Let's Make a Deal Pt. 20- Epilogue 04

"And I should have asked. I dumped a lot on you. Is there anything else we should talk about, at least tangentially related to all this?"

The girls were quiet for a minute or so, which felt like a long time. Finally, Hannah said, "Dad, how come it took you over fifteen years to get married again after Chris died? I'm plenty happy you did, I wouldn't even exist if you'd married someone else. But I don't understand it."

Scott laughed. "It's not the question that's funny, hon. It's that Nancy's mom asked me about the same thing, once. And since she asked in a way that flattered me outrageously, I'll tell you more or less how she put it. Something like this: 'Scott, what is the matter with all the women you know, that they aren't all chasing you?' I didn't do a very good job of answering that time, and I won't this time, but I'll try.

"At first, I was too grief-stricken to even be polite and sociable. I'm afraid I hurt a lot of young women's feelings. I was really self-centered, and if people tried to put me together with their sister or cousin or aunt or whatever, I basically just sat there and didn't respond. I didn't mean to be so rude, I just couldn't make myself care about things. So people gave up on me.

"Later on, well, my habits were formed. And I felt like—um. We've already been talking more about some personal sexual issues that I'm happy doing with my daughter and niece, and this calls for more. I'm sorry. Chris and I hadn't been well matched sexually. It was more important to me than to her, a lot, and I wanted a lot more of it. I don't mean that she didn't try. She did. But it felt to her like I was demanding that she turn into a totally different person, just to please me. I hurt her so badly over it, and she hurt me. But I really didn't want to be in that situation again. And, well, here I am, thirty-something, I'd be looking at women my age or at least mid-twenties. OK, so say I find someone and do things with her, and we plainly like each other. So far so good. So, we're maybe having coffee—tea for me, of course—and talking. Do I just up and say, 'By the way, how much do you like sex?'

"If she's inexperienced, how can she judge the answer? And what is she going to think about me? Add to that, there's a pretty good chance she's inexperienced partly because sex isn't something she's really wanted.

"OK, if she's divorced she knows how to answer. Maybe. Mind you, if it's not that her husband abandoned her, and it's not that he was cheating on her or has moved on to another woman, she's off limits, so I have to have asked about that. And if she's been unchaste, before or since the divorce, she's out as well. You've heard me sing that song, 'Round Once Again', right? 'Gone with the memories of those before, And every time I know there'll be one more,' that one? And you know what scripture says about that. Not to mention that I could never want that myself, just one relationship after another.

"And, finally, in a lot of cases where her husband divorced her, I could see all too easily why he might have done that, in terms of her attitudes. Like buying a used car, you have to be careful that it wasn't for sale precisely because it had expensive problems. Remarriage after divorce, well, maybe he just wanted to trade up to a newer model, but maybe not. And she's already taken the first step toward developing a habit, dropping the relationship instead of dealing with problems—unless he just walked out despite her attempts to hold things together. And I do want to emphasize that she may have done everything in her power to keep it together. It's just that you can't tell very easily.

"So, widows. Again, they at least would have some hope of understanding what I'm asking, and some standards for answering, a big plus. But, again, I'd find it incredibly hard to ask. And at that age, widows aren't really all that common.

"Finally, sad experience tells me that most people gossip, even Bible-believing Christians who should know better. I imagined the woman rehashing her last date with a couple of her women friends, with a question like that to discuss. And for me, that was just a huge issue.

"So, basically, I was intimidated. I wasn't willing to risk such a mismatch again. Mind you, in many, many, many ways Chris was as perfect for me as your mom is. But there were a few large areas. Sex may not have been the biggest, but it always felt to me like the mismatch there fueled some other problems. Anyway, I also wasn't willing to try to raise those issues.

"If I'd thought of all those questionnaires your mom and I went through—and Nancy's mom, too—I might have wound up married to someone. At least, questions about sex would have been buried among all the issues. Though a lot of those questionnaires tended to assume that you were aiming toward a first marriage, so they didn't necessarily ask the questions I needed answers to."

