Brother and Sister by Edwin West

please! It’s Paul you want to talk to, not me.” All at once she was crying, not having known that she was going to cry, not wanting to cry, not wanting Uncle James to see her so weak and defenseless. “Talk to Paul,” she wailed. “Talk to Paul and leave me alone!”
     
    But her tears, unplanned and unwanted though they might have been, finally turned the trick. Uncle James hesitated, glared around at the living room and retreated. “I’ll come back tomorrow,” he said, less loudly and less belligerently. “I’ll come back tomorrow and see your brother.”
     
    “Do what you want,” she sobbed. She turned away from him, burying her head in her arms. “Do what you want. I don’t care. Just leave me alone.”
     
    “I thought you were the one with sense,” he said. “I th ought we could talk together. I-- I’II come back tomorrow.”
     
    He slammed his hat on his head and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him.
     
    She remained where she was for a long while after he’d gone. Her crying subsided and she stretched out on the sofa, her head buried in her arms, too exhausted -- both physically and emotionally-- to move.
     
    Why did Uncle James have to be like this? There wouldn’t be any problem at all if he would just leave them alone. She and Paul, the two of them together here-- they got along so well.
     
    Maybe they just ought to give him the house. The lawyer, Mr. McDougall, had said something about Uncle James making a settlement for maybe half of the value of the house. Maybe they just ought to take it and move to an apartment in the city some place. That way, they wouldn’t always have him snapping at their heels.
     
    But she knew she would never be able to suggest such a thing to Paul. She understood that the house was the most important thing in Paul’s life, that he would do anything to keep it, and that he would never forgive her if she so much as mentioned the idea of giving it up and living somewhere else.
     
    She couldn’t understand the depth and intensity of his feeling about the house, but she did acknowledge that the depth and intensity were there. And she had no desire to test them by disagreeing with him on the subject.
     
    Thinking of Paul, she remembered the other night when they had gone out together to celebrate his discharge. She remembered their good-night kiss.
     
    It was not the way a brother kisses a sister. He had kissed her the way Bob kissed her, the way a man kisses a woman. But better than Bob-- far, far better and much more exciting. She had felt the same stirring within her that had made itself known the night she had almost gone to bed with Bob. This time, however, the stirring was stronger, and she had been afraid to go upstairs with him, afraid that she wouldn’t be able to control herself, that she would have made a fool of herself with him.
     
    Except that he had felt the same kind of stirring. She was sure of that. She had sensed it in him then, and it had only served to make her own desire all the more intense.
     
    And that night, in her imagination, her brother’s face had loomed over her again, her brother’s body had, in make-believe, lain atop hers. She hadn’t been able to stop that make-believe. She hadn’t wanted to stop it.
     
    But nothing had happened since, either in reality or in imagination. Since that night, they had acted as though nothing at all had happened between them.
     
    But something had happened. They had both felt it. They had both been aware of it. And in a strange kind of way, though she was frightened of what had grown between them that night and was repelled by it, still she was fascinated and glad that it had happened. She couldn’t completely rid herself of the hope that it would happen again.
     
    During the hours after James left, while she was waiting for Paul, she thought of Uncle James, the house and her parents and she thought of Paul.
     
    Not once did she think of Bob.
     
    ***
     
    Paul