Hello again! This one turned out to be another long one. I hope you enjoy!
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All characters are over the age of 18
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It broke my heart when my brother Angus and his wife Carol died in that car crash. I was at home when I got the phone call, my elderly mother sobbing on the other end of the line, almost incomprehensible with grief. I went numb. They were gone.
I felt so terrible. He was my older brother by five years and I had always looked up to him. We were not in contact much these past years, him staying in our home town out west and myself and my wife having moved to a big city in the East.
Still, we would talk on the phone every few months and every couple of years one of us would make the trek across the country for a visit. In fact he was due to bring his wife and 18 year old daughter, Miley, to stay at my place in a few months. With the Pandemic, it had been three years since I had seen them in person.
It had been sudden. The two of them were traveling down one of the narrow two lane highways around our home town and, coming around the bend, had hit a semi truck head on. The driver of the truck had dozed off and let his rig wander over the line.
I spent the next few days preparing, as best I could over the phone, arrangements for the funeral. My father had died years ago and my mother lived in a long term care facility. She was in ok shape but setting this all up was beyond her at this time.
With his wife passed on I was executor of his will, but I knew Angus and knew that he would have had everything arranged. The major issue was his daughter.
Miley was 18 years old, and had recently graduated from high school. She was primed to go to a university out west, but obviously things were complicated now.
"Wait," my wife, Allie, said one evening after I had hung up the phone after talking to a funeral home. "Who is Miley's godparents? Is it us?"
I thought for a moment.
"Yeah," I said. "I think we are. I haven't thought about that in a long time."
"Do you know what that means?" Allie asked me.
"I think we were supposed to guide her in her way to god or something? I guess we never did much of that."
"Well yeah," she said. "But it also means that if something happened to the both of them, we are responsible for her. Like we are supposed to take care of her."
"Really?" I asked. "I was like, 25 when she was born. We had just gotten married. You were, what? 23? What were they doing leaving us responsible?"
"I don't know," Allie said and looked down at her hands where she had them clasped on the table in front of her. "I think...maybe we should ask her if she wants to come stay with us. If she wants. For the time being."
"Really?" I asked. It had not occurred to me. I knew that Miley was staying with family friends at the moment, and school and housing would be paid for by a trust her father had set up. It was early July and she had just graduated.
I looked at Allie. We had never had children of our own. When she was a teen she had gotten in a bad accident that almost killed her. She obviously survived but her reproductive system had been destroyed. We knew that going into our relationship and had decided that if we wanted kids we would adopt.
The time had never seemed right. We were both successful in our careers and enjoyed our lives. Now that I was 43 and she was 41 we knew that we were not going to anything about that.
"Would you want that? I don't know if she would want to move here, but even if she did, would you want that?" I asked.
Allie looked around the room. We had a nice house in a neighborhood just off of downtown. She was a lawyer and I did management consulting for a big firm. We had plenty of money and had paid over a million dollars for the house. It's all relative, of course. In my home town a house like this might cost you 100,000. Here you paid for living in the big city.
"This place has always been too big for the two of us. Four bedrooms. What do we need that for? It might be nice to have someone else around. And I feel so bad for her. She has gone through so much loss. I want to help her out."
I could not argue. I nodded.
"I'll talk to her," I said. "I'll see what she wants to do with her life. She's an adult now."
"Ok. Try to convince her. For the summer at least. I think its for the best."
The next day I gave Miley a call.
"Hey, Uncle Eric," she said when she answered.
"Hey, Miley," I said, a bit unsure how to speak to a young woman who was going through what she was. "How are you holding up?"
"Oh," she said, her voice quiet, "you know. I'm getting through. The Smiths are being very kind. I'm looking forward to see you and Auntie Allie."
"We are both looking forward to seeing you too," I promised. "We will be there tomorrow. Look, we have been talking and we were wondering, and no pressure if this doesn't sound good to you, but...how would you like to come back to the city here with us? To stay for a while?"
There was silence on the phone for a few moments. I realized that I could hear her quietly weeping on the other end of the line.
"Oh, shit," I said, starting to panic. "Don't cry! I'm sorry! You don't have to at all! I'm sorry I mentioned it."
"It's not that," she said, through her tears. "It's, I mean, yes. I'd love that. I was hoping you would say that but I was afraid to ask!"
