Vetted Further

by K'Anne Meinel

  “So, why don’t we remove this,” Fey tugged at Allyssa’s shirt suggestively, “and cool you off.”

  “Oh, really?” Allyssa caught on immediately. “But if I remove my shirt, you have to remove yours.”

  “Oh, all right,” she agreed, sounding greatly aggrieved, but the look in her eye told her wife she had gotten her way. Slowly, piece by piece, they removed their clothing, never breaking eye contact as they dared the other to go one piece further, until finally, they stood naked before each other.

  “Ah, that’s better,” Allyssa said, enjoying the feel of being nude in their house before her wife.

  Thinking about how like a wild colt her wife had looked for so long, she was pleased with the added curves her maturing body had added. She couldn’t resist reaching out to touch them, caress them, and delight in the satisfied murmurings she heard coming from her wife.

  “Baby,” she gasped as Fey slowly and firmly pushed her against the living room wall, pulling her leg up and maneuvering her own hip between her legs, rubbing suggestively.

  “Yes, was there something you wanted?” she inquired, trying to keep her voice normal as she tormented her wife, feeling the moisture against her hip and recognizing from her wife’s scent that she was already aroused.

  “I want you,” she admitted, putting her arms around Fey’s shoulders and pulling her in for a passionate kiss while bucking against her. They were soon fucking straight up against the wall and enjoying every moment. Allyssa screamed her pleasure into Fey’s mouth as she came, thrilled with how inventive she had become.

  “What about me?” Fey taunted her as she was tempted to take her wife a second time and knew she could. Allyssa was a passionate creature, and she loved her for it.

  “What about you, indeed?” Allyssa asked as she got her breath back and took her leg down from her wife’s hip. She could feel the come dripping down both of her legs, but she didn’t mind. Slowly, she slid down her wife’s body, kissing it erotically as she used her fingertips to scratch and rub provocatively. When she was kneeling before the brunette, she lifted her face and started nuzzling between her wife’s legs.

  “Hay-zeus,” Fey swore, making it sound Spanish as she slapped both her hands on the wall to keep from falling. She took on the classic cop position, only this time, her legs were spread for her wife’s ministrations.

  Allyssa slurped and licked at the juices that gushed as she tormented her wife, her hands cupping and kneading her wife’s ass to keep her in place. “Mmmm,” she murmured into the folds, loving every moment of this impromptu love fest. She could sense that Fey was highly aroused.

  Fey desperately wanted to cup the back of Allyssa’s blonde head, hold it in place, and grind against her face, but knew if she took one hand off the wall, she would fall. She tried to grind against her anyway, but Allyssa’s hands were on her ass and she loved every moment of the feel of it. Her clit felt like it was about to break off. Allyssa’s mouth felt like fire on it, and she whimpered for release, bearing down, squeezing her Kegels to apply pressure.

  Allyssa could sense Fey’s frustration building, and not wanting to keep the pregnant woman waiting, she brought one hand around to plunge two fingers inside and pleasure her wife.

  “Oh, God,” Fey cried out, feeling the pressure combined with her own squeezing causing her crisis. She came against Allyssa’s face, bucking and grinding as Allyssa wrung it all out of her.

  “That sounded like a religious experience,” Allyssa teased, reminding her that she had called out to God and Jesus.

  “It felt like it, babe,” she said, taking the naked blonde into her strong arms and holding her there. “It felt like it.”

  * * * * *

  “What are you doing today?” Fey asked the next morning as she drank hot chocolate. She had given up coffee for the duration of her pregnancy.

  “I’m going to clean out the mobile home before Buddy gets here. I hope they are nice people. What kind of name do you think Althea is?’

  “I’m sure it’s probably a family name. It’s certainly old-fashioned. And I bet Buddy is a nickname.”

  “Hey, I just remembered your father asking if we went through that trunk he gave us?”

  “Oh, jeez. I forgot about it. I put it in the front hall closet to get it out of the way. We should go through it tonight.”

