In the wake of a pair of tragedies, a young man makes a common promise to his grandfather, to take care of his grandmothers and mother; to do for them whatever the grandfather would have done, and is rewarded with an unusual legacy. It is a story about an incestuous family, with overtones of mind control, or could be seen as a mind control story with a large dose of incestuous sex. Not a lot of sex in this chapter, but it's coming (no pun intended). Votes and comments welcome. Enjoy. Jb7
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I was twelve when my dad died. He was 22 when I was born, just out of college. He went to work in his dad's business--multi-line insurance-- and had earned his CLU and broker's license by the time he was thirty. Gramps had given him a full partnership the year before, the first year he made the Million Dollar Club.
That same year, Gramps had taken out a $1M life insurance policy on him, naming the agency as the beneficiary, and insisted Dad take out one naming me and Mom. Both of them carried double indemnity clauses in case of accidental death.
Mom worked for Gramps, too, as the office manager. She held an agent's license so she could handle renewals on non-life policies, and accept premium payments or policy changes along with other related detail work. Her license probably wasn't strictly necessary, but Gramps insisted, just to be safe, he said. I don't think there was ever a problem, but it was useful and necessary after the accident.
My little sister, ten at the time, was going to camp for the summer and needed a couple of items from the out door store. Dad had driven her. On their way home from the mall, a speeding charter bus, full of tourists headed for the Falls, skidded through a red light, hitting them in the shotgun door. The police investigating the accident told us Judy probably died on impact.
Dad survived for a little over a week----long enough for us to get to see him while he was conscious. The last thing he said to me--"William Henry, (that told me what he was about to say was important. He only used my middle name when it was important or I had done something really bad) you are the man of the house now," he said, gripping my arm around my elbow. "You take care of your Mom. Whatever she needs, whatever she wants you to do, understand?" He gave my arm a squeeze, and it felt like he hit my funny bone--that feeling like an electric shock, you know.
With a lump in my throat, I nodded. "Say it," he said. "Tell me you understand; that you're going to do it for me."
"I understand, Dad. I'll take care of Mom. Whatever she needs or wants me to do--I'll take care of it."
"Good boy; good man," he said, gripping my hand. He closed his eyes then and went to sleep. Mom, Gramps and I stood around and waited a few minutes, then slowly left the room. I glanced back at Dad one last time as I went out the door. I saw him once more before he died. He was talking to Gramps, gripping his arm really hard. I heard him say, "When he's ready; promise me."
Gramps nodded, and repeated, "When he's ready."
I'm not sure how all that affects the story I'm about to tell you, but I thought you should know the situation which led up to my conversation with Gramps just before he passed on.
The next nine years just kind of slipped by, the way they tend to do. I did okay at school after adjusting to the loss. I didn't really need to study much; things just seemed to come easily to me.
Mom continued at the agency, handling all the walk-in business when all five agents, including Gramps, were out of the office. She even managed to sell a couple of life and medical policies each year, as well as several auto and home contracts. She also supervised the clerks and the receptionist.
Not that we needed the money. Under the conditions of the partnership agreement Gramps had written for Dad, Mom was entitled to half the proceeds from the company's insurance on Dad, in return for the share of the agency she inherited. Knowing how difficult it was going to be to replace him, she settled for $500K. Gramps wanted her to take all of what she had coming, but with the $2M from Dad's personal insurance and the $7.5M from the bus company, we didn't need any more.
I suppose we could have moved into a tonier neighborhood, but we both liked where we lived, so we stayed put, not even buying better cars or any of the other outward signs of wealth. Sometimes, Mom talked about changing jobs, or stopping work, but it was just talk--idle dreaming. The few times we went on a trip for a vacation, it was to go with Gramps, Gramma and Nana, Mom's mom.
On those trips, each of the adults made sure they spent at least one day alone with me, exploring whatever city or park we were visiting. Even in my later teen years, I never had the feeling that I was being handled, or that they were trying to hide something from me.