Here Martha broke in. "Scott, you and I need to talk a moment before whatever you were going to say next. Girls, please excuse us. I think we'll be back pretty soon."

They went out into Scott's office. Martha said, "Scott, I think we need to answer their earlier questions. I think that they're going to jump to conclusions that are a bit off the mark. They've run into this, and they probably will again, one way or another. But they're ready to hear more of the story. You know I'm usually with you totally on what is their business, but this one is too close to home. And I really think we shouldn't be relying on half truths with them, not to this extent. I'm really uncomfortable. Every word you said was true, but this isn't the way to treat our daughter, or Nancy either."

"You know this isn't something I'm comfortable discussing with our girls. Theory, OK, but this part of our lives, I don't think I'd like it if they were twenty-six and married with a couple of kids each. But it also seems to me that they're too young to hear this kind of thing."

"Scott, if it were any of the others, even Brian and Traci, I'd probably agree. Even if they'd already heard it from someone like this Kim. But even when I was their age, kids, girls especially I think, talked about things at that age, and it's gotten worse since then. I don't like it either, but they're already thinking about it, and they really are old enough to be starting to know what desire feels like, and all that. I wish they were a couple of years older, too, but they're old enough."

Scott went over to her and put his arms around her, looking down into her face. "You really think so?" She nodded. He sighed. "Then I guess I'm OK with it, kind of reluctantly."

"You mean it's really against your better judgment, but . . .?" She smiled at him.

He smiled. "That's exactly right. Um. Actually, not so. I really don't know what my better judgment says, this time.

"But there's one more thing you don't seem to have thought of. I don't want to tell this with editing on the fly to keep Lynda's part out of it. So we need her to be here and to agree. I think I insist on that."

"You're right, and I hadn't thought it through. You call her and see whether she can come over, while I go tell the girls it will be a little longer. I'll come back here."

Scott called Lynda and asked whether she could come over to discuss some serious things. She said that she'd be over soon. She needed to hand the responsibility for the littler ones over to their next daughter, Traci. This was a common enough thing, with either Traci or Nancy, that she was there in a little more than five minutes.

Scott and Martha reviewed what they'd talked about so far, and why Martha thought they needed to come clean. Lynda looked at them. She said, "It would make life easier in some ways, for sure. It feels really scary, kind of like you're asking me to take off all my clothes for them. But if you both really think so . . . "

So they all went into Hannah's room.

Scott said, "OK. We've decided that you need to know some things that really aren't your business. You understand, though, this is all for you, not Kim, not your siblings. And in fact, given what happened earlier, if you're going to talk about this between yourselves, you need to take some kind of steps to make sure you're not being overheard. Got that?"

"Yes, Dad," and "Yes, Uncle Scott."

"That part I trust you with, easily, so long as you remember to think about it. With Kim, or anyone like her, well, what you said earlier still applies. It's even true. And you need to understand. We've raised you to be completely truthful, even when it hurts. It's important. But we are—or I am, anyway—handing you a bit more complicated job. There are people, and questions, you don't owe a straight answer to. I'd have been having this talk with you soon, anyway, as you're starting to head into adulthood, though the process will last a few years. Make sure your character is such that honesty is the way you live your whole life—but be ready to lie when it's appropriate. Not for momentary convenience. Not to avoid just consequences. Not with people you owe the truth, even when it hurts. That's harder than just following a simple rule of always telling the truth. But it's part of being an adult."

Martha said, "Scott."

"Right. Too much on that for now, but we'll talk more eventually. It's relevant in one way, though. We've all deliberately misled you, we believe for your own good, but we've all been uncomfortable doing that. We hope you're old enough to handle this.

"We don't know exactly what this Kim has told you, but from what you've said, there's some truth in it. Remember, what we've told you before is all true, every word. This is just filling in more. For a few months, both of your moms had an ongoing sexual relationship with me.

