When Hunter had left the house seemed to fall silent. Snow fell day after day, insulating our secret from the rest of the world with layers of ice. But inside our hardening igloo, I felt trapped.
Agatha seemed to dog my steps, haunting me with laundry and vacuums and brooms. It seemed to me that wherever I was reading quietly, Agatha found reason to rearrange a bookshelf. Wherever I sat with a coffee, she took a thirst too. I read into every significant glance, every little cough, wondering if she suspected more than she was letting on.
And I avoided Katherine.
Whenever I looked at her, I saw shame. My shame. You shared your daughter, I told myself. You shared your secret. You let him use her.
But if Kat felt anything like shame or regret about what had passed between the three of us that night, she didn’t let on. Two days after Hunter had gone, I found Kat in the laundry room, eyes free of the tears she had spilled for the boy in the drive. She’d hopped up onto the spinning washer and drew me in with two light kisses and a soft whisper.
“Sneak into my room tonight,” she’d said. “I’ll wear these.”
Kat danced a black pair of lingerie before my eyes.
“We have to be more careful,” I breathed back, separating myself from her with an uneasy glance at the closed door. I told her about my encounter with Agatha, but Kat only brushed it off.
“I don’t care anymore,” she said. “If she didn’t catch us then, she won’t.”
Kat reached a hand into my pants to claw at my cock, pressed her lips into my neck. I pulled away again. Her touch at once enthralled and terrified me. And there was the hint of shame. You shared your daughter. You risked everything.
But in Kat’s eyes, there was only a hint of hurt at my rejection.
“When are we going to tell her?” Kat had said, one hand on her belly.
In nothing but a t-shirt and jeans, her pregnancy was obvious to anyone who knew her.
“Soon,” I said, allowing her another guilty, reassuring kiss before I left her there to fold her favorite pair of lace panties.
The longer I put Katherine off, the more she tried to catch me alone, slipping into my morning showers and drawing me into her room to steal a kiss. Her eyes puzzled over me, her mouth twitched as though she wanted to say something but, instead, it worked over my mouth hungrily. Her hands clasped at my pants, my chest. She was ravenous but, hearing the footsteps of my wife everywhere, I would push her away. You shared your daughter. You shared your secret.
The more Katherine pursued me, the more I began to get the impression that she did not feel the same way about what had transpired during Hunter’s visit. I saw her giving secret smiles to her smartphone, texting under the table at dinner. Twice, she called me into her room to find her masturbating, her phone glowing on her nightstand with threesome porn. She liked it.
Once or twice, I could have sworn that I’d heard her soft footsteps cross the hall in the middle of the night, only to patter away again.
Again and again, Kat would find me alone. She’d lock me in the bathroom. She’d follow me out to the barn. Again and again, I wanted to talk to her about what had happened, but I locked up. I pushed her away with fears of Agatha, who was never far behind. And Kat, too, had something hanging on her lips. A subject she had broached with me twice on the first day she’d been home and then not again.
I wouldn’t give her five minutes for fear of Agatha and for fear of Kat. You shared your daughter.
So, instead, I spent my time endlessly clearing snow off the drive, breaking the ice dams that built themselves on our gutters. As the week waned, Agatha’s dogging of my steps took on a purpose – Christmas planning. It would be the first with Kat home and we should do something special.
The planning began. Relatives were called. Recipes were unpacked from long-forgotten cookbooks that hadn’t been opened since Kat’s mother died. We scoured the house, cleaned it as we’ve never cleaned it before. Agatha was on cloud nine throughout the proceedings, but for me, it was only the promise of more eyes, more threats. While I strung lights up around the house, I felt the black pit of fear weighing me down.
As the week of suspicion came to an end, Kat and I were dispatched to find a Christmas tree.
Katherine watched me for the whole drive into town. When we’d gotten into my truck, she’d stripped off the puffy green winter jacket that had become her standard outdoor wear to hide her growing belly. Beneath it, she wore a tight sweater dress that hugged her knees and thick black stockings, revealing the rise in her stomach. The seatbelt divided her breasts, making them appear larger than they actually were. With her eyes locked on me through the pale curtains of her tied-back hair, it was difficult to keep my eyes on the road.
But in the car, we were safe. Or should have been.
Katherine spent most of the ride with a hand on my thigh, fingers curled up as though waiting for mine to intertwine with them. An innocent gesture. Close enough to romantic to catch a wandering eye, but far enough to be brushed away.
