There is a skylight in my parents' bedroom, and so when I woke up I was staring up at the deep blue sky through a tiny little lens in the ceiling. The room was hot and warm and bright. Sam had rolled off of me, and was asleep on her side facing away from me on the pillow next to mine. Mom was gone, but I saw her through the window down at the fire, and made my way.
She had wrapped herself in a long white robe, fastened tightly by a belt tied intricately around her waist. She didn't look up to greet me, though I could see she heard me coming. She had lit a fire in the pit, and was fiddling with breakfast dishes when I finally got near enough to touch her.
"Breakfast is ready," she said curtly, scurrying out of the way of my touch to do more food preparation. "Sit down and eat."
"You're being highly efficient this morning," I said, "What's up?"
"Your dad is getting back this afternoon," she said, "You eat up and get on the river. You know he'll want fish when he gets here. He'll be wondering what you've been up to this whole time."
"Mhm," I said, pouring myself coffee and taking a sip, "I don't know what I'd tell him."
"You won't tell him anything," she said, still not meeting my gaze, "Nothing happened. We didn't do anything. We lay out and tanned and you fished and we shared meals like a family. Like a normal family. Nothing else happened."
"I think I can keep that straight," I said, trying not to sound as concerned as I was with my Mom's new demeanor, "If I get back today with any fish is all."
"You will," she said, "Go put your shorts on. All of nature can see you. Then eat up and get on the river."
"Mom," I said, "You seem perturbed. You should try and relax a little."
"Oh, you'd like that," she said, "You'd like that a lot. You've got this whole sick game going on with me and your sister, and I fell right into it. I feel sick."
"It's not a game, Mom. I never planned any of this. This isn't what I imagined a family vacation was going to look like."
She didn't say anything, just kept herself making busywork. I sat down on the picnic bench and leaned back into its table section, sipping at my coffee. I just watched her as she fussed about with dishes and concentrated very hard on not looking in my direction at all. When silence became untenable, she sighed in frustration, stood up straight, and wiped at her forehead while looking at the sky.
"I'm sorry," she said, "I don't mean to be snappy. I'm just having a really hard time processing just what the hell went on last night."
"It's okay, Mom," I said, "It didn't mean anything grave. We were all just horny, curious, and close. People do that."
"Families don't do that," she said.
"Well... maybe ours does?"
"No," she said, "I don't think I can do that again. We can't do that again."
"That's fine. But we can all be cool about it? We didn't do anything wrong."
She made eye contact with me for the first time, and I saw she was working really hard at holding back tears. Her lip was quivering. Her shoulders were shaking and she looked like her knees were ready to give way.
"I cheated on your father," she said, "Last night was cheating. He can't ever find out about it."
"He won't, Mom," I said, "It's fine. We don't ever have to tell him. Don't blame yourself. He hasn't been up to his husbandly duties lately, and it's better you got yourself sorted out somewhere that cares rather than just finding solace with a stranger."
Her knees gave way then. She fell into my lap and crossed her arms and started sobbing silently into them. I wrapped my arms around her back and rubbed her soothingly.
"You won't tell him, will you?" she said, "You won't say anything?"
"Mom, I promise he'll never find out."
"Do you think I'm a horrible person?"
"No," I said, "Not at all."
"I love your father," she said, "I really do. But a woman has needs. And if I'm being completely honest with myself, I kind of liked what happened yesterday. Kind of loved it. It made me feel so bad in such a good way. And I don't know if I'm a bad person because of it."
"You're not a bad person, Mom," I said, "You're just a person. That's all. That's all we all are."
She was looking up at me then, and finally her tears were waning, and the crack of a smile was breaking the corners of her determined frown.
"I think that's the best I can hope for," she said.
"Have you eaten?" I asked, "Get some breakfast in you. You'll feel better."
That's when the smile finally broke through, and she stood up on her feet again. She went back to the fire, and cracked eggs into a skillet.
"You eat," she said, "You need your protein."
The creak and then slam of the screen door opening alerted us, and both our heads cocked to catch sight of Sam strolling out along the porch and down the stairs. As was her custom, she was naked as the day she was born. My cock began stirring gently. Sam just had the type of body that could do it to me in an instant. Her naked breasts swayed and bounced on each step as she descended the staircase. Mom and I both watched in rapt attention, only Mom was more quickly able to break her spell.