  “If you make it back. Aren’t you going over to the Sorensons for inoculations?”

  “Yeah, but I’m hoping this year they don’t keep me waiting. I should just leave if they haven’t brought all their cattle in.”

  “You just be careful they don’t crush you,” she warned, pointing at her stomach warningly.

  “Yeah, and if I have to go back that would be a good lesson for our interns.”

  They discussed their usual morning subjects, then Fey went off in the RV and Allyssa grabbed cleaning supplies. She waved to Renee, who opened the office in preparation for answering the phones for both the clinic and the rescue. They’d found they needed a separate phone for the rescue after people got confused about who they were calling.

  The mobile home was hot, and Allyssa opened all the windows to remove the fumes of the cleaning supplies. She was using citrus. It left a fresh, clean smell, and she liked it. She was nearly done cleaning when she suddenly felt an overwhelming wave of heat. The next thing she knew, she woke up laying on the floor of the kitchen several hours later. Cautiously, she got up and checked the time. Realizing the passage of time, she worried that she had fainted. She couldn’t remember fainting before. She gingerly felt her body parts, but nothing hurt, so at least she hadn’t broken anything. She saw where she had left off, completed her cleaning efforts, then shut the windows to trap the clean, fresh smell and left the mobile home carrying her supplies. She decided she needed to eat and get a cold glass of water.

  “Hey, there. We’re getting a fountain,” Renee said from where she was watching the 4-Hers and their artist installing the nearly life-sized horse he had created within a circular fountain. It was high enough that nothing could just fall in and beautiful enough they could promote it. Already, the ducks and geese had shown an interest in the circular part of the fountain…even without the water. “I will paint the concrete blue, so it looks cerulean blue,” he told them passionately. Right now, it was messy with the concrete and the horse looking out of place on the dirt.

  “Just so long as he uses solar panels to power that,” Allyssa cautioned, grinning as she headed up to the house. The enthusiasm of their artist and the kids helping him was amusing. She glanced up at the hot sun, feeling a hot flash and not relishing the feeling. She wouldn’t tell Fey about the loss of consciousness; she didn’t need to worry her.

  She was eating a sandwich when Fey got home. She’d already pulled the trunk out of the front closet, the weight of it causing the heat flashes she was experiencing to reoccur and her eyes to swim. She only got it partway into the living room.

  “What the hell?” Fey swore as she nearly tripped over the trunk. “What’s this doing here?”

  “I put it there,” Allyssa called from the kitchen. “I didn’t want us to forget to go through it.”

  “Not likely when it’s in the way like that,” she muttered. She scooted it out of the way slightly before joining her wife in the kitchen. “Sandwiches again?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t want to heat up the kitchen with a full meal. The garden gave us all this lettuce and cucumbers and tomatoes, so we are having BLTs without the B.”

  “BLTs are not BLTs without the B,” Fey pointed out, laughing at her wife. She went to get her own plate and make a sandwich.

  “You want toasted or plain?” Allyssa quickly asked.

  “Toasted, and I want the B,” she said, looking into the fridge to find some bacon. She put the bacon on a microwave-safe plate, then placed paper towels above and below the rashers to catch the grease. She put the plate into the microwave and set the timer. “How was your day?” she asked as Allyssa popped two pieces
of white bread in the toaster.

  “Got the mobile home cleaned for our guest,” she told her, but she didn’t mention she had returned to the house to take a cold shower and nearly passed out again when she pulled the trunk from the closet.

  “I’m sure he will appreciate it. Was it very dirty?”

  “Nope. They kept it nice, and I got the new sheets on the bed for him, so it’s all set.”

  “I look forward to having the help. Trying to inoculate calves without getting physical is nearly impossible.”

  “Did you do it?”

  “Yes, but I have to go back. They didn’t have them all in as I requested,” she said, exasperated. Some farmers and ranchers didn’t think ahead, and they wasted the veterinarian’s time. “Make sure you charge him for both trips, and maybe he’ll listen to me next time.”