Still, I feared every stoplight, every chance to meet a neighbor, a friend of Kat’s from her school days.
At a stoplight, Katherine leaned over for a kiss. She settled for a peck on my cheek and slumped sullenly back into her seat, withdrawing a hand.
“What’s your problem?” she said suddenly, bitingly.
“I…”
I was at a loss for words. I couldn’t put into words what my problem was. I’d never been so afraid of discovery before, afraid to lose her. I looked at her, helplessly, and, for a moment, saw only my daughter. A reflection of her mother. Hurting.
“She isn’t going to catch us out here,” Kat said, still fiery, still my daughter. “So that isn’t it.”
The traffic light turned green. I stared at it, a baffling green moon.
“It’s,” I started. You shared your daughter. Your daughter. “Is what we’re doing – is it wrong?”
The words came out of my mouth unbidden. I had been thinking about that night, about Hunter. But I realized now that there was more.
To my surprise, Katherine laughed.
“Now?” she said. “You’re worried about that now?”
She was her mother again, laughing at my jealousy. She was my daughter, laughing on her horse. She was my Katherine.
A sharp honk brought me back to earth and I put the truck in gear, turning my gaze back to the road.
“It is wrong,” Kat said quietly. “But we’ve made our choice, haven’t we?”
I nodded, eyes still locked determinedly on the road. The feelings that had bloomed in my heart were faded, eased by the virtue of having spoken them. You shared your daughter, a little voice reminded me.
“And I love you,” Kat said. I could feel her eyes still fixed on me. How had it come to the point where she had to comfort me?
I reached over and found her hand, squeezing it for reassurance.
“I love you too,” I said.
~~~
When we found the tree farm, the few miles between us and home had seemed to grow into leagues and leagues. The oppression of suspicion seemed to have been lifted from my bones. I allows myself to circle the car and take Katherine into my arms as she donned her long winter coat to hide her belly.
The air was chilly and smelled faintly of snow and holly. Kat was warm and her breath misty. Our mouths met once, twice, three times. Her tongue passed between my lips and my hands wound down around her waist.
“Wow,” she said when we broke apart. “Where did that come from?”
I smiled at her. It was as though the clouds had parted. Near the checkout window, a younger man looked politely away from us. A family of four trundled down the path with wheelbarrow and ax. No one noticed. No one cared.
We paid our fare and collected our tools and went out searching for a tree. Kat’s hand found its way into mine and we swung it between ourselves.
To me, it was a day like many others, many long past and many I thought gone forever. I was reminded of days when we were still a family when Kat’s hand would have been her mother’s long, long years ago, sharing our first Christmas.
I could do almost nothing but watch Kat as we walked, her cheeks blushed with a fine winter red, wrapped in a scarf, hair pinned back by a thick wool hat. Her eyes gleamed clear and green back at me. We walked, we talked, we joked.
We darted between tall, overgrown trees under the pretense of considering them, and I kissed her deeply, sliding hands beneath layers of winter garb. She tasted like ice itself, lips cold and minty, but her eyes were warm.
The longer we wandered, the more I took to walking behind her, watching the sway of her ass. My cock grew hard and hungry for seemingly the first time since that nearly forgotten night.
Hours may have passed before I remembered we were looking for a tree.
Kat finally found it, a tall evergreen a foot and a half over her head. She rushed to it as though its first sight had captured her and threw her arms around it, grinning back at me.
“This is the one,” she said.
We took it in turns, swinging the ax at the trunk. I critiqued her form. She laughed when my second swing failed to fell it, as I had promised.
When our tree was safely resting in the wheelbarrow, the sun was arcing past noon, its golden light painting the fading snow in yellow hues.
“I miss days like this,” Kat said. The ax was over her shoulder, making her look like some huntress on the prowl. It was undercut by the flush in her cheeks and her fuzzy brown scarf.
I smiled.
“We’ll have more like this,” I said. “Just like we used to when you’re home again.”
We walked along the rows quietly for a while. I pushed the wheelbarrow along, thinking happily about warmer days when Kat would arc her body off the dock to splash in the lake, thinking about a life I could have lived with her then.
“I was thinking,” I mused. “We could tell Agatha about the baby after Christmas, once everyone leaves. That would give us time to go and collect your things, file the paperwork, and whatever. That way, you don’t have to deal with the relatives asking questions, right?”
