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 came to tears once and I comforted her with a hand on the back, feeling as though I were playacting a husband. The secrets of what had transpired without her seemed to be alive in the room with us.

We finished one glass of wine and then another until, finally, Agatha rose.

“I think I’ll start heading for bed,” she said.

“See you soon,” I said, accepting the brief kiss she planted on me.

Only when she had disappeared down the hallway did the door to Kat’s bedroom open and she came creeping out, wet and fresh from the shower in her bathrobe.

Kat slipped into me and through the crook of my arm. The weight of her felt good in my lap, even with the added mass of the baby bump.

“Hi, daddy,” she said in a voice that apologized for her. I kissed her with abandon.

Her robe, starting to strain over her belly, slipped open at the chest, revealing a swollen, pink nipple. I smiled at her and teased downwards with my lips, but she jerked away.

“Not until you’ve made your decision,” she said, roughly.

“I made my choice a long time ago, baby,” I said. “You. I choose you.”

I watched Kat’s face as it battled between girlish delight and adult solemnity. Then, her smile broke and she allowed me to kiss her. She was steam and lavender.

“When?” she said.

“Before the baby comes. We can leave the farm behind,” I said, “but we need some money to get us started.”

Then, she frowned. “How?”

“What if,” I started, “what if you transferred schools in the next semester? We could tell Agatha about the pregnancy, say you wanted to get away from that boy—I wanted you away from that boy, whatever—and I’ll go with you. Just to move you in, get you settled, be overprotective. Then I just...send home the divorce papers.”

I watched Kat’s face. Something flickered along her brow when I mentioned the school, and her lips tightened at the name of Hunter. When she spoke, she spoke slowly.

“I could go to A_______,” she said. “They’re the University’s sister school so, I’d already be in.”

There was a warning knock against the inside of my chest. It wasn’t the point I expected her to stick to.

“I was thinking,” I stopped, casting an ear down the hall to where Agatha had disappeared. “Farther. I might be able to take some money with us, something she won’t find in the divorce. I was thinking.”

I stopped again before the plunge. Kat’s clear eyes were fixed on mine. Her lower lip was parted.

“The Southwest somewhere,” I finished, adding hurriedly. “Even, we could take Light. We couldn’t have a real ceremony, but we share a name. No one would know.”

That something passed again across Kat’s brow and I couldn’t place it. I wanted to get away from Agatha, far away where no one would know us and we could remake our lives. I had thought it was what Kat wanted too, but I saw—thought I saw—that she was only just coming to terms with what I was asking from her now. Something was keeping her here after all, even after her brave talk days before. Something that I had a sickening feeling in my chest was the boy from her college.

“It could work,” she said, softly. My doubts ebbed.

I looked down at her face to see her lip curl and her eyes flick up to mine.

“You really mean it don’t you,” she said.

I leaned into her for a light kiss and let my hand slide out to part the open V of her robe. We kissed for a long time, hands reaching and groping.

“Do you have it?” I whispered.

Kat nodded and guided my hand into her wide pocket. My fist closed around the cold, metal circle of the ring. I took it out and held it out in front of us.

“Katherine,” I said, heart shuddering, “will you marry me?”

Her lips pressed together and her eyes closed.

“Yes, daddy,” she whispered.

I slid the ring on over her finger and, suddenly, Kat’s hands were all over me, groping, rubbing. I kissed her, avidly, letting the room around us fade away and the knowledge of Agatha, preparing for sleep in the other room to pass out of worry. In that moment, she had ceased to be my wife in my mind. I my heart, with my lips wrapped around those of my daughter, Agatha and I were divorced.

Kat glanced down the hallway.

“She went to bed,” I said.

Kat grinned and kissed me again, harder.

As Kat’s hands became less and less restrained, riding up my shirt and pawing open her robe, I felt a stone growing in my chest. I had made a decision. It was real and I was leaving my wife of three years behind. Already, our life together was retreating, gathering dust, and losing color. Kat was all that was real to me now. Kat and our growing child in her belly.

Then, she was naked beneath me and my pants were worked back around my thighs. I was hard and riding up and down against her before I knew it.

“Quickly,” she breathed.

I pumped into her, slipping inside as easily as putting on a glove. She was more real than the world around us. Her breasts leapt back and forth gently against my chest. Her breath was hot and anxious on mine.

“Oh, god, Kat,” I groaned.

“Cum inside me.”

I sank my mouth around a hard nipple and sucked. I wound my fingers through the wet rope of her hair and kissed along the edge of her neck.

“Daddy,” she whispered. “Too loud.”

I hardly heard her. My mind had gone ahead of us into our future. Dimly, I was aware of the sound of the couch knocking against the coffee table, the steady one-two of our hearts. My hands slipped along the curve of Katherine’s belly. I could feel myself ready to cum.