  Allyssa grinned and then jumped up when the toast popped, handing both slices to Fey to apply butter or mayonnaise. And just then, the microwave beeped that it was finished as well. She watched her wife make a BLT and add the cucumbers to her sandwich.

  “Wish we had pickles. Any of these cukes small enough?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t plant pickles, but I’ll remember to pick some up at the store.” She didn’t like pickles but would pick them up if Fey reminded her. After their late lunch/early dinner, they put the dishes in the dishwasher, cleaned up the kitchen, and began to look through the trunk. Allyssa grabbed the pictures, looking at her wife through the years. In some pictures, she saw a much younger Keith Herriot holding his daughter. For the first time, she saw a clear photo of Fey’s mother standing proudly with Keith. “Your mother looks just like you. She’s beautiful,” Allyssa said, showing the picture to Fey.

  Fey had a distracted look on her face. She had already started in on the journals, finding someone had numbered them for ease of reference. They also had dates on them, starting in the 1840s. She had been frowning thoughtfully as she read one of the first journals.

  “What is it? Hard to read? Faded?” she asked her wife, looking at the journal she was holding.

  “No, it’s like copper script. It’s perfect. Both my great-grandmother and great-grand…father wrote them from their perspectives. Excuse me a moment. I have to call my father.”

  Surprised, Allyssa watched as her wife picked up the house phone to dial her father’s number.

  “Hello? May I talk to my father please?” she asked respectfully. She listened a moment and then said. “I understand, Rosemary, but that wasn’t our intention. Could you put my father on the phone please?” She listened some more. It was obvious Rosemary wasn’t happy and was taking it out on Fiona while she had the opportunity. “No, I don’t agree with you. Would you please put my father on the phone?” Instead, Rosemary chose to continue her tirade, which even Allyssa could hear across the living room. Finally, Fiona had had enough. “No, I don’t believe you have a friggin’ clue what you’re talkin’ about. Put my goddamned father on the phone and shut the hell up! It’s none of your business if we choose to have children, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.” She hung up the phone, feeling enormous satisfaction from finally telling her stepmother how she felt, and then, she realized why she had called her father in the first place.

  “Are you okay?” Allyssa asked cautiously, wondering what was so all-fired important that Fey had called her father and put up with Rosemary’s toxic tirade.

  “Yeah, I’m just curious about…” The phone rang, and she answered it. “Hello? Oh hi, Dad. Yeah, I’m real sorry Rosemary’s feelings got hurt. No, I won’t apologize to her…ever! When were you going to tell me my great-grandparents were lesbians?”

  Allyssa could have stopped breathing at that moment. That question had her staring at her wife in shock. She was barely able to get her slack jaw closed as she tried to fathom what her wife was saying.

  “Uh huh. Yeah. I see that, but you could have…Why didn’t you…? But that’s years ago. You could have–” She went on, only getting in snatches of questions and statements as Keith tried to explain, and she finally, just listened. “You don’t think…?” she continued, and after another five minutes of listening to her father, she finally said, “Okay, I’ll read them. I get it. But I think you could have given them to me ten years ago.” She listened some more before nodding and saying, “Yeah, Dad. I understand. Thank you.” She hung up the phone and stood staring out the front window as she thought for a while.

  “Fey? What?” Allyssa asked, shocked by her opening statement to her father.

  “Apparently, my great-grandparents were lesbians,” she turned to tell her wife. “I didn’t realize their five children were adopted. I knew my family came from Ohio on a wagon train, but I didn’t know the details. Apparently, they were two women, who adopted five children and raised them as man and wife. My father felt it was time I learned this tidbit about my ancestors.”

  “Is that the story in these journals?” she asked, reaching for the one Fiona had put down.

  “Yes, hers and hers. He didn’t want Rosemary to know, so he didn’t let her read them, but when you lost your baby he remembered the trunk. He’d found them when he was young, and his father had given them to him for safekeeping. He wanted us to read them because he thought they would help us.”

  “Wow, could you imagine being gay back then?”

