Chapter 1: In the Beginning

From Carol Ann’s Private Diary

So, you’ll understand if you find this, I started this diary to keep my secrets and actions private. This work relates nothing and everything about my daily life back in those days. I’m writing now, looking back, and when I look at the Diary I kept (on my laptop) back when all this happened, I found nothing about this. Not one whit of any of these is there. It’s too personal, too intimate, too spot on about Edward and me.

The only love of my life.

Even now, with my belly swollen with my first child, and Donald so very happy he is about to be a father, I won’t share the truth with him. I can’t. He isn’t Edward, which means he isn’t Daddy, and never will be. If I hurt his feelings, I don’t believe we’d survive it. I love him, but not in the right way. I’m fond of him, honestly, I am, very deeply so, and we do make love.

But then again, we don’t. What we do, do, is go through the motions of love making, and I fake enjoyment. There is some physical pleasure, but it isn’t emotional, profound, or spiritual. Those are still reserved for my darling Daddy dearest, my soulmate. The feelings started in my 16th year but didn’t take form until my 18th.

A quiet intimacy thrived between us, something near secrets, perhaps a little beyond. A daughter should love her father; I understood that. I loved mine far deeper than what’s required. When Mom left him, left us, it should have pulled us apart. But we grew tighter, an intense and urgent two-strand cord that wound around itself, a bond meant to last forever.

By summer’s end, it shifted beneath the surface. A different kind of tension, unsettling and thrilling, took root. I wanted to tell him, but I plotted to own him in place of admitting the truth. I’d become more than his daughter, more than his lover.

We’d be soulmates.

It manifested first as a new restlessness, a hunger gnawing away at everything I’d believed firmly fixed and familiar. The kind of love I wanted became harder to define. What began as a constant but unspoken closeness between us contracted, tightening into new forms. I didn’t name it ... the name can’t be given until the bond binds us. I didn’t understand how to tell him.

It scared me how effortlessly I let Mom go, how I didn’t miss her at all. It scared me more how little Father missed her, how little we both needed her. It frightened me most that neither of us cared.

A stranger might’ve seen what grew between Dad and me and thought that a daughter and father shouldn’t’ve been so close. I loved how much we needed each other, how his attention focused on me. Finally mine, Daddy and I a thing beyond father and daughter in my mind.

There came one awkward moment when Mother tried to explain, her voice lifting just above the familiar whine. “You’ll be better off, all of you.”

By then, neither of us really listened to her. After all, I’d already imagined the new version of us, casting Edward and Carol Ann in the roles of an invincible team. In time, we’d need no one else.

Dad packed her things into heavy boxes while she slept with a man whose name I could never remember. If I wanted to, I could’ve, but I didn’t want to. Sliding the dispenser over the lid, I taped them shut. Boxing her memory inside and shoving it out of my heart.

I found more satisfaction in the adhesive’s rip than I’d expected. The next morning, Debra drove off, bound for something other than the world she left behind. It slipped away as soon as she turned the corner. She’d been out of the picture for a while.

I remembered the exact moment I realized I could have him all to myself. He’d called it an adventure.

“Nothing but the open road and no responsibilities,” he said. “Just us.”

My father’s eyes were blue and bright, sea-foam dappled by sunshine, and I realized he’d never say no. I understood, right then, that I’d love him forever.

Two hours later, his old pickup truck coughed and wheezed its way onto the highway, held together by sheer stubbornness. That summer began. We crossed half the state, skirting its perimeter like explorers with nowhere specific to be.

We found oceans, mountains, dark and silent places that wrapped themselves around us and drew us closer and closer. I discovered something else, too.

By the end of the trip, something unsaid but immense stood between us. Something changed, for me at least. I didn’t know how to admit that I loved Edward, really loved my darling Daddy dearest most of all.

The happy-ever-after kind of love.

On the last night, before the long stretch of highway pulled us back toward home, he fell asleep under the stars. They spangled the sky like bright fragments of his own impossible promises. I imagined they were all for me. Sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds, all of them a gift from him to me.