"Sam, put your clothes on," she shouted up at her, "Your Dad is going to be back any time now. If you want a to tan, put a suit on."
"Oh, he won't care," Sam dismissed, "He'll probably be just as excited for it as Chris was."
"I'm not falling for that again, young lady," Mom said, "Go right back inside and get dressed for breakfast."
"What did you say to her?" Sam asked, stopping and turning to face me.
"I didn't say anything," I said. I wondered if my still being undressed was an issue. "She may have a point, though. You don't want to give Dad a heart attack."
"He's seen it before," she said.
"Seen you?" I asked, "You're quite a sight. Don't startle him."
Sam didn't say anything.
"No two buts about it," Mom said, "Get yourself dressed. Grab shorts for your brother, so he can get back to fishing. Then you and I can have a talk about family decorum."
That just about put the writing on the wall for me then. I drank my coffee, ate my eggs, and faster than I could even leer at Sam when she returned in her most stubbornly revealing bikini, I was out in the canoe hunting out the best fishing ground.
I wasn't feeling especially confident finding fish, considering it was a late morning start. It wasn't likely for the fish at that point to start biting til dusk, which comes late in the summer. Still, I found a patch of reeds where I was able to snag quite a few big walleye that might at least account for a few bad days' fishing on the river. I had enough that we'd all be fed, it just looked as though I'd been out on the river a few days with comparably scant success.
I hadn't the patience to stick it out til dusk, so before long I was paddling my way back home, a half-bucket full of fish the best I had to offer. I was hoping to get back in time to beat my Dad to the fridge, and get the fish in there so that it at least looked like I'd been up to something while he'd been away, as opposed to up to what I'd really been doing. With time on the river to consider it, it really did occur to me that I might have cucked my Dad something serious. I didn't know how he'd react and I never wanted to find out.
Regardless, by the time I was honing in on the dock, my dad was laying out on the grass, in between my mother and Sam. They were all decked out in modest bathing suits. As soon as I was in shouting distance, my Dad sat up and looked out at me, blocking the sun from his eyes with his hand. He jumped to his feet and strode out to meet me on the dock.
"Bad couple days on the river, boy?" he asked, before I was even docking, "It's okay, your Mom told me all about it."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, she did," he said, "Nothing but oatmeal and preserves for you all the last couple days. I tell you, you can't feed a family with results like that."
I jumped out of the canoe and guided it by hand into the dock.
"Nope," I said, "Bad luck on the river. But at least we'll eat tonight." I grabbed the bucket of the modest catch I'd had on the river and slid it onto the dock for his examination. He looked at it in the shade of his hand again.
"That's not too bad, all told," he said, "We'll eat tonight. We may even eat tomorrow. That's not bad. Are you hungry?"
"I'm starving," I said.
"Good boy," he said, "You lay down and relax. We'll get Sam and your mother to cook."
Which we did. Sam and Mom disappeared up into the cabin while Dad laid me down and told me stories about his work. He'd been called back because of a pretty serious and curious manslaughter thing that happened to a kid from back home, and Dad was the only one available to represent him. That's really a story for another time, though.
We basked in the sunlight, catching the descending rays of the sun while he talked to me about action and responsibility, me all the while wondering what might have been shared between Mom and him, or Sam and him, or most curiously, between Mom and Sam. It was difficult to juggle at the same time thoughts about criminal culpability and incest, the emotions of anger and the feeling of horniness stretched too taught, so I was very relieved when plates of fish and sides were brought down to distract us.
It was not my imagination suggesting to me that dinner was stuffy and awkward. Conversation was sparse. Simple dinner requests like 'pass the salt' echoed unbecomingly in the silence they escaped from. Sideways glances made their presence known between Sam and I or Mom and I at every occasion my Dad lowered his eyes enough to catch food on his fork. Sam's bikini had changed to a much more modest one, although even it was still a striking black number that had me leering when I thought I could get away with it.
When all our hunger was sated, Dad dropped his fork loudly on his plate and smiled.
"I have a surprise," he announced, "You kids are going to love it."
