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 also the first time she had invited my side of the family to the house since our wedding.

I had only a brother, but he and his wife had been close to Kat's mother and, when I remarried so soon after her death, their grief turned around on Agatha. Now, she was nervous, I knew, and eager to make the perfect home.

Now, there would be a house full of both our relatives for the first time and my secret with nowhere to breathe.

Ever since our date, I had gone back to skirting around Katherine, even as she looked for me in every nook and under every mistletoe the house had to offer.

Kat's belly was growing. The longer she remained in the house, the more suspicious it came to be that she wore heavy sweaters and bulky coats everywhere. What's more, Kat had lost interest in hiding it.

She would trot out to the shower, passing naked from her room to the bathroom behind Agatha's back, a hand on her broad stomach. She lounged on the couch in tight T-shirts that wore like crop-tops until I threw blankets over her.

On some cold nights, we would sit together on the couch and Kat would wriggle up beside me, hands resting on my thighs while Agatha told us stories about her sister she'd heard on the phone. Kat would rest her head on my shoulder and begin to sleep. One night, I stayed there with her while she slept, unwilling to disturb her, until Agatha too had gone off to sleep.

I watched her gentle breathing and planted a soft kiss on her forehead. Kat's eyes flickered open at the sound of Agatha's door snapping shut. She gave me a sleepy smile and drew me into her. I couldn't resist her. Her mouth opened repeatedly to mine. I tasted mint on her lips. For a moment, I forgot myself, hands running along her belly, cupping her breasts.

"I love you, baby," I whispered.

Her hands climbed my chest, pushing up my shirt under our shared blanket. Her fingers tangled in my chest hair. Her hips writhed into me. We were making out on the couch like furtive teenagers in their parents' basement when I heard the bedroom door crack open. I sprang away from Kat, but she only rested her head against my shoulder again, one hand still creeping into my pants.

Agatha crossed the hall to the bathroom in her robe. She didn't even look over at us.

Katherine grinned up at me and moved back for a kiss. I let her but encouraged her no further. Kat's hands were like claws dragging across my back, rabid.

She stopped.

"Aren't you going to put me to bed, daddy?" she whispered. She climbed up onto my lap, straddling me. "Or do you want me out here?"

She ground against my cock, hard against thin sweatpants, and shook her tangle of blonde hair out of her face. She let out a soft moan.

"I want you to fuck me to sleep tonight, daddy," she whispered close to my ear.

I was hard. My heart was beating faster in my chest.

"Kat," I whispered.

She slipped open the blanket covering us and parted her bathrobe. I covered a hard pink nipple with my palm. I wanted it, there on the couch, as much as I feared it.

"We can't," I said.

All of the fight seemed to go out of Katherine then. She slumped against me and swung her leg back over to her side of the couch.

"I'm sick of this," she said.

"What?" My heart was hammering again, but for a different reason now.

"Hiding. Pretending like this is so wrong," Kat said. "Why don't we just tell her the truth and you can leave her. This could be our house."

"Kat! You know we can't do that," I said.

She looked up at me. Her blue eyes were ice.

"Then what are we even doing?" she said.

The water shut off in the bathroom and Agatha stepped out into the hall. She looked over at us, a puzzled look on her face. Before I could say anything, she had darted back into the master bedroom and was gone.

Kat was still staring at me, challenging.

"What?"

"I want a normal life," she said. "I want a normal relationship."

My heart was pumping fast enough for two people. A moment ago, Kat had been on top of me, loving me. Now...what is she thinking?

"You can't have a normal relationship," I said. "Not with me. Are you saying that you..."

"No!" Kat said. Her eyes flew open and she put a hand on my chin.

"I want it with you," she said. "And I know it's going to be hard, but we can't go on like this forever. Hiding in this house. With her."

I knew that she was right. If I had committed to a life with my daughter, then my wife couldn't have any place in it. Somehow, it was this moment--not the first time we kissed, not the pregnancy--that made me realize how my life would change with Katherine in it. She had the whole of her life ahead of her and I'd already had mine. A life with Kat's mother. A life with Agatha. Now, Kat was giving me another one. In that moment, I loved her more than anything I'd ever loved before.

I brushed a strand of blonde hair away from her softening eyes and kissed her.

"I know," I said. "We'll figure something out."

With Agatha safely in bed, I leaned into Kat's mouth again, kissing her hungrily until her bathrobe opened again as if on its own accord and I was kissing down to her breasts, across the expanse of her pregnant belly, peeling back her sweatpants and filling my mouth with her taste.

I carried her to her room and laid her down in bed, filling her with my cock and pouring my love into her eyes with every stroke.

When we were finished and my seed was glittering down the sides of her belly like white waterfalls, Kat's eyes were closing and it was nearly one in the morning. What Agatha would think when I finally crawled into bed beside her, I no longer cared.

In the morning, the fever had passed and, though the resolution still burned in my heart, I had returned to my retreat from my daughter's bed. But the night had placed a new glow in Katherine's eye, sating her with the promise of our future. It seemed cruel that we could not be together immediately, not even after the passion of our decision. Agatha was still there, looming with errands to clean the barn, fetch appetizers and alcohol, and all together busy us with the threat of her coming family and the death of our privacy.

Of the night Katherine and I had spent together, Agatha said nothing. Though in the morning puzzling looks seemed to fill her eyes and twice I thought a question died on her lips.

The hour of arrival, the hour of dread, was quickly approaching. How could I face these relatives with my terrible secret? Knowing that within months I would be a father again and my wife would be out on the street?

The problem twisted in my stomach until breakfast on the day before. Agatha was boiling an egg in the kitchen, her back turned to the kitchen table. Katherine was with me, wearing a baggy t-shirt that had once belonged to me and shorts that barely covered her ass. Her uncovered toes were slinking around my ankles and her clear eyes sought mine. A sudden urge was building in me to blurt out our secret, to banish Agatha from our lives forever.

Then, the clouds burst.

The phone split the winter air and Agatha picked it up. A fuzz of otherworldliness seemed to pass over the house as Kat and I listened.

"Oh, my god," Agatha was saying. "Oh, that's terrible. I--I can get on a flight tonight. I'll be there. I promise."

Within moments, the fevered energy in the house had turned from anxious hosting to frenzied packing. Agatha was leaving for her sister's in Chicago. Exactly what had happened came out in a jumble of sicknesses, tests, and fears. Agatha was crying on the phone purchasing a plane ticket, apologizing to Kat and I for leaving, throwing clothing pell-mell into her suitcase.

In the morning, Kat and I drove her to the airport, leaving the house cold and empty behind us. Agatha gave me a frozen kiss goodbye and disappeared onto the blue sky.

When she was gone, Katherine mounted me in the parking lot of the airport and rode me until I came inside of her.