All characters engaged in sex acts are eighteen or older.
Home looked the same. It was set way back from the road, and Byron drove me down the tree-lined path just like he had a million times before. He was just like he always had been too, except maybe a little older and with a little whiter moustache. He wore the same newsboy cap and thick glasses. "You happy to be back home, Mr. Trip?" he asked. No matter how many times I told him, he would never just call me Trip. At least he didn't call me Earl, my real name. It was "Trip" because Dad and Grandpa were also Earl, I was the third. He had been delighted with the box of Cuban cigars I had brought him, and the wooden box sat on the passenger seat next to him. I knew he'd be puffing on one just as soon as I was out of the car. Good old Byron.
"Nothing else like it, Byron." Truly I was glad to be back. I had been at the same northeastern university as Dad had gone to, and Grandpa, and Papa, all the way back God knows how far. The tutor mom had hired, Dr. Avery had told us, but I hadn't paid enough attention. We had tormented that poor man. Massachusetts was cold and windy and not at all what I was used to. At least when I summered in St. Croix, the weather had been something like this.
The old house was tucked away north of New Orleans. But both "old" and "house" undersell it. When we came in, the sign proclaimed it "Tremblay Plantation." There were even signs on the road. The house had been in our family since this was French land. I could see it down the path through the evening gloom, even though the rain came down in buckets. It was a grand old building, with white Corithian columns in the front and second and third floor verandas. The Platonic ideal of Southern aristocracy. The portico where the driveway looped had seen horse-drawn buggies unload, even though there were garages for my and Dad's sports cars.. The bedrooms were all on the third floor, and I could make out a light on in one of the bedrooms. Flora's room.
Flora was my little sister. Dad was always gone and Mom was usually gone in spirit, so parenting Flora got split between the nanny Ms. Carol's hard hands and mine. I had called her my Possum before I left.
I know it's a cliche, but money isn't everything. None of us kids had ever wanted for anything. Anything material anyway. We never worried about where our next meal would come from or if we could pay the rent. When Grandpa was in the hospital after his stroke the only thing we had to worry about was if he would ever speak again or even if he would come out alive, not how we were going to pay for it. He never learned to talk again and didn't come out alive anyway. When Flora had asked, Mom had dropped fifty K a piece for three horses. She rode one of them a couple of times and discovered that it terrified her. The horses were now just her pets. Mom had given Louise a credit card when she was way too young for it. She had paid Wilson, our groundskeeper, to pose as her dad, and got her first tattoo at sixteen, a black widow on her collar. Dad had screamed and yelled the first time he saw the tattoo, but Louise never snitched on Wilson, even when she locked herself in her room crying.
My gift was a summer house in St. Croix where I tended bar, fumbling at first and reasonably skilled later on. I shared the house with my cousin, Glad, for several months each summer. That was its own sordid and perverted tale.
Anyway, the point is that even though we had everything handed to us on a silver platter, our emotions starved. We owned land all over the country and overseas and Dad was constantly out running the family business. He barely kept his affairs secret from Mom, including a very suspicious relationship with my other cousin, Chelsea. It was to his infinite disappointment that I had no desire to take it over, studying biology, then history, then Spanish literature in college. At least I could talk to some of the help in Spanish. Wilson was witness to quite a few jokes at Mom and Dad's expense.
The car splashed through puddles in the Louisiana rain. "Again, thank you kindly for the cigars, Mr. Trip."
"Whatever, Byron. Enjoy 'em," I hoped my tone sounded magnanimous rather than dismissive. His shining teeth under his white moustache gave me my answer.
The downstairs windows were blurry from condensation on the outside, but I spotted movement on the second floor landing. Byron stopped under the portico, but I was out before he had a chance to come around and open the door. It was like a game to us, a little bittersweet now that he was this old. Still, he smiled the way he always did. I went over when he popped the trunk, too, but halted when I heard a squealing voice. "Trip!"
I looked and there she was. Flora stood in the doorway, the warm light of the doorway framing her figure. She had only been thirteen when I had left, and she was terrified of starting high school the next year. Now she had just graduated and she had... grown up.
Flora had always been chubby, but that pudge had blossomed and she was all curves now. She wore a pair of overalls with a t-shirt underneath and was barefoot. Her hips were thick now, and her tits strained against her shirt. I couldn't help but stare. She had cut her mousy hair short and it stuck out from her head, only partially contained by a headband and a couple of hair clips, one with a butterfly and the other with a possum. She had put a couple of purple streaks in her hair.
Before I could say anything, she stormed down the stairs in clumsy, unaware bounds, giving me an instant fright. Just as I feared, with a hoot she misplaced a foot at the bottom and fell head over heels into the muddy soil among the bushes to the side of the stairs. I dashed to her rescue. What else could I do?
When I arrived there, she was on all fours, ass in the air. Ample ass. It looked so soft and was delightfully round. At least she had fallen into the mud and not the bricks of the walkway. I came to her, and placed my hands on her side. "Possum, are you ok?"
She turned. Though she had grown, I could see so much of the girl she had been in her face. Her hazel eyes were red and glassy, and mud was smeared down the side of her face, soaking most of her hair. Her cheeks were almost as chubby as I remembered, and to my delight, her freckles hadn't faded with age.
Her lip quivered as she looked up.
Jesus, don't cry.
She seized my leg, using it to pull herself up, and we were standing face to face. Or at least as close as we could get, since I had at least half a foot on her. She stared up at me. "Aww, Possum Pie," I said to her.
Like always, that smile lit her face up, and she gave a sound between a laugh and a sob. "Trip..." she whimpered and pressed herself into me, smearing me with mud. Of course I didn't mind, this was my little Possum. Her entire front was covered mostly with mud, and it clung to her messy hair. She squeezed me so hard I couldn't breathe.
Jumping back, she said, "Oh my God, Trip! I'm so sorry, you're all muddy." A tear streaked through the mud on her face.
"Possum, don't. It's..." I said.
"Sorry, sorry, oh no..." she said, her pawing hands only streaking the muck. And I knew she was going to cry for real.
