome, for years to come.

Two legal, but otherwise fictitious, marriages would cement the four of us together. They would provide a legal parent of each gender for any children either couple might have. They would solve legal problems that might present themselves regarding access to medical records, regarding taxes, and regarding finances or property. (We were careful not to mention the nature of the property we already had in mind for sharing.)

And the marriages we were discussing would be the natural extension of the smokescreen with which we'd surrounded the facts of our sleeping arrangements.

We'd already, during the spring when Mom and Dad had died, settled that Steph and I were not going to Do The Nasty with each other—no matter how much either of us wanted to. And we'd settled, as well, that Mindy and Buck weren't going to Do That with each other—no matter how much either of them wanted to.

We all intended to keep those promises. So these marriages would be just legal conveniences. And, because they would never be consummated, they could, in principle at least, be annulled at any future time if we decided the need arose—although, we acknowledged, there could be associated difficulties if things ever came to such a pass.

There was no hurry, and we spent a few weeks talking the idea over. We worried it pretty much to death. And we concluded that we should go ahead with that plan. We set the date for a double wedding for the following September. Mindy had continued to carry 19, 20, or even 21 hours each semester. (And continued to get all A's—I think she really is smarter than I am.) Thus, she was able to finish her degree at the end of that summer with a couple of summer school courses.

So that's how I came to marry Steph, and how Buck came to marry Mindy, in Fort Collins, one day during the fall after we were all graduated. It was a simple civil ceremony, with only a few guests—Quent and Amanda among them. And when the judge who had gone through law school with Dad told Buck and me to kiss our brides, we gave no one any reason to doubt what our marriages meant. The chemistry we'd discovered almost three years earlier was still there, and we still enjoyed it as much as we ever had.

After our marriages, Buck and Steph apologetically opened their finances to us, and we found things about as we'd expected. They had barely managed to finish college; they had no money left.

But Buck, who had done well in Computer Science, suddenly found himself very employable. He fully expected that he would have to support all four of us—and that didn't bother him in the least. He would much rather go on to graduate school, but he didn't think that was going to be possible for years to come.

That was before we took our turn and opened our finances to them. They almost fainted when they learned the sizes of our trusts.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Buck asked.

Mindy and I looked at each other. And then we looked directly back at him. "I think you know," Mindy said.

"Because you wouldn't have married a rich girl, if you'd known," Steph said. "And I sure wouldn't have married a rich boy." She smiled at me. Then she looked back at Buck. "They've outsmarted us again, Steve-ster. I knew they weren't to be trusted when they figured us out right after that Thanksgiving dinner when we were sophomores. But I guess we're stuck now, aren't we?" The smile was still on her face.

We took that fall off, and we all went to graduate school the following spring, all four of us at the same university somewhere in the Mountain West. All of us earned doctoral degrees: Buck's was in computer science, Steph's in Italian, Mindy's in French, and mine in math. By the time we finished with that, the trusts had dissolved and Mindy and I, together with our spouses, controlled the proceeds. "Share and share alike" has become our motto. It took us a while, but we finally taught Buck and Steph to receive as graciously as they gave.

We moved to a middle-sized university town, also in the Mountain West, where we had all found suitable positions—Steph as an Italian professor, Mindy as a French professor, and me as a math professor. Buck alone abandoned the ivory tower to become the head of security for a fairly well-known firm with a strong internet presence. (The story of our search for positions in four diverse areas of interest, but all in the same town—which was even further constrained by the requirement that there had to be mountains handy—would be another book in itself.) We bought and remodeled a large old Victorian mansion in an older residential district there. We've all lived there ever since.

We dithered for years about whether or not we should have children. We all—the women in particular—wanted them; that wasn't the issue. We were worried about genetic defects—especially where Mindy and I, with our unique family background, were concerned.

All of us read extensively about the biology of inbreeding. Mindy and I were especially worried about the possibility of unexpressed recessive genes we might both carry that could double up in our offspring, as well as about the phenomenon known as "genetic drift." We found encouragement in repeated references to the lack of problems breeders see in inbred lines of domestic animals.

Brian Charles Magness was born to Mindy about ten years after our marriages. The twins, Laurel Stephanie and Suzanne (Steph and Steve's mother's name) Melinda Young were born to Steph a year after that. And David Steven Magness came to Mindy still a year later. All were happy, healthy children.

It wasn't until a year or two after David was born that I realized that the example of inbred domestic animals probably isn't relevant to our circumstances. The likely reason there are so few genetic problems in inbred lines of domestic animals is that good breeders don't let an animal breed if they even suspect that it carries an inconvenient trait. And so, dangerous recessive genes were gone before inbreeding started.

Here in our shared house, we've raised the kids as though they are all siblings—who happen to have two moms and two dads. Of course, the kids know who their own parents are, and who sleeps with whom, but they don't know what other, potentially embarrassing, relationships obtain among the four adults. They'll have to learn those things some day not too far away.

And we've noticed, in the last five years, or so, that the four of them seem to have taken an interest—which they've tried, not entirely successfully, to conceal—in the "I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours" game. And we suspect, but we haven't been able to confirm, that there's also been some surreptitious experimentation—Purely in the Interest of Science, naturally—with the object of figuring out how this fits into that.

The kids are approaching their teens, now, and we'd better see to it, before too long, that they understand pregnancy, how it happens, and what its ramifications are. Not to mention how grownups keep it from happening—while, nevertheless, putting this into that repeatedly and frequently.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It's a late evening toward the end of February, and the kids are all in bed, fast asleep. As I entered the last few paragraphs above into my computer, Mindy, my little sister, the mother of my sons, and the love of my life, came into the room. Altogether too many years after the story I'm finishing here, she is still a pretty, sexy, intelligent woman.

She looked over my shoulder, seconds ago, at what I had just written—the paragraph that precedes this one.

"You're almost done, aren't you?" she asked.

I was distracted, thinking about what to say to end this story and how to say it; I mumbled something without giving it much thought. Then she said, "And for the 'pretty, sexy, intelligent woman' part you get this." And she planted a big wet kiss in the middle of the back of my neck.

I'd barely recovered from the shudder her kiss caused, when she whispered into my ear, "Big Brother and Little Sister!"

I think I'm done. She expects the usual response. And I believe I know exactly what she thinks we should do after that.

(The End)

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I value your comments and your feedback, and I try to respond to either—usually within a week. But I don't comment on my own stories, so I have no way to respond to anonymous comments.

—CarlusMagnus