  “I know. Now, I want to read them. Damn! He could have given them to me twelve years ago or more. I think this story might have helped me when I came out.”

  “Maybe we need this now,” she said softly, then asked, “What’d Rosemary say?”

  “Oh, some choice tidbits about lesbians having children out of wedlock without a man to take care of them and some other nonsense.”

  “I bet that pissed you off,” she tried to laugh.

  “God, that woman would try a saint,” she said exasperatedly. She looked at the trunk again. There were a lot of journals, and now, she had a different appreciation for them as she reached for the one she had started.

  “Do you mind if I read them?”

  “Of course not. Apparently, my great-grandmother, one Molly Pierce Herriot, started writing them when they were about to embark on their travels from Ohio to Oregon. She was given the first journals by her wife, Erin Herriot, who I always thought was a man. He, or rather she, wrote journals later, explaining her viewpoint. Molly doesn’t hide that she loved and married a woman.”

  “They actually got married?”

  “That’s what this says,” she said, holding up the journal. “Erin tricked a preacher into marrying them. She even got him to backdate the wedding certificate by two years since they’d been living together that long before setting out and adopting the five children.”

  “Holy cow,” she breathed, imagining how that must have come about and anxious to read them too. “Why don’t you start with that first journal and give each journal to me as you finish.”

  “That’s a good idea. Can you find an old-fashioned photo album in town next time you go? I’d like to put all these loose pictures in order in an album.”

  “You bet. That will look fine,” she admitted, pleased to help Fey. She couldn’t wait to read about her wife’s great-grandparents. They sounded like fascinating women. She started rifling through the trunk, organizing the pictures by date. Some of the handwriting on the backs and fronts of the pictures was very old. Later, after reading the journals, she would recognize some of it as belonging to Fey’s great-grandparents. She found their marriage certificate and promised herself she would frame it for their wall.

  Fey could be found reading journals every moment when she wasn’t working. She kept one in a plastic zip top bag in the RV to read instead of popping in a DVD or watching television when she stayed overnight at farms. When the interns arrived and began to go around to farms with her, they both commented that Fey was a bookworm. Allyssa corrected their assumption, explaining that a trunk of family journals had come into her possession recently and she was reading up on her
family lore. She didn’t explain. It wasn’t her place to tell anyone about Fey’s great-grandparents.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “Okay, time to take the vet to her vet,” Allyssa teased. “Got a journal to read?” she asked, knowing it was an unnecessary question. Fey had a journal with her at all times these days, and she was just as bad as Fey. When Fey finished a journal, Allyssa eagerly took it up, keeping it in the plastic bag safe from accidental damage as they both read voraciously. They’d decided to read Molly’s version of events first before starting on Erin’s. The writing was very different but no less distinctive or beautiful. Erin, pretending to be a man to keep her family intact, was every bit as good at penmanship as her wife.

  “Did you make your appointment?”

  “Yes. If you don’t mind waiting, Miss Smarty-pants, I made an appointment at the same time as yours.”

  “How is Leslie going to see us both at the same time?” she countered.

  “Ha, ha, ha,” she answered. “I’m right after you. The clinic understood.”

  Fey grinned, enjoying the teasing as they bantered back and forth. It helped to pass the time as they drove to the clinic for their appointments.

  “Hello, Doctor Herriot, Mrs. Herriot. How are you?” the receptionist greeted them, not batting an eye at their married state after their visits last year. “Doctor will be with you both shortly. She’s finishing up now.”

  They sat in the waiting room. The fish tank always fascinated them but not enough to get one of their own. Fey began to read the journal she was working on, and Allyssa pulled her journal out of her purse to read. They shared a companionable silence, only discussing what they had read after Allyssa finished a section, so Fiona didn’t give anything away and Allyssa could enjoy what she read.

  “Doctor Herriot, Mrs. Herriot, this way please,” the nurse called to them. A couple people in the waiting room looked up, not realizing the two women were married. One frowned slightly as she figured it out, but then, that was her problem not theirs.