Our Parents are Related!

Author's note: A huge thank you to Spector_Dugan for being such an amazing editor, mentor, and cheerleader on this story and many others. Hopefully I'll have the courage to post more of them soon. Everyone in this story is over the age of 18, and all errors are mine.

I was just about to finish choosing my spring semester electives when my sister Brianna barged into my room with a stack of family photo albums. She plonked them down next to the mini Christmas tree on my desk, crossed her arms, and just glared at me with those large hazel-green eyes of hers. It was probably the tenth time she'd interrupted me that day -- pretty average for a Saturday.

"I'm guessing this can't wait," I said, saving my progress on the university's website.

"Did you know about this?" she said. I could feel her scrutinizing gaze boring into my temple.

"Sure," I said. "Family photos. What about them?"

"Rowan, I'm being serious."

I closed my laptop and set it aside. Brianna liked to throw me into the deep end of conversations she'd been having with herself, usually after getting so worked up that she couldn't explain what she wanted, needed, or just had to talk about at that exact moment. Yesterday, it had been chapter seven of book three of her latest urban fantasy teen romance, where the vampire protagonist had discriminated against the werewolf cheerleader because of his personal biases towards hairy women.

I wasn't familiar with the books, so it took me about twenty minutes to form a complete mental picture of what was frustrating her since she'd only give me non-sequitur snippets of information. The understanding that eventually coalesced in my mind was formed in the following sequence:

Brianna was angry at some alpha-jock that hates on hairy women.

This jock's most recent bullying victim is a cheerleader.

Also, the cheerleader is a werewolf.

This was obviously from a book. A series, actually, book 3 to be exact. (Before this clue, I was worried it was some real-life bullying situation at her high school.)

And apparently the asshole jock drinks a lot of... grape juice?

No, not grape juice, blood. He's a vampire.

So this vampire jock is a hateful, annoying, creepy protagonist who expects all his girlfriends to be big-breasted, clean-shaven, skimpy-clothed bimbos.

Oh, and his name is Robert, but he goes by Bob.

After about twenty minutes of Brianna just rattling off out-of-sequence and out-of-context parts to some wildly inconceivable fantasy teen drama (because who names a vampire Bob, right?), I finally understood that Bob the jock vampire had dumped Brittany the cheerleading werewolf because she was too hairy (WHEN SHE TRANSFORMED), which was totally unfair since she has no control over that aspect of her physical appearance.

"Bob's a dick," I said.

"Thank you," she said, then did a one-eighty back to her room, presumably to start reading the next chapter.

Today, her frustration seemed to be about something closer to home. I hadn't seen her this riled up since she found a bottle of MSG in the spice cabinet. She chewed out our parents for weeks, then dyed her normally mousy-brown hair to a fluorescent bubblegum pink in protest. Mom and dad didn't care about the hair, but they stopped using the flavor enhancer anyway.

This was worse, though. Based on the family albums, my money was on photographic evidence of our mom and dad feeding us highly processed food as kids, which would be directly responsible for us developing type two diabetes in the next few years.

We have good parents, really. Brianna was just a very picky eater. Mom had once joked that her first words were "too salty" after dad had given her a bowl of pureed black beans.

"You're being very serious about some old photo books," I said matter-of-factly, summarizing the extent of the knowledge I'd gathered so far about her current indignation.

She opened the first photobook and leaned in. "Here and here," she said, stabbing her finger at the family portraits of our mom and her parents. "What do you see?"

I tried to ignore her loose pastel tie-dye pajama top hanging low enough to reveal her sports bra covered breasts.

"Mom, grandma, and grandpa?" I said.

"Yes, but what do you SEE?"

"I'm going to need some help on this one, Brie."

She looked at me like I was blind. "Why are the photos cropped so weirdly?"

I could kind of see her point. Most of the family portraits were poorly staged against fake looking back-drops, and were generally low-effort, like they'd been taken by some freshman photography major at one of those cheap discount superstore photo shops.

"Umm, terrible photographer?" I guessed, still not sure where she was going with this.

She put her hands on her hips and gave me a judgmental look. "Think, Rowan. You're supposed to be the smart one."

"Brie, I really don't see anything," I said, exasperated. Then I tried to think like her. What was the most absurd, unlikely conspiracy theory I could come up with based on those pictures.