“Daddy?” Kat said, quietly. She took a deep breath. “I want to stay in school.”
I stopped, letting the legs of the wheelbarrow drop.
“What do you mean?” I said. “That isn’t part of the plan.”
“I know, I know,” she said, turning to me and letting the ax head fall to the snowy earth.
“But, listen. I’ve been taking these classes – veterinary science?” she said in a jumble. “I love it. And I think I could be good at it. I could-“
Her words turned into a violent buzz in my ears. Hunter’s broad, naked chest swam before my eyes, Katherine’s glowing look, the way she threw her head back when he came inside of her.
“It’s because of him, isn’t it?” I said.
Kat was kissing him on my front porch, her mouth opening to him. She was texting him under the table at dinner. Thinking about him when her fingers worked between her legs at night.
“Hunter?” Kat said. “Daddy, no. I swear. I broke it off with him. I told you.”
She rushed to me and gripped my lapels, smoothing them. Her eyes darting between mine.
“He was only ever for the cover story, like I told you, he-“
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t bother.”
I pushed her away.
“Daddy, please,” Kat’s voice was desperate.
“I thought we’d ‘made our choice,'” I said. “I thought we wanted this.”
I looked up and down the rows, hoping no one else was near. Way down the line, a family was kicking the tires of a seven-foot-tall evergreen.
“We do,” Kat said. “I do. But I want… more. I want things for myself – a career, a…”
Her voice trailed off and she placed a hand on her belly. I turned away.
I could feel the honesty in her voice. This was her choice. It had to be. I wanted Kat to myself. I wanted her at home with me forever, my Kat. But it had to be her choice. Still. I knew what she would find at that school. What else she might find. You shared your daughter. And now she wants him.
I felt a tear burning in my eye, but I swallowed it.
“I could get my degree and come home,” she said. “There are farms all over. I could work on ours and start my business. We’ll be together. I want that.”
“Okay,” I said, putting my back into the wheelbarrow again. “We’ll make it work.”
It took two steps before Kat caught up with me.
“Really?”
“Of course,” I said, though it pained me. “I’ll come out to visit you, check on the baby. You’ll be home for the semester by the time it comes. It’ll be alright.”
Kat beamed a grin that should have melted the snow. That was enough.
She gripped my arm and laid a bumpy kiss on my cheek.
~~
With the tree secured in the back of the truck, Kat and I were headed home, our date ended. Back to the cold prison where my wife waited.
“We should stop somewhere,” Kat said.
“You hungry?” I said, eager for an excuse to extend our respite.
“Something like that,” Kat said, eyes flashing.
“Kat,” I said, warningly.
She reached a hand over to the sudden stirring in my pants. I felt like a teenager again as she drew it out.
“I’ve been trying to get you alone all week,” she said. “I wanted to get you in a good mood.”
“I am in a good mood,” I said.
Kat stroked the length of my cock. It was all I could do to keep the truck between the lines.
At the first stoplight, Kat freed herself from the seatbelt and leaned over the bench seat to kiss the head of my penis. Her tongue circled it. She eased it down her throat. My eyes connected with the old woman in the SUV in the turning lane.
As we drove on, Kat rolled her dress up over her hips. Her stockings, as it turned out, were long socks that only covered her up to her thighs. Beyond them, she’d worn nothing. My eyes flicked from the road to her ass. Twice, I had to swerve to keep us from the oncoming lane.
“Find us a place to stop,” Kat said, after the second time.
I turned down the next side road I saw, searching for an abandoned parking lot, a hidden park. I found a turnoff behind a closed gas station and put it in park.
I hoisted Katherine onto my lap and kissed her. She ground her pussy against my cock. I could feel her wetness urging her on, working on top of me until I entered her.
“Oh, daddy,” she breathed. “Oh, daddy. Yes, yes.”
She arched her back and rode me harder, faster. It was frantic. I felt the fear returning, the fear of discovery. Every car that passed by drove my cock deeper into her and sent panic into my heart. Kat’s back brushed the horn. The car rocked. The windows steamed. Kat’s hot breath filled my mouth. Her scent filled my nose.
I remembered my lust for her at the college, on the road, those nights away. I remembered the thrill of danger. I pumped into her harder. My stress evaporated. I closed a hand around Kat’s throat and her eyes widened in ecstacy.
With Kat’s pale face swimming above me, descending on me like a loving ocean, I came quickly for her, filling her with my seed.