Later in the night, much later, I watched him breathe. A beautiful moment for me. Therefore, it wasn’t quite enough. A restlessness took over, but not the kind I could easily relieve. As an alternative, I let it grow, like seeds planted in furtive, unexamined corners of myself. An ache moved through me in sharp little bursts, warm and urgent, far too much to ignore.

Every night, I reached down and pressed the heat away with my hand. I pressed it, fiercely, to something more than longing. I pictured his face, its lines made angular and dramatic by shadows and moonlight, so close I could feel his breath on my skin. For one perfect moment, he turned into the only thing in my universe.

In my mind, we moved in perfect unison as lovers. I pleased him with my mouth and my body. And Edward, Daddy, the powerful lover, did the same with me. When the tension broke, I understood that I could never tell him. I edged past sixteen on my way to eighteen.

Edging became my thing, I discovered the joy of self-pleasuring. The wonderful, magical kingdom of masturbation. The thing you do when you can’t have the real deal.

The beginning dragged itself into years. Each one carried more of that same impossible wanting, the heavy burden of desires I couldn’t put into words. Not yet anyway. When I turned 18, I developed a plan.

When we got home from spring break, I couldn’t sleep for days. It became Edward’s fault, and I loved Daddy even more for it. He consumed my thoughts, waking fantasies, dreamscapes, and all the unfilled spaces in between. Nothing existed outside us.

The nights and days when I pictured him in absolute detail. All hard edges and strong lines. Tall, fit, and impossibly perfect. I imagined his rough workman’s hands reaching toward me, making every square inch of me his own. I envisioned us in endless repetitions of futures I hadn’t begun to live, happy endings that redefined my entire world.

I waited for him to notice, but he didn’t. I should have said something. Rather than that, I began testing his limits, always a little too scared to cross them, always wanting to anyway. I watched him.

I examined Daddy as if he were performance art, a gorgeous and unattainable thing, something always out of reach. And like art, it took a while to find its meaning.

In the meantime, I did everything but tell him. Humping my pillow, panda bear’s foot, or my hand.

It started small. A touch on Daddy’s shoulder lingered. An unbuttoned blouse, which he accidentally turned, caught a glimpse of tits, with me smiling. A little more lipstick than he thought appropriate for school. And Daddy realized it been dressed that way at school.

An innocent grazing of fingers when I handed him his morning coffee or evening beer. It developed all too easy, scrutinizing him, a specimen under a microscope, tense and shifting in his seat. Holy shit on a cracker, I made him uncomfortable. Delicious, sweet treats.

He’d say things like, “Sweetheart, I do love you,” when my pout pushed past the edges of reason. Blinded by his view of right and wrong, Daddy didn’t appreciate what I meant.

“You know I love you, don’t you?” I asked.

He’d smile and muss my hair, a sign of nothing wrong here, how it should be.

Then the openly dating other women began. Women I’d never seen before filled his weekends, our time, and his thoughts. I heard them laughing on the other side of the all-too-thin walls. Worse than that, I listen to them fucking.

Anger and jealousy rose, choking and vile it my throat. I heard Edward fucking them. I realized Daddy’s passion wasn’t directed at me. I thought my mind would crack under its weight. But anger has ways of shifting its shape. Desire, too.

If it’s possible to seethe and crave at the same time, I managed. I’d never been so aware of myself as when Daddy brought women home. Never so alive as when they made their exits.

When he thought I slept and supposed I blissfully slumbered unaware of his rutting’s. The sounds they made mixed with my own fantasies. They drove me to the edge and pushed me over it. That line I’d never dared to cross grew closer and closer, not the impassable chasm I thought it would be.

And my attempts at seduction grew bolder. It became a game.

That night began like any other. I’d waited up, breathless with impatience, sick with the worry that my strategy wasn’t working. When he came through the door, just after ten, the darkness of my room gave way to half-light as moved to the top of the stairs.