"Like, do you think mom's family cropped out some disowned child, and we have a mystery delinquent aunt or uncle out in the world somewhere?"

"You're getting warmer," she said.

I'd reached the bonkers threshold of my imagination, so I didn't respond. Then, she said something that literally short-circuited my brain.

"Dad was cropped out of those pictures."

I tried to compute the implications of that sentence while she quickly turned pages and pointed to other photos. Some were of mom on her own, some were of mom's parents, and some were of the three of them. For the most part, they were pretty average, family photos.

"So, you're saying that dad..."

She nodded encouragingly.

"...was cropped out of photos in mom's family album?" I was basically repeating what Brie had just said since the synapses in my brain were still misfiring.

"You almost have it," she said.

"Wait," I said, stopping to make sure we were both working with the same information. "Mom and dad met in college. They were raised on opposite sides of the country. And they're both only children."

"Do we know that for sure?" she said, raising an eyebrow. Brie liked to question any and all assumptions, but this was getting ridiculous.

I sighed. "Fine. Mom and dad told us those things."

She smiled and nodded.

"But, they also told us all about their childhoods," I added, not wanting to get into the details. We never got to know our grandparents on our father's side, not even through pictures. They'd passed away in a house fire that had tragically taken their lives, along with pretty much any photographic evidence of their existence. Luckily for dad, he'd been away at a slumber party and escaped the tragic accident.

"Exactly," Brianna said. "Stories. ALL STORIES. That's Exhibit Number One."

I still had no clue what she was talking about.

"Now, here's the nail in the coffin," she said, with a dramatic pause. "WHY, do we look so much like our parents?"

"Umm..." It felt like one of those trick questions, like when you're asked if a pound of rocks weighs more than a pound of feathers.

"We look like our parents because..." I took my time, hoping she'd step in with a hint. "We're their children?" I finally said. Sure, it was the overtly obvious answer, and that circular logic wouldn't fly if I was trying to solve some mathematical proof, but it seemed reasonable enough in this case.

"Don't be so obtuse, Rowan, that much is obvious."

"So what's the not-so-obvious part?" I asked, cautiously.

"Our parents are related," she said.

"Like, by marriage?" I said.

"By blood," she said, dropping some left-field asteroid of a bomb directly on my head. "They're brother and sister, to be specific. I'm not sure if they're twins yet, but I plan to get to the bottom of that too. I think they had a whirlwind incestuous teen romance, fell in love, but worried that their taboo relationship would be shunned by the world, so they conspired with grandma and grandpa and made up that story about dad's parents dying in a fire, and all photos being lost from his side of the family."

She stopped to take a deep breath.

"Then, they curated these photo books to make it seem like they came from different families. Pictures of dad start showing up when he's around your age, which is when mom got pregnant with you, and their ruse began."

Brianna was a little quirky, eccentric even, but this was the first time that I seriously worried about her. I touched her forehead, checking to see if she had a fever.

"Stop that," she swatted my hand away.

"You really believe that mom and dad are..." I couldn't even say the word.

"Siblings. Brother and sister. Hermano y hermana. Kyodai--"

"Okay, I get it," I said, cutting her off. I picked up one of the photobooks and started flipping through it more carefully. This latest conspiracy theory just seemed so far-fetched. It would require a massive undertaking for our parents to keep a secret that big.

"There's a big problem with your theory," I said.

She crossed her arms. "Enlighten me."

"Occam's Razor," I said. "You're making way too many assumptions based on what proof these pictures offer, which isn't much at all. Sure, your theory fits, but so does everything mom and dad have told us about their family history. There's just no hard evidence."

She pursed her lips then narrowed her eyes. For a moment, her features were reminiscent of the childhood tantrums she'd outgrown, but there was also a dangerously calculated look in her eyes, as if measuring whether she could survive a jump off a bridge, and that was the moment I knew this would end up worse than a tantrum.

She grabbed my arm, yanked me out of my chair, and dragged me downstairs to where our parents were cuddled on the couch, watching TV. Brie took the remote, paused their show, and narrowed her eyes at both of them while a freeze-framed image of some baking show framed her background.