"You know the background. I'd had to fire Martha, which was crippling to me. To give you information I didn't have until much later myself, her lapses in attention came about because, years earlier, she had fallen in love with me. I had done nothing to encourage this, except train her on the job, and she didn't say anything because she'd figured out that I wouldn't accept any kind of romantic relationship with her, and you know the reasons for that. From what she said much later, I think she had basically fallen into daydreaming about capturing my affections somehow, about my kissing her and probably beyond that, enough to interfere with her paying attention to doing her job." Martha nodded and said, "That's it exactly."

"But anyway, we told you that Lynda had come to me offering extra work, outside work hours, off the books. But it was specifically sex she offered me, ultimately whatever and whenever I wanted, if I would just give Martha another chance, as long as I'd keep her on. I turned her down, telling her I'd think about it, but that was just to keep her from trying to add yet more. And thinking about it, well, I knew I couldn't avoid that. She was beautiful, I was really lonely—although I didn't think of it that way, right then.

"Then, a few days later, Martha came to me with a similar offer. She made it clear that sex was part of the offer, but that she really meant she'd do whatever it took to get another chance. And I decided this was a temptation I wasn't going to resist any more.

"I asked her to come back after working hours, and asked Lynda to come in then too. Neither had any idea the other was to be there. I told them each about what the other had offered, and said I would accept if they were both willing to be in this together. I laid out a lot of conditions, to make sure we all were agreeing to the same thing, and to protect all of us."

Lynda broke in, "That was really all to protect Martha and me, Scott. And that's important."

"It wasn't that simple, but it's too complicated to go into now. Anyway, they agreed. Hannah, your mom pretty much agreed without qualms or reservations. Again, I didn't know it, but to some extent I'd just agreed to what she'd been wishing for, for years. Nancy, your mom was willing, but her feelings were all churned up. Remember how much she'd been hurt by her boyfriend and others. Oh, one of the conditions I had insisted on was total honesty, no lies or misleading each other at all.

"Anyway, we didn't jump right into sexual intercourse. Partly, if either was going to change her mind, I wanted to make it happen before that. Martha, though, insisted on jumping into that, the very first night. Um, yes, they'd promised to do what I wanted, what I asked, but she asked me for this in terms I was ashamed to refuse. And of course, I wanted it too, a lot.

"So a couple of nights later, my plan was to require them both to engage in making out with me. I mean, kissing and major fondling, clothes off part of the time. I'd planned not to take it further than that unless by their choice, but it was plain that it was going to be all the way again with Martha. For Lynda, I said she would decide when we got to that point, that I wouldn't require more. She had already had ups and downs of feelings about it all, resenting mixed with being grateful, finding that she didn't feel really comfortable with the idea of seriously kissing me and being touched, much less actual sex. I'd insisted on not pushing her faster on those things.

"Well, that first night, I'd given her some money, not much at all, and told her to do something with it, and instead she had pocketed it. This was right after we'd all agreed to total honesty. Remember, she was a bundle of conflicting feelings, and she had resented parts of the discussion, so she told herself I didn't deserve better. Lynda, I'll tell this, but I'm kind of ashamed to, what you said in the end was so flattering. She'd spent a couple of days trying to justify her dishonesty to herself. Then she watched me make love to Martha again, and she decided that, even though they'd promised whatever I wanted, I was insisting on being kind and gentle and doing what they wanted, and she was overcome with remorse. She'd stolen and lied by implication, right after promising honesty, and then she felt I was going way beyond what we'd agreed, just to treat them well. She just melted down completely. She kept it quiet enough, until Martha and I were done, that we hadn't realized she was sitting there crying her eyes out.

"I told you earlier what I did. I asked her a couple of questions to make sure it was OK—remember, I didn't know why she was crying yet—then set her in my lap and just held her, trying to be comforting, until she calmed down enough. At that point she insisted on telling me what she had done, and we discussed it at length. And I forgave her. It was obvious that her contrition and repentance were honest and deep.

"And then she insisted that we go ahead, not just with making out but with sex. I tried to put her off. I knew that after all that emotion it wouldn't be very pleasant or satisfying for her, but she insisted. And I was right, it wasn't very good for her."