The sight of me stopped him in his tracks. It started right at that instant. My skirt shorter than it had ever been, and my blouse barely there at all. I held it together, feigning modesty, hoping it would drive him crazy. He turned his head, avoiding a wreck. But Edward wanted to look. And Daddy didn’t dare.

Moving down the stairs, slinking really, I followed him to the kitchen, hungrier than I’d ever been.

“Thought you had a date,” I said.

I loved how the words made him flinch and how my voice took on the mocking timbre of discovered secrets. The women he dated were no secret to me. Nothing he did remained undisclosed to me. He stood at the fridge longer than he should’ve. Almost as if it might tell him what to say. Akin to he might actually eat.

“What’s for dinner?” he asked.

“You went on a date. I’ve already eaten.”

He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, nervous and adorable. A teenager who didn’t know what to do with his hands, only he wasn’t a teen. The smile he offered clung to his lips, helpless, and sort of sweet. Kind of maddening.

I perched on the counter and let the hem of my skirt ride a little higher. It seemed dangerous. I adored it.

“Date, Edward, darling Daddy, what happened?”

“Bailed early,” he said, eyes on the floor. “You didn’t have to wait up.”

Chance favors the bold, I took it.

Turning up the heat, I bit my lip, slid down from the counter, slipped into a new version of myself, and let him finish the game. I moved across the kitchen and into Edward’s space, watching Daddy try to find a safe place to put his eyes. He couldn’t.

“Who’s waiting?” I asked. The innocent act came as easy as breathing.

His stare turned from wreck to train-wreck, eyes focused and wild, and he let them wander to all the places he never let them go before. For a split second, I saw his resolve collapse. His shoulders followed.

He gripped my arms, jerked me from the counter, and spun me around. He held me like he didn’t understand whether to let go or hold on tighter. With his free hand he yanked a chair from its place at the table. Then bent over it.

The wood chair pressed hard under my belly, his hands large and firm against my back as he pressed me down. It didn’t hurt yet, but it would. I braced myself, half thrilled, half afraid he’d lose his nerve.

“Daddy,” I whimpered, to see what he’d do.

He froze.

It might have been hours or seconds before he found the courage to bring his hand down on my ass. Lightly. It barely stung, but more than enough to leave its mark inside me. Heat spread through me, warmth and triumph. He’d crossed the line, finally.

His palm came down again, harder this time, just above the edge of my panties. And again, just below. And again, and again, and again. The blows blurred together as he built momentum, soft sounds lost between sharp strikes. I’d never been more certain of anything than about his next move.

When it ended, he stepped back as if I were on fire. Fearing that I might burn him.

“Go to your room,” he said. Edward thought his voice sounded firm, the command of a father disciplining a wayward child. I heard it as something else. We both realized he wouldn’t let this happen again. He thought I’d learned my lesson.

I pitied his naivety, Daddy dearest hadn’t any idea of what I’d planned to come after this. I bit back a smile, forced a cry, ran to my room, and slammed the door more alive than I’d ever been. Good lord, fucking wet, so dripping wet inside, in between my legs.

Panda took my hunger, and I left a wet stain on his big ole panda foot.

He must have thought it over. That rebellion had failed. He slouched against the bedroom wall, a soft thud followed by breathing the same short breaths he used to take when he said goodbye to his dates.

I listened to the zipper of his jeans give way to all the pent-up tension of a night he couldn’t escape. I listened when his big hand wrapped around his cock and beat the fuck out of it. A beautiful expression of his want.

My panties slipped off with little resistance. I pressed myself against the wall, letting its coolness and Edward’s tortured gasps seep through my body. His chair clattered to the floor. It barely registered. The only sounds were those of our quickened breath, his cock against his palm, my slick, ready pussy rubbed furiously on Teddy’s foot.

He didn’t appreciate how thin the walls were. He didn’t grasp how close to climax he’d pushed me. He thought I cried from him punishing me. He’d disciplined himself with his own dinnerless solitude. He had no idea that my punishment fit my crime too perfectly.