When I was old enough, I went to work at the Agency, as a clerk; part time during the school year, and full time over the summers. That schedule continued until I turned twenty-one, my junior year in college; then I was old enough to get an agent's license. I think that year I must have set some kind of record. I averaged eight to nine policies a week, selling to senior college students, and even some of the faculty members. They weren't huge policies, five or ten grand each. Gramps, I think was impressed. Sometimes I would catch him looking at me, rubbing his arm where Dad had been gripping it.
Just before I graduated from college, Gramps had been diagnosed with the aggressive form of prostate cancer and was supposed to be taking it easy. One Friday, I was delivering my latest bunch of sales reports and applications. Gramps was in the office and said we needed to talk, privately, and asked me to follow him home. . I followed him and caught up to him in his study.
Gram was there, and he asked her to make us some coffee. As she headed to the kitchen, he said to her, "Rose, I need to speak to the lad, man to man. Best if you're not here. And don't listen outside; we're going to be talking about you."
When she was gone, he turned to me and said, "Sit down, Will. What I have to say to you is important." I found a chair and sat down. "Do you remember the promise you made to your dad the last time you talked to him?"
"Yeah; I promised to look after Mom, doing whatever she needed or wanted me to do. Why?"
"Because I need you to renew and expand that promise for me. You need to include your grandmothers. Can you do that?"
Puzzled, I nodded. "Sure, Gramps; that shouldn't be a problem."
He looked at me over t he top of his glasses. "Hmph," he snorted, "let me explain what I'm asking, and why." He poured himself a glass of sherry and held up the bottle, asking if I wanted some. I shook my head, and he sat down, looking into the fireplace.
"Back at the end of the Great Depression, in the late '30s, my Ma was working as a housemaid for a businessman named Ward and his family over in Georgetown. The wife was sickly, couldn't have children, and, from what Ma said, couldn't be much of a wife most of the time, either. Ma was a fairly attractive young woman, full of life and good humor, and caught the eye of the husband. That wasn't all she caught from him.
"When she told him she was pregnant, he was happy as a pig in shit, and told his wife. She wasn't as happy, but agreed to pay Ma's medical bills and keep her on until the child was born, then she'd adopt the child. It was a boy and they named him after his father's father--Lucas.
"Ward made arrangements for Ma to go to work in one of his stores and kept seeing her. Six or seven months after Luke was born, she caught me. When the wife found out, she was more than a little pissed and made him sell his businesses and home, and they moved out West somewhere. They were gone before I was born.
"During the war, Ma met and married a young Marine. He died on Guadalcanal, but his family took her in and helped support her, treating me just as if I was their true grandchild.
"Ward had insisted on enlisting at the beginning of the war and made it into the Air Corps. During the war, Luke and his ma moved back to Georgetown to be close to her family. As it happened, they settled on the same block as me and Ma. Luke and I were close enough in age that we became good friends without knowing our true relationship.
"His ma was kind of cool toward me when she learned who Ma was, but accepted the situation as some kind of weird fate, and even had us over for a picnic a few times. Ward stayed in the service after the war and saw some action in Korea. He wasn't home much, and I never really met him. He did get home for Luke's eighteenth birthday, but his flight back to Hawaii disappeared in a storm they had tried to fly over."
Gramps stopped and looked at me. "Have you guessed who Luke was?" he asked.
"Mom's dad was named Luke. Is that..."
"That's right. We didn't find out we were brothers until...well, until your ma was pregnant with you. Luke went off to college and got married to a girl still in high school. I went into my step-grand dad's insurance business and married Rose, who was a clerk there.
"Luke came home and went into business. We picked up as if there hadn't been any time apart. The girls became good friends, and we all became like family. Luke seemed to be a natural salesman, able to sell anything to anyone. It was the '60s and sex was in the air. He convinced the girls to try swapping one weekend, and it soon became a regular occurrence, but never outside the four of us.
"Pretty soon, Rose wanted to start a family. I couldn't. A teenage case of mumps...She had noticed how much Luke and I resembled each other, and on one of our swapping dates, which she had planned with Bess to fall during her mid cycle week, she left her diaphragm in her dresser drawer.
