"Your brother hasn't been the only one to change," Creagon said. "My sister has done her share of changing, too, over the years. And her change has been anything but for the better, I assure you."
"Changed?" Marne asked curiously. Marne hadn't seen Melissa all that much over the years; but, Marne could certainly see no change having occurred.
"Oh, she hasn't changed since you've known her," Creagon said, automatically sensing the direction Marne's mind had taken. "It happened a good many years before you or your brother came into the lives of we Davenports."
Marne waited patiently for her husband to go on. After a good minute, though, she wasn't sure he was going to. Creagon's eyes had that faraway look, as if he had left Marne in mind if not in body.
"You'd probably never believe that my sister was once as different from what she is now as night is from day, would you?" Creagon asked finally, his voice seeming to come from far, far away.
"How different?" Marne asked during another long pause that seemed to give indication that there was going to be no further interruptions from her husband.
"Oh… just different," Creagon said, noncommittally, seemingly coming back from wherever it had been that had momentarily claimed him.
But, Marne wasn't willing to leave it at that.
"You'd rather not talk about it, right?" Marne asked, figuring that was the best way to get things out if Creagon had any inclination whatsoever to carry the conversation further.
"Yea, maybe I'd better not talk about it," Creagon replied, a little sadly.
And Marne wasn't going to press the point further. She had learned long ago that you didn't get anything out of a man-especially out of Creagon-by prying it out. When Creagon was ready to let it come, it would flow out easily enough.
"I guess it's a bit painful, because I've always kind of blamed myself for what happened to my sister. Oh, not what happened," Creagon added quickly to correct a possibly misplaced emphasis, "but for what happened afterwards."
Marne waited. She hadn't really made heads or tails out of any of this yet; and, for one of the few times, she didn't really have any inkling.
There was another lengthy pause.
"When you and John were kids, did you ever… like… well… fool around with each other?"
Marne remembered that it had only been but a few minutes earlier that she had been remembering her rather inept attempt to seduce John.
"Funny you should mention that," Marne said with an accompanying laugh, "because, while at the window awhile ago, I was thinking of the time I tried to save John from a fate I thought was worse than death. My plan, of course, was to get him into bed with me."
"Really?" Creagon asked, his attention obviously caught.
Marne could tell that Creagon was anxious for her to go on, and, there really wasn't all that much more to tell.
"Well, you know how he was when you met him," Marne said. "I thought maybe he'd turn queer if he didn't get a little pussy. You know, he was damned good looking even then, in a funny, uncoordinated sort of way. And, I figured he needed a little taste of cunt before the boys got to him. And, since I had been told by more than one kid on the block that I had the best pussy in miles…"
Creagon couldn't help laughing. He'd known Marne was no virgin when he'd married her. He hadn't cared any more than she had cared that he had fucked a few hundred women before he had gotten around to plowing his blood-engorged cock up her hair-fringed pussy.
"And?" Creagon asked, wondering just what the outcome of this amusing little anecdote was going to be.
"And, my brother was duly horrified, to say the very least," Marne said, giving an accompanying giggle. It all sounded so ludicrous. "But I was determined. I mean, in those days, the worst thing that could happen to a girl was having it get around that her brother was a fairy."
"And John fucked you?"
"Actually he persuaded me he had already started fucking Emily Peterson. I don't think I would have believed him, even then; but, he seemed to have a pretty thorough knowledge of just where Emily's birthmark was and what it looked like."
"And that was as close as the two of you ever came?"
"That's it. We really weren't all that close, you know? I was always out having one hell of a good time; he was always off somewhere with a book."
"Melissa and I were very close-once," he said.
And Marne didn't know why she found that revelation so surprising. Most likely she did because she couldn't imagine anyone being close and not seeing each other but two or three times during a fifteen-year span-especially in a modern age of planes. And if they hadn't visited with each other in person, there had always been the telephone. Marne couldn't think of a time that she had heard Creagon and Melissa on the phone, talking together.
"Melissa used to be so gay and full of life," Creagon said, his voice again holding tinges of sadness. "My father sapped all of that out of her, leaving her a beautiful facade with nothing much inside."
Little clicks began going off inside of Marne's mind as she felt pieces of the jigsaw suddenly beginning to fall into place.
"You and Melissa?" Marne asked, wondering if it were possible. Frankly, Marne sometimes found it impossible to picture Melissa in John's bed. Now naked and with Creagon?
"Did you never wonder why I left home, why my father disowned me?" Creagon asked, knowing full well that his wife had indeed wondered but had kept from asking only out of respect for her husband's personal privacy. But, had Marne never really suspected the reason-the real reason for the break? Or, had Creagon gone around with his guilt for so many years that he thought it stood out on him like a blinking neon sign?
"I knew you'd probably eventually tell me," Marne said. "But never once did I even think to guess that it was because of anything you and your sister might have done."
"We began by playing around harmlessly like kids will," Creagon said, warming up to the subject now that he'd started. "This house is a mighty big place, as you can well see. Melissa and I had tutors but few kids our own age to play with. Mother was dead. Father was always away on business. We two children had to make up our own ways to amuse ourselves."
Creagon paused, carefully looking at his wife, trying to read how she was taking this. He thought he knew her well enough by now to suspect Marne wasn't about to come on with any ridiculous condemnations of incest. Marne was very much like Creagon, very easily able to cast aside any and all taboos that might stand between her and a good time. Wasn't she? Hell, yes! Hadn't Marne already admitted that the only thing that had kept her from fucking with her brother had been the fact that he was too painfully shy, and she was too busy fucking up a storm elsewhere to really press the matter?
"Do you find any of this particularly shocking?" Creagon asked. In spite of his thinking he knew the answer, he wanted his wife's verbal assurance. Because, Creagon had long since convinced himself that what he and Melissa had done had really not been all that shocking… sinful… or degenerate at all.
"The only thing I find shocking is that I somehow never suspected Melissa of such sexual daring."
"But you did expect it of me?"
"Come now, Creagon," Marne said, tapping her finger playfully against her husband's chin. "You know what I mean. You remind me of me-and you always have. Melissa has always reminded me of John-or, rather of how John used to be. I can see you doing most anything, just as I could see me doing the same. But Melissa? I've always found her a bit on the sedate side, for as long as I've known her."
"Father never let her forget what we'd done," Creagon said.