Then, the world shattered.

I felt Katherine cringe away beneath me. The temperature in the room seemed to drop three degrees. I curled back into myself. Agatha was there in the kitchen, standing in a pool of broken glass.

She had seen us. Kat’s exposed and pregnant belly. The ring that glittered on her finger. My cock inside my daughter.

Agatha’s mouth moved silently.

Kat was swearing quietly, gathering her robe around her and standing up from the couch. She looked from me to Agatha and back to me.

I stood up next to her, pulling my pants back up around my waist. My mind was an empty void.

“Sorry,” I said, dumbly.

Agatha let out a wordless, bewildered shriek. She stalked away down the hall, hands gesturing wordlessly.

Something slipped in my chest and I let out a streak of air. I felt as though I had been holding a breath for over a year and it had finally been released.

“Well.”

I looked at Kat. For the first time in my memory of her, she looked mortified. Even in her robe, she was covering her breasts and her groin. Her hair was a tangled spill down her back. She looked at me and I saw that she was afraid.

I gathered her into my arms and kissed her cheek.

“It’s going to be alright, baby,” I said. And I meant it.

She broke away from me and paced.

“She wasn’t supposed to know,” she said. "She wasn’t supposed to find out. She wasn’t…”

I chased her down and held her again, brought her to the couch and stroked her tangled hair. I wanted to fuck her again. Instead, I held her and whispered and thought.

When Agatha came back, she was calm.

“Katherine,” she said, “may I speak to your father alone?”

Kat rose from my arms, nodding, and walked away to her bedroom with her eyes tracking the floor, looking for all the world like a chastened schoolgirl.

I got up and followed Agatha to the kitchen where she was already stooping to gather up the broken bottle into a rag.

“I don’t even know what to say to you,” Agatha said. “Your daughter. Your daughter, Adam. Do you understand how fucked that is? It’s fucked.”

I’d never heard her cuss. I let her storm. Her voice started quiet, but rose with every word. She threw out the wine-soaked rag and pulled another bottle from the rack.

“And she’s pregnant, isn’t she? Is it yours? Is. It. Yours?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck!”

Agatha turned away from me, almost visibly steaming. She poured herself a glass of wine. Sipped. Poured it out.

“You know, once—one time—I suspected something, but I thought--no. I never thought you could,” she broke off. “I married you.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” I said. “I never intended…”

“We could have separated you,” she said. “We could have gotten you help.”

“Help?”

“She’s your daughter, Adam.”

“You don’t understand,” I said, knowing that there was no way to explain, knowing that I could only let her yell.

“I’m divorcing you,” she said. “Tomorrow.”

I nodded as though we were discussing the groceries.

“You’ll get the house. I won’t contest it,” I told her.

“Fuck that,” Agatha said. “Keep your fucking house. I want a restraining order for that girl. To keep her away from you.”

She may as well have kicked me in the chest.

“You won’t get that.”

She pursed her lips and tried another glass of wine, another sip. This time, the wine remained in the glass.

“You’re a monster,” she said, testing the word. Then, more certain: “a monster.”

I wanted to hit her. She had been my wife, but now she was a stranger—faced with the greatest secret I owned and the power of my love, Agatha saw and cursed it. Instead, I poured myself a glass and sipped. I gripped her words.

“I know that.”

***

I stood in the hall between our doors. Behind one lay the paradise Kat and I had shared while Agatha was away. Behind the other was the tomb where my old life slept. One was closed fast behind me, the other held open by Kat and her shining eyes.

“How much did you hear?”

“Enough,” Kat said.

I touched her chin.

“I love you, baby,” I said.

She nodded, but her eyes skittered off mine to rest on the carpet.

“And I love our baby,” I said, pressing, hoping.

“I love you, too.”

Her voice brought hope back to me. I cupped her cheek and raised her face to mine. She allowed a soft, dutiful kiss.

“It’s going to be okay.”

A tear split away and rolled down her cheek, into my palm. I wiped it away. Another slipped from her left eye.

“Why don’t I come in?”

She shook her head and half turned away from me. I let my hand slide from her cheek to her elbow.

“Come on, baby,” I said, feeling the desperation rise. “I’ll make you feel better.”

I knew that tonight, of all nights, I shouldn’t. But I also knew that there was nothing I could do to hide the secret any longer. Why shouldn’t we? I thought. If I didn’t spend the night with her then, I knew that I may not ever again.

“Daddy,” she whispered, head shaking.

“I need you,” I said in a silent whisper. “I need you.”

Her elbow slipped away and I held only her hand, feeling the cold diamond on her third finger where I had left it.

And then, a lingering, tearful look, Kat slipped through my fingers and was gone.