It’s a dark story. May had a younger sister, June, who she was very competitive with, as sisters are sometimes wont to be. The two girls were always trying to one-up each other. May was older and had more maternal instincts whereas June was more vivacious and a bit of a party girl. May married Ben while June was flitting from boyfriend to boyfriend.
May always wanted children but was incapable of getting pregnant. Her dream was to have a family but as much as she and Ben tried it never happened. June on the other hand made of for what May lacked. She kept waking up next to strangers after drunken parties. Thank God for the Plan B pill! She even got pregnant a couple times and got an abortion (the pharmacy was out of Plan B). She would brag about this to May. This started to eat at May. It felt like cosmic injustice that she, who wanted a child so badly could not get pregnant and June, who wanted everything BUT a child was capable of not only conceiving but getting rid of the baby before it was born. June was certainly one-up on May!
But Fate (or Republicans) stepped in. The state passed a law that abortion was no longer allowed except in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life was at stake. May saw her chance. She started attending a couple of parties with June to meet some of the people in her circle. She noticed June was attracted to one particular guy, Peter Johnson, who was, as best as May could determine, a nerdy bad boy. She saw her chance. At the next party, she started working on getting June really drunk and then put her in close to Peter. When she saw them heading for the bedroom, she ran out to the pharmacy (there was only one…it was a small town) and bought up all the Plan B they had.
As she had hoped, the next day June went running to the pharmacy but came back pissed off. All she (June) could do was to hope she hadn’t gotten pregnant. No such luck. She was dejected. Her life was now going to change and, as she saw it, not for the better. As she progressed through the pregnancy, she became more bitter and obnoxious, eventually losing her job because she chased customers away. She started getting deeper into debt and was faced with eviction when May suggested June move in with Ben and her. May started planting seeds of the idea that June should start pushing Peter Johnson to start paying her support for the child when it was born. June thought this was a great idea.
Time passed and eventually the baby was born, a boy. May suggested she name the baby “Peter” after his father. Things between June and Peter Johnson were not going well. Neither was very bright and both were trying desperately to avoid the responsibility of parenthood. They had some spectacular arguments before the baby was born and had only stepped it up a notch when the baby was born. May had suggested June take him to court to get child support, which she did. May then suggested that June take the summons for court to Peter herself to get the satisfaction of seeing his face as she one-upped him. What a great idea! She headed that way immediately.
This was the chance May was waiting for. She grabbed a gun she had bought at an estate sale (times were easier then), and followed June over to Peter’s house. She heard them yelling at one another so she knocked on the door and went on in, not waiting for an answer. She started calming the fight down, working her way closer to Peter. When she was close enough she put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. June was stunned that her prim and proper sister would do such a thing. That stun turned to horror when May turned the gun on her and pulled the trigger. The horror only lasted a moment as the bullet hit her right between the eyes. May then wiped the gun off and stuck it in Peter’s dead hand, making sure there were plenty of his finger prints on it. She then called 911 and frantically reported the murder-suicide that had just happened right in front of her.
Her performance was very convincing. But then she always had enjoyed theater in school. So with June now gone and there being no other relatives, when she suggested to Ben that they adopt baby Peter he readily agreed. He had no knowledge of her part in making baby Peter an orphan.
That is how Uncle Ben and Aunt May ended up raising Peter. And every time she heard someone call him “Peter”, she got a little giggle inside remembering how it came to be.
