You haven't seen beauty until you've seen my daughter riding along Country Route 18 in July. We own the land on the whole stretch of road between Wendell's farm and the Amish community up north. All you ever see on that road are haywagons and buggies. And my daughter, Katherine. I swear the only reason anyone else rides that road instead of the wider route to the south is for the hope of seeing her go by on that stallion...

July passes and then it's bare-knuckled November. Up close to the Canadian border, winter comes in fast and sudden and burns out my crop with frost and snow. That's when the tourists come flooding in. Most of my nearest neighbors have given up farming to turn their historic ranch homes into B&Bs. I'm one of the last. November is about the time my Katherine stopped riding along the road. It's long since she's started weari...

I pulled Katherine into my chest, arms scraping against the cheap motel quilt. It was dark, but I could feel her eyes beating into mine. Our legs rubbed together. My arms slid down her body, feeling the spot where her t-shirt had rolled up and the soft crevices in her hips. Her nose touched mine. I let my fingers slide up beneath Kat's shirt, remembering how she'd pulled out her bra before bed and left it dangling from th...

Kat and I were rabid all summer. When we returned with Light in the secrecy of our love from our springtime trip south, Katherine and I could hardly keep apart from one another. Agatha, my wife, had taken her own trip while we were gone--off to see her sister in Maine--and I had hoped against all logic that she would have chosen to stay there for another week, another month, or, better still, that she would melt away to n...

Our roaring summer crashed in a crescendo of tears and words and sex. I'll not forget that frozen, late summer day when my Katherine came to me and told me about her late period. I felt the days we'd spent together come crashing in on me - the nights in the hotels, the afternoons in forest clearings, stolen mornings in my marriage bed. If I had impregnated my daughter... Why hadn't we been more careful? The summer was spe...

It was dark in Katherine's room save for the string of Christmas lights that lit up the sweat-slick body of the boy on top of her. She held him by the nape of his neck while he breathed hotly into her ear to the rhythm of his coursing hips. Katherine was staring into her ceiling, trying to pretend she wasn't enjoying the freshman inside of her and avoiding the judging eyes of the family photos plastered on her wall and li...

Hunter's fingers ran along the rim of Katherine's belly like those of a blind man reading a face. In the past few weeks, it had begun to grow, swelling beyond what Kat could hide in the nakedness of her room. She liked when Hunter touched her like this. He often did, especially since he found out she was pregnant, sweeping his hands over her belly and breasts, a smile tweaking her lips. She'd let him make the discovery, w...

Katherine's door rustled open, flooding her room with the briefest splash of moonlight as a tall figure darted inside. Kat repressed a yelp and instinctively darted her hands away from the slit between her legs. The face she had imagined before her evaporated into winter mist. "Daddy?" she said, faintly. "Hi, Kitty." Kat felt a leap in her belly. Was that? She thought. No, too early. She sat up and a slash of moonlight fe...

It's not what you think. Not what it looks like. You didn't see what you thought you saw. You're dreaming. Go back to bed. All of these explanations rushed through my head as I stared at the boy silhouetted by moonlight in Katherine's bedroom door, but what I really wanted to say was, take a good look. I knew that I should be scared, worried, filled with dread - and I was - but the part of me that was in control of my bod...

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 to...

By Sunday, the house had been decked from porch to bathroom with garlands frosted with white snow and buttoned with pine cones, strings of white Christmas lights, and holiday knick-knacks that had come along with Agatha from her side of the family. The tree Kat and I had picked out stood proud in the living room, hung with lights and glass balls. Never before had my wife gone so all out for a Christmas before. But it was...

My daughter's pregnant belly rose and fell as she worked her hips slowly on my dick. We were enraptured before the fireplace, bathing in its warm glow when the desire took us. Kat's breasts were swollen and her nipples were hard. Her eyes glittered down on me, mirroring the Christmas lights left behind by my wife. We were free, and, in our freedom, we were in love. Kat's head was rolled back onto her shoulders in desperat...

And, like that, it was over. Agatha’s mother was dead. The funeral was over and my wife was home. Kat was avoiding both of us, though for different reasons. On the first night after she came home, Agatha wanted to debrief about her trip. We sat on the couch with a bottle of wine and Kat hid in her room—the room that had so briefly been ours while my wife was away. Agatha told me about her trip, the funeral. She nearly cam...

Kat was sitting at the kitchen table with an untouched cup of steaming coffee and a box of tissues at her elbows. I could tell as much from the sea of crumpled Kleenex as from the tension in the room that she had been crying for a while. I wondered if she’d even really slept. “Kitty,” I said. But my voice was stiff. The pet name that I had once given her mother tasted foul on my lips. She hardly looked at me when Agatha c...