This had just escalated. Brie wasn't one to navigate heavy conversations delicately, and right now she looked like a raging bull in a china shop. The good news was that after eighteen years of experience, our parents were very used to her antics, but I wasn't sure if anything could prepare them for the accusations that were about to fly their way.

"Rowan wants to know if you two are brother and sister," she said.

"Whoa, wait," I said, raising my hands in a defensive gesture. "This was NOT my idea."

Our parents glanced between Brianna and me with a look of bewildered shock.

Mom's gaze settled on me and she calmly said one word:

"Explain."

It was like she expected me to be some kind of crazy sister interpreter.

"Well," I said nervously, avoiding her hard unreadable courtroom lawyer look. "Brie kind of thinks that..."

This was so awkward and surreal.

"Brie suspects that you two are related, by blood, like that you're really brother and sister." I followed that up by quickly raising my hands in a defensive gesture. "Not me, though. I do not think that. I got dragged into this."

"Daughter," Dad said, "Are you taking drugs?"

"None that you aren't aware of, father-uncle. Now answer the question."

Mom crossed her arms like a lawyer that was about to cross-examine a witness. "Harold, our children want to know if you and I are related by blood."

"Not me," I reminded them, emphatically.

They looked at each other and exchanged glances.

Mom sighed. "I guess it's time to come clean, honey. You caught us, Brianna. Guilty as charged. What gave us away? Did you find our old dating profiles on ancestry.com?"

They both suppressed a chuckle.

"I know it sounds bad," Dad said, smiling like he was having fun with this, "But it sure made things convenient when it came time to meet your mom's parents. I didn't even have to leave the house!"

They both laughed harder.

"Harold, we should stop, incest jokes aren't funny."

"I don't know, honey, isn't it all relative?" They both broke out into hysterics, almost falling off the couch.

Brie glanced between them, her face alternating between being satisfyingly vindicated and doubtfully confused.

I groaned. "Okay, we get it. Come on, Brie, let's go back upstairs." I was mostly relieved to hear them laugh at the ridiculousness of Brie's theory, and rightly so, but I did feel a little bad for her.

When we got back up to my room, Brie launched herself onto my bed, pressed her face into my pillow, and kicked her feet like she was tantrum-swimming.

"I underestimated them," she said.

I sat down on the bed next to her. I knew my sister well enough to know that there was probably some other tangentially related issue at the heart of her outlandish conspiracy theory.

"Brie, tell me why this is bothering you so much."

She turned and looked at me, her eyes a little teary.

"Row, do you think you and I will be close in twenty years?"

"Sure," I said. "We're family."

"But Sarah said her brothers stopped talking to her after they left for college. And most of my friends aren't even close to their siblings."

"That won't happen to us." I said, rubbing her head. This always comforted her, ever since she'd fallen off her bike when learning to ride. Brie and I had always been close. Now, with us both entering adulthood, our life paths were beginning to diverge. I had also worried about the same thing recently; my first semester in college made me realize how much I missed her random, unexpected intrusions and unfiltered stream-of-consciousness rants. There was no one in the world like her and I actually enjoyed her company quite a bit.

"It might happen," she said. "You're in college now, meeting new people, and forgetting all about me."

I shook my head. "You realize that we text or chat like every day, right? And I come home once a month, like I promised. Besides, aren't you applying to my university? Next year we'll be able to hang out more often. Maybe we'll even be in the same dorm."

This seemed to lift her spirits.

"But what if I don't get in?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Unlikely, miss perfect SATs."

It was obvious that she'd been worrying about the same thing as me. She wanted us to remain close, as close as our parents had remained after twenty years of marriage. Her outlandish accusations were probably linked to fears that we'd lose that close bond.

"Row..." she said, staring up at the ceiling of glow-in-the-dark stars.

"Yeah?" I said.

"If it were true... if mom and dad really were brother and sister, would it bother you?"

It was an unexpected question, and coming from anyone else, my instant response would be yes, that would be weird. But this was Brie, so I thought about it honestly and without fear of judgment.

"I guess I'd be upset that they'd kept it a secret from us," I said. "But it wouldn't change how I feel about them, or you."

She nodded. "Me too."

"Row..." she said again.

"Mmm?"

"I still think it's true," she said. "I really, really do."

