What We Inherited

The drive home was only a few minutes. It felt longer.

Every red light gave me too much time to sit with the deep, hollow ache where her hand had been. My panties were already damp again. I hated that detail more than anything else. By the time I parked in our driveway my jaw hurt from clenching it.

I sat in the car for another minute after I killed the engine, forehead against the wheel, before I finally made myself get out. I had to go inside and act like none of it had happened.

Dad was in the kitchen when I came through the door.

He was standing at the counter with a mug of coffee, already dressed in jeans and a Tshirt. The episode was gone. His eyes were clear. When he looked up and saw me, something careful moved across his face.

“Hey,” he said. “Didn’t hear you leave.”

“Couldn’t sleep. Went for a drive.” The lie came out smoother than I expected.

He nodded once, but his gaze stayed on me. I watched him notice the way I was standing, weight shifted off my left leg, shoulders a little too tight. I had tried to walk normally from the car to the door. I didn’t think I succeeded.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“You look like you’re hurting.”

“I’m fine.” I moved past him toward the hallway so he couldn’t keep studying me. “Just tired.”

He didn’t follow. I felt his eyes on my back the whole way to the stairs. When I reached the top I risked a glance down. He was still standing in the same spot, coffee forgotten in his hand, watching the place where I had been with an expression I couldn’t read.

I went into my room and closed the door.

The second it latched I leaned against it and let the careful posture drop. Everything between my legs throbbed in a slow, deep pulse. I could still feel the ghost of Denise’s hand and the thicker ghost of him. Two different kinds of ache stacked on top of each other.

Downstairs I heard the soft sound of a mug being set on the counter.

He knew something was off. He just didn’t know what.

The day moved in small, careful pieces.

I came downstairs again around noon because staying in my room felt worse. Dad was at the kitchen table with a sandwich he didn’t seem interested in. I made one for myself and sat across from him. Sitting down pulled at everything that was still sore. I tried not to let it show on my face.

We ate in silence for a while.

“You sleep okay after your drive?” he asked.

“Yeah. Eventually.”

He nodded and picked at the crust of his sandwich. “I actually slept through the night.” A small, almost embarrassed breath left him. “First good rest in… well, in a long time.”

I kept my eyes on my plate. The lie I had cleaned into his skin that morning sat between us like a third person.

“That’s good,” I said.

“Yeah. It’s been a while.” He glanced at me, then away. “I know it's been a lot. With the funeral. With everything else. I’m trying to keep it together.”

“I know.”

Another stretch of quiet. The refrigerator hummed. Somewhere outside a lawnmower started up.

I stood to put my plate in the sink and felt the deep pull in my ass and the softer ache in my pussy at the same time. My posture must have changed because his voice followed me.

“You sure you’re all right?”

“Just stiff. Guess I didn’t so sleep great after all.”

He accepted it, or at least he let it go. I rinsed the plate and left it in the rack. When I turned he was watching me again, that same careful look from the morning.

“I’m gonna go lie down for a bit,” I said.

“Okay.”

I walked out of the kitchen knowing his eyes were on my back. Every step reminded me of the night he didn’t remember and the morning he would never know about.

Later I heard him move around downstairs, TV on low, the sound of the back door opening and closing once. Normal house sounds. They felt anything but normal.

When evening came he locked his bedroom door the same way he had the night before. The click carried down the hall.

I lay on my bed listening to it, sore and wide awake, replaying the way he had said “I slept through the night” like it was a small miracle.

He thought he had gotten away clean.

I was the only one who knew he hadn’t.

My phone lit up a little after eight.

Denise:

Are you home?

Can you talk?

I stared at the screen longer than I needed to. My stomach tightened. I got up, closed my bedroom door, and called her.

She picked up on the second ring.

“Hey.” Her voice was careful, lower than usual.

“Hey.”

Silence stretched for a second. I could hear her moving around, maybe the kitchen, maybe outside.

“I just wanted to check on you,” she said. “Make sure you’re actually okay after… earlier.”

“I’m fine.”

“Laura.”

“I am. Sore, but fine.”

Another pause. I sat on the edge of the bed and waited.

“I still have it,” she said finally. “The toy. It’s in a bag in my bathroom drawer. I didn’t know what you wanted me to do with it.”

Heat crawled up my neck. I could picture it exactly where I had left it.

“I forgot it,” I said. “I can come get it sometime.”

“Okay.” She sounded relieved and not relieved at the same time. “I just… I keep thinking about how deep it was. And how you reacted when it came out. I want to make sure nothing’s wrong. Like medically.”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

The line went quiet again. I knew what both of us were not saying. The way my body had clamped down and then released all over her arm. The change in her breathing when she had been wristdeep. The long silence after the plug finally came free.

Denise cleared her throat.

“I’m not going to tell Rob. Or anyone. I meant what I said earlier.”

“I know. Thank you.”

“Just take care of yourself, all right?”

“I will.”

“Okay. Goodnight, Laura.”

“Goodnight.”

She hung up first.

I sat there with the phone in my hand, the ghost of her voice still in my ear, and the very clear knowledge that the plug was in her drawer right now. Both of us were going to have to look at each other again knowing exactly what her hand had felt like inside me and exactly how my body had answered it.

I put the phone facedown on the nightstand and lay back on the bed.

The house was quiet. Dad’s door was still locked. My body still ached in the places that belonged to two different people now.

Nothing about any of it felt finished.

I turned the lights off and lay on my back in the middle of the bed.

The house had gone completely quiet. Dad’s door had been locked for hours. No footsteps, no television, nothing. Just the low hum of the air conditioner and the occasional creaking of old wood.

Every time I shifted, the leftover soreness reminded me of the exact shape of him and the exact reach of Denise’s hand. I was empty now, but the memory of being full sat heavy in the tissue.

The guilt came in harder without the panic to drown it out.

Mom had only been in the ground for a couple weeks. And in that time I had fucked up so much, and enjoyed more than I should have. The thoughts sat side by side in my head and made my stomach turn. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes until colors bloomed behind them.

It didn’t help.

Because underneath the guilt, the other feeling was still there. The low, unwanted heat that showed up when I remembered the way his cock had forced the plug higher, or the sound Denise had made when she finally got a grip on it. My body responded to both memories even while my mind tried to shut them down. I hated the reaction. I lay there getting wet again in the dark and felt disgusting for it.

I turned onto my side, then onto my back again. Nothing was comfortable.

The plug was in Denise’s bathroom drawer or somewhere. Dad thought he had slept through the night without any incidents. I was the only person who knew the truth about what was happening in this house.

How long could I keep up the lie?