Cold Paradise

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 of hers. She paid for it herself, you know. Takes care of it real good.In March, she rides it still wearing her leather parka I got her. In April, she trots over the puddles in the road like they weren't there. But in July, everything is the blue of the sky, the green of the crops, and the red of the barn. Then there's her. Bare brown shoulders. Cropped short blond hair. Tight jeans. Bareback.She's a luminous angel before a sidescrolling reel.She says she prefers riding topless. In the dead heat of July when the motion of the horse under her is the best way to catch a breeze; she wants to feel it on her chest. She says it's like swimming in summertime. I was angry the first time I caught her doing it. I came up behind her in my truck. This tanned furrow on top of that horse. I recognized the beast before I recognized her. But I caught her face in my rearview; I saw her pink nipples turned up at the treetops. bayan escort beylikdüzü I motored home to my wife. She wrestled her top back over her chest and kicked into a gallop after me.We had it out in the kitchen. I know her mother would have wanted me to shout her down. But when I asked Katherine why she did it, she said it made her happy. I guess that was enough. That horse has been the only thing she loved since her mother passed. 'You got married again,' she said to me once, 'I got Light.' I can't get in the way of that.I asked her why she couldn't ride one of the back trails, somewhere out of sight. She said there wasn't enough sun back there. The point was feeling the light on her chest. If I were a good father, I would have at least insisted. Now, I'm glad that I didn't.She never brings boys around. I've never even heard about a college boyfriend. Even now that she's graduated, I've never known her to date.*Sometimes, that worries me but mostly I'm just grateful to have her home again.I married Agatha two falls after Katherine's mother died. I expected my daughter to have a hard time with it while she was away, but she understood. She understands me better than anyone, I think. If Katherine noticed that Agatha is a spitting image of herself, she never said anything. Agatha is escort bayan beylikdüzü twenty years my junior. Practically my daughter's age. They say she married me for my money, but all I got is land. She wears her blond hair short around her ears like my Kat, has the same round face. She even wears the same clothes. They share sometimes. I caught them last Christmas in Katherine's room, both in their underwear, swapping garments like twins. I had a hard-on.That was the first time I noticed it, but I think it's always been there. I'm in love with my daughter.I wish my wife could cover it up. But she is a pale reflection of my daughter. Her skin is milk-white. Her nipples are brown and her blond hair is fake. To the rest of the world, maybe, she is my daughter's twin, but only my Katherine has the shining beauty that I'm in love with. It's the outlandish confidence that takes her out riding in her underthings, that sheds her top in the summer. My wife is stiff, practiced. Never wild. Not like my Katherine.Last Fourth of July, before her senior year at University, we cooked out on the dock. There's a little lake in the middle of our fields. Most of it manmade, but stocked from time to time with trout. I set up the grill on the edge of the lake. Katherine came down from the house while kayaşehir escort I was getting the fire lit.* She unbuttoned her shirt and hung it from the grill for me to watch for fear of it blowing away. She hadn't been wearing a bra. When she dropped her jeans, I knew*she hadn't been wearing underwear either.Her body unfurled off the dock like a great swan in flight. I caught sight of all of her from the back. Her bottom rose from her legs in a perfect hump, hiding the flower beneath it. Then she was in the water, her chest breaching the black surface in a backstroke, her body a ghost beneath the water. Maybe that was the first time I noticed that I was in love with my daughter. I had a hard-on then, too.I'm pretty much retired from the hard farm work now. I hire local boys to take care of most of the lifting. Dragging bales of hay in for Light, loading the truck for export. That sort of thing. One of them, Joshua, has taken well to the ploughing so now I hardly even do that.That leaves me with free time in July that I've never had before. With the wife still at work, there's nothing for me to do. I tried reading, but I can't sit still for that long. Never had a television in this house and I don't plan to.When I started driving Route 18, I'd forgotten about Katherine and her habits. I just wanted to see the property, feel the air on my face. It was just a pastime. Then, I saw her again. She was facing me then, riding Light through the midafternoon. It was a late spring this year and the pollen was still in the air. Katherine came dusting through it with her breasts shining in the summer sunbeams, glistening with the sweat of riding.