"I know," I said, partly agreeing with her, despite it being a strange and illogical theory, recently debunked by our parents. Nothing could rationally explain the belief; it was vague and fleeting, but there was also a certainty to it, like knowing that dad would make waffles every Sunday morning, and that mom would always get the first one. Or knowing that Brie would continue to barge into my room everyday for the rest of my life, if I let her, which I happily would.

"How?" I finally asked her. "How are you so sure?"

She turned on her side and looked at me.

"There's a secret clue," she said conspiratorially.

"A secret clue?" I repeated, probably sounding a little more skeptical than I'd intended.

"Yeah, I figured you already knew," she said. "I'll tell you, if you want."

I nodded.

She took my hand and pulled me towards her until we lay side-by-side, our faces only inches apart. Then she leaned in and pressed her lips to mine. I froze, not because it was strange or awkward that my sister was kissing me, more because it was a bit sudden and unexpected. I needed a few seconds to process the brief kiss. It felt... normal. Like a simple greeting or goodbye kiss, or a warm gesture shared between closely bonded family members.

As she pulled away, her eyes remained closed.

"How'd that feel?" she asked.

"Okay, I guess," I said honestly. "Normal."

"The secret clue that makes me so sure..." she said.

I nodded expectantly, even though she couldn't see me.

She opened her eyes. "It's because we're our parent's children."

I wasn't completely sure what she meant, and my confusion must have been apparent.

"We're a lot like them," she said. "Dad is mom's rock, just like you're mine. And mom keeps dad on his toes, just like I do for you. We're apples that fell from the same tree."

"Sure, makes sense," I said. "They're also quirky, unrelenting, and frustratingly patient parents," I added.

Her brow furrowed a bit. "Yeah. I think you got the patient part, and I got the quirky unrelenting parts."

I smiled. "Wanna trade?"

"No." She smiled contentedly. "I like being me," she said like a leopard that loved its own spots. Then her smile turned to a determined and mischievous grin, and I knew we weren't finished with her shenanigans.

* * *

The next morning, dad was making his famous Christmas Day waffles, which were shaped like a wreath. Brie was the last to come down and join us, but her timing was impeccable; by the time she sat down, the first waffle was ready.

"Who got the first Christmas waffle when you two were kids?" Brie asked, nonchalantly.

Mom paused her first bite for a half-second before continuing to chew. It was pretty obvious what Brie was doing, but mom just grinned and chewed, completely unfazed by the question.

"I'll tell you who got the last waffle," Dad said, serving Brie the fourth one off the maker. "The naughtiest person."

"So that means that growing up, you and mom must have split the last waffle," Brie said, carefully dipping hers in maple syrup.

Mom gave a single chuckle, then I saw her with the same determined mischievous smirk that Brie had given me the night before. "You're really not going to let this go, are you, young lady?"

"Not until you tell us the truth," Brie said, biting into an oversized piece of waffle.

"And what truth would that be?" Mom asked.

"That you're a brotherfucker."

Brie said it so casually that it took me a few seconds to process the sentence. It was like my brain had to rewind and parse each word just to make sure it actually meant what I thought it had meant. Brie was goading them. Looking for a reaction that would give away some clue by deliberately provoking them. But mom and dad didn't react, which meant they were either professional liars (which was possible, since they were both lawyers), or that Brie's accusations were baseless.

Brie stabbed at the last piece of waffle on her plate and pointed it accusingly at dad.

"And you, father-uncle, you managed to get your sister pregnant. Twice."

Mom dropped her fork onto her plate in a first sign of annoyance.

"That's not true," Mom said, her face genuinely angry and hurt. "Take that back, Brianna. Right now." It was obvious from mom's intense stare that Brie had finally struck a nerve.

"Okay," Brie said quickly. "I'm sorry, Mom. I take it back." Even my impertinent little sister knew that once mom's almost-infinite patience ran out, that you had to immediately back down. And for a moment, it seemed like this would be the end of the road for Brie's accusations. Mom's response had settled it.

"Good," Mom said, her features relaxing a bit. "Because Brianna, it's never okay to assume that a woman hasn't had miscarriages. Your father has gotten me pregnant more than twice."

In a rare sight, Brie's mouth dropped open and her face sobered into a strange state of shock, realization, and sorrow. My reaction probably mirrored hers, but I was so focused on the next thing to be said that I silenced the thinking part of my brain.