"Oh, Miley, sweetheart," I said. "You don't need to be afraid to ask me anything! I promise that me and my aunt will be there for anything you need or want! We can figure anything out. School, whatever. But we have the space and a room for you here. For as long as you would like."
"I can't wait to see you in person and thank you!" She said. I was smiling. It looked like it was all going to work out.
Allie was delighted with the news. She gave me a big hug and a kiss.
"This will be great," she promised. "It'll be a bit like we have our own daughter!"
"Be careful," I warned her. "She just lost her parents. We don't want to seem like we are trying to replace them."
"Of course!" Allie exclaimed. "Let's finish getting ready."
+++++
We left very early and arrived late in the afternoon. I had rented a car and we drove out to the small town I was born and raised in.
It was always strange, returning to my home town. It was a pretty little village, surrounded by forests and farmlands. I could pick out farm fields that we passed that I had worked on as a young man, before leaving to go to school.
I had hated it there. I was always bored and did not really fit in. I read books, loved movies and the theatre and made art. The other people around me either regarded me as some kind of weird joke or tried to bully me.
Angus protected me from the worst. He always looked out for me. He would fight anyone who tried to harm me, and his size and popularity set him apart and above most others in town.
Angus never left. He got a college degree and went to work for one of the grain elevators, buying and selling grain. He made a nice life for himself, but not one I could have ever done myself.
Finally we arrived at the home he had built for his family. It was large, much larger than my own, and I remembered several happy Christmases that we had all spent there, Allie and I having traveled to join his family.
The long looped driveway was full of cars. I knew that Angus had been popular around town so the house was flooded with cousins and friends.
I parked and made my way into the crowds in Angus' house. I nodded to the few people I recognized but was searching the room for Miley. I couldn't seem to spot her.
Allie saw her first and left my side and crossed towards her. My niece was standing by a wall, a cup of coffee in her hand, talking to some old woman. Allie interrupted them and caught her up in a hug.
It was no surprise that I had not recognized my niece. The last time I had seen her she was 15. She had been rail thin, with wire framed glasses and braces. She had been vivacious and talked a lot. She had, it seemed, grown up into a woman in the three short years that had passed.
I could not help but compare my wife and her when they stood side by side. Allie had always been a beautiful woman. She was tall and thin. She had been on the swim team in high school and still swam laps every morning at the local pool before work. She was wearing a simple black dress. It was shapeless, but fell perfectly around her on the way that only an expensive designer dress can. I knew, from long experience, that under that dress she had an athletic body with small, b-cup breasts.
Allie never wore much makeup, having a naturally pretty face, so she looked, as always very fresh and natural. Her hair was black, with a few streaks of silver that she refused to dye away. It was straight and thick and fell past her shoulders when she did not have it done up in a bun like she did today.
While she was 41, she looked ten years younger than that. She looked like the cool, urban, professional lady she was.
Miley, on the other hand, made me stop and stare for a moment. She had always been a cute kid, but somehow she had blossomed into a beautiful young woman.
She was wearing a black dress that came down to her knees. It was very respectful, almost drab, but it could do nothing to hide how she had grown up. Her waist was small, but her hips were wide, and the skirt did not obscure the roundness of her ass. Above the trim waist was a set of tits that must have been stupendous. Even in that dress they were clearly very large. Her face was no longer that of a child. Her braces were gone, and her wire framed glasses had been replaced with stylish ones with thick black rims. Her face was oval, with slightly plump cheeks. She was wearing minimal makeup, but her lips were still plump. Her nose was small and slightly turned up. Her eyes were blue like mine and her father's and her hair was a honey blond that fell to her shoulders in waves.
I felt guilty eyeing her up. Even if she had not had this tragedy happen to her, she was my niece! But nothing could stop me from noticing how sexy she had become. I shook my head, clearing it, and she made eye contact with me.
She smiled and crossed the room towards me. My wife followed, but I only had eyes for Miley. She opened her arms and I brought her in for a hug. She seemed to melt into me, pressing herself hard against me. I was a monster, I felt, but I could not help but enjoy the feeling of her large breasts pressed against my chest.
"It's so good to see you, Uncle Eric!" she said, not breaking the hug, but looking up at me. Her eyes were the colour of the sky on a hot summer day. I could imagine many men would get lost in them.
"You too, Miley. I'm so sorry for everything," I said, finally breaking the hug. "This... this sucks."