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 wearing her top again. Her bare chest is the ghost of a memory by mid-December, but I can sometimes still resurrect it when I'm alone in a hot shower.
In November, Kat switches to riding the trails or along the property line. She says the salted roads aren't good for Light's feet. I'm sure she's right, but I don't like losing sight of her anymore. Not since she started playing with Joshua.
I think about how I found them together often. It both disgusts and excites me to think of her with a man -- with another man. A man who isn't me.
I can see them together during those moments in the shower. Katherine's back arched in a perfect bridge from his pelvis to his chin. The way her breasts shook under his hands.
I didn't fire Joshua. I didn't say anything. Kat knows better than to tell me about him, but sometimes I wish that she would. I'd like him to eat at my table, thinking I know nothing about their exploits. He'd tell me how he doesn't want anything improper -- I'd make him tell me that. He'd tell me he aims to marry her. But I'd know all along where they've been. I know what they look like together.
I could lie awake at night knowing he's snuck in through her bedroom window, listening carefully for the gentle squeaking of her boxspring.
It's beautiful because my daughter is beautiful.
Joshua will be back in the spring. But since harvest ended, Katherine has been different. Well, the same as she used to be. She goes out riding once a day, but she always comes right home. Stays for dinner every night. Never goes out. I could almost believe she hasn't seen him since that day. I could almost believe she was wholly mine.
Since that day, I've stopped reminding myself that she's my daughter. I am in love with her physically and emotionally.
At night, I build a fire against the cold. I like the work of maintaining a wood stove for heat over the simplicity of a thermostat. Most winters, I take down a tree. I split the logs myself and build a pile against the back of the house.
I like it more now that Kat is home again.
She comes out to stand by the fire until the whole house is warm. She stands back there far too long, stripping off layer after layer until sometimes it's just her bra left and I can practically trace the triangle of freckles that is the only ornament on her pale back. Then she'll sit with me. And we'll talk. And she'll pull a blanket around herself and lean her head on my shoulder.
This happened last night after my wife, Agatha, had gone to bed. Kat came out of her room, trailing a maroon blanket her mother had knitted for her and sat down on the couch with me, her head falling to my shoulder.
I had been reading the paper, blissfully forgetting the guilty lust I had for her.
I could tell there was something wrong. No sooner had my wife's door closed than my daughter's door opened.
"Nothing," she said when I asked. "Boy trouble. It's nothing."
This was the most we'd ever spoken about her love life. The closest we'd come to talking about sex since her mother and I explained it all to her. The closest she'd come to telling me about Joshua. And I left it at that, afraid that I would allow the conversation to spiral down to what was beginning to happen in my pants.
I was hard again. I put the newspaper down and put my arm around her. I kissed her soft forehead, pausing on the locks of her hair.
I wanted to kiss her again. I thought about kissing her on the cheek, but knew better. So I just held her there like her father would, wanting so much more. She fell asleep on my shoulder and I wouldn't wake her.
Once, during the night, I woke up and the blanket had parted around her chest. I could see through her cleavage nearly to her stomach below. She was wearing a low tank top. Her left breast was right there. I could see myself pulling my daughter's shirt down and putting her in my mouth. I could feel my hard-on pressing against her side.
But I held myself back, held her tighter, and fell back asleep.
We slept together for most of the night until finally, she woke up and told me to go to bed. She got up and I watched her go. I finished the night n the couch, afraid to return to my wife after feeling the way I did all night.
There's a storm coming on Friday. A blizzard for the ages, they keep saying. Thirty-six inches of snow. If it hits us like they say it will, it will cripple the whole county. So I've been splitting more wood and stacking it in the mudroom. I expect to be buried inside for a few days at least.
We're not going to be able to keep the whole house warm, so Agatha and I are going to move our mattress into the living room in front of the fire for the three of us. We have centuries of family quilts to keep us all warm.
On Monday, Katherine beat me to the shower. She dodged naked across the hallway with her towel dangling from her finger and winked at me standing there with my own towel around my waist.
"Sorry, Daddy," she said as she went by.
I only caught a glimpse of her. That small round butt. Her breasts. But it was enough to freeze the image in my mind for the rest of the morning.
I joked about getting in with her through the door, shaking a mock-angry fist. Then I let my hand fall on the door, felt the grain of the wood that kept our naked bodies apart. My towel fell to the floor, pushed open by my hard-on.