Lynda jumped in again. "Scott, they need to know, if they're going to hear all the rest of it. First off, yes, it was disappointing considered as sex, though it was fine. But emotionally, it was kind of a high point of my life.

"Second, part of it—a big part!—was that first my boyfriend, big time, and then most of the guys who had ever asked for dates after that, it was obvious that all they wanted was sex. OK, they found me good-looking, but that was for their benefit, not mine. And any girl who would pull down her panties for them would have done as well. OK, maybe some of the guys who asked me out later on weren't like that, but that's what I thought. And here was Scott, who I'd promised sex to any time he wanted, trying to put me off because I wouldn't enjoy it enough!

"Third, because of all that, during what Scott was describing, I fell in love with him, as hard as Martha had. He treated me like I was precious to him, like he loved me, not like someone making a trade, Martha's job for sex. And if I try to say more about that, I'll be crying all over again."

She looked straight at Nancy. "And finally, this has got to have you wondering, so I'd better say this now. Your dad asked me to marry him, knowing all this, he asked me anyway. By that time I was in love with him, of course. But he's been as loving and considerate as Scott ever was. I don't think he could have been more, but just as much. This all is something I can't afford to talk about too much, because it brings back memories. They're very good memories, but I really do love Scott as a big brother and father, and that's the way it needs to be. And that's very good. Your dad and I have been together through a lot more, and we're way happier together than Scott and I ever could have been. Good as sex was with Scott, I knew he was always thinking about how wrong it was, so your dad and I can just be way more open together. And if I keep talking, I'll be crying again." She looked at Scott.

"OK, I think about the only thing left to say is that somewhere in all this, both these ladies somehow saw something in me besides lust and hypocrisy—not to mention the pride they both pointed out to me, repeatedly—and started coming to church. And we talked about spiritual things, and eventually your mom believed, Hannah. At that point she understood that she couldn't honestly say she believed and continue on with that kind of affair. So we all stopped, cold turkey, and that was very painful all around. Nancy, your mom still had questions to resolve, but a few weeks later she believed, too. And I really think you've heard everything after that."

The girls sat there a while, not looking any of the adults in the face. Finally Nancy spoke up. "Mom, Uncle Scott told us earlier that he had sat there with you in his lap, more than once, and didn't kiss you or, or touch you, whatever word he used. And one of those times was what he just described? You had promised to go to bed with him, and he sat there without touching you? That's pretty hard to imagine."

Lynda said, "It's perfectly true, whether you can imagine it or not! Scott complains whenever I say it, and you probably will too, but I mean this. He was always a perfect gentleman. I needed comforting, he didn't use that as an opportunity for anything but comforting. Remember, we had offered sex to him, he hadn't asked for it, and he never would have, with us or anyone. He was always reliable and considerate, always concerned with us. Scott, don't you dare try to twist anything to make it sound like that's not true! I suppose I need to point out that I had promised him sex, and sitting there in his lap I had told him I wanted it—but he also made it plain, from the moment I told him I had been raped, that he was willing to let me out of my promise if I wanted.

"You also need to realize that, sitting there like that, he really, really, really wanted me. I trust you don't have the experience to know first hand how obvious that became. You better not! But he just tried to comfort me, to calm me down. And like I said, he then tried to put sex off, for my sake, when I told him I wanted him to do it. I can only hope you, both of you, wind up with men who are a tenth as patient and giving as your dad and Scott. I hope you'll have more sense than I did in the first place. That isn't something you should be giving like that. I did it because Martha had been so good to me, and I felt so worthless—and I hope you never feel like that, too. And Scott told us, right at the very beginning, when we were still just talking, that we were idiots to go to him or anyone with an offer like that, we could have let ourselves in for disaster in so many ways. He was right. This one time it worked out, but if Scott hadn't been what he is . . . "

After another long minute or two, Hannah spoke up. "Dad, how could you? I know what you tell us, and I know you believe it, about sex being for marriage only! And they weren't believers and probably didn't believe that, but you did. So how could you agree to something like that?"