Chapter 1: Matt and Penny

I sat in a corner of the breakfast nook reading the news on my IPad. Saturday morning in our home was usually pretty quiet. My daughter Penny’s BFF, Misty Reese, had arrived a few minutes earlier and the two of them had instantly rushed upstairs seeming to avoid the resident parent – me – as fourteen-year old’s are prone to do. This seemed normal.

‘Normal’ evaporated about thirty minutes later when I quietly walked upstairs.

The door to my daughter’s room was open. I heard Misty state, “You two are going to get caught. You’re both dumb and being driven by your hormones or something. I’m not saying ‘Stop’, but I am telling you that you need to do something so you appear to have more of a ‘normal’ relationship. You don’t want people to talk about you.”

There was that word ‘Normal’ again.

As the bottom dropped out of my stomach and I about vomited the last ten meals I’d eaten in the hall, I realized that the closely guarded secret Penny and I shared was known by at least one other person. I was frozen in position. What should I do?

I forced myself to walk stiff-legged to the door to Penny’s room. The two girls looked at me: Misty with that ‘caught’ look and Penny with a face betraying pure panic. Her complexion had paled, but her neck was rapidly and visibly becoming blotchy as though she was breaking out in hives as I stood there.

Misty tried to look calm and adult. “Hi, Mr. Reed.”

I cautiously said, “I just heard a few words you said to Penny. Could you clarify for me?” I tried a friendly smile but I’m sure I looked about as guilty as sin. I added, “Oh, and as I’ve told you often, please call me Matt. Mr. Reed is my father.”

Misty grimaced as she tried to briefly smile and said, “I have figured out that you and Penny sleep together and I’m pretty sure you’re making love all the time. I happen to think that’s sweet, and I’m glad you care for each other that way after Mrs. Reed died so suddenly, BUT you show it and you’ll get in trouble if you continue to display your love.”

“Say more and how do you know?”

Misty came over and hugged me. “I put a piece of sandpaper in Penny’s bed a week ago. It’s right where I left it. If she were sleeping there, it’d be long gone. I guessed what was going on by how she looks at you – longingly, like a lovesick calf. You no longer look at her like a daughter but like a man genuinely in love with a new infatuation. You can’t stand to not look at her. You, sir, are in mad romantic love with your daughter and she’s madly in love with you. The New Relationship Energy is so thick I could cut it with a knife. Other people will spot it, too.

“One of the frequent topics of conversation between Penny and me dealt with the interesting boys in our classes, and when we weren’t gossiping about them, we were speculating about what some aspect of sex might be like. Those conversations stopped suddenly about three or four months ago, not that I haven’t tried to initiate them. Penny is waaaaay beyond them, and I can tell. She could teach me a thousand times more about sex instead of the two of us speculating as we’d done. She’s more of a woman – not a virgin, and it was a sudden event back then. She’s just about the most mature girl in our freshman class.

“I didn’t understand what was happening, and chalked it up to puberty, but then it became one more clue in the mystery of Penny Reed and why she started to behave as she did. Today, after she failed my sandpaper test, it all added up to what you’re doing together.”

I pondered how to respond, so asked, “And what would you do?”

“I would confuse the enemy.”

“Huh?”

“Think of everyone outside of you and Penny – except me, of course, as the enemy. They are the ones that might discern your relationship and squeal on you to somebody important, like Child Protective Services or the school board.”

“You won’t do that?” I asked, trying to stay neutral.

Misty came over and hugged me. “Mr. Reed – Matt, I love you and Penny. I would never do anything to hurt either of you. You can trust me. My lips are sealed.” After a pause, she added, “You are like my first love. I have a crush on you that won’t stop, just like your daughter.”

“I hugged her, I hope so. Thank you. You may blackmail either of us whenever you wish, you know. We don’t want our family, what’s left it, broken apart.” I started to return to the doorway, but turned, “I’ll have to think about how to confuse the enemy.” I was already thinking about how we could continue our romance and yet not display it to the outside world – panicked that we already had.

I looked up ‘confusing the enemy’ on the Internet. Confusion is invoked when the enemy expects a particular thing to happen and then something else happens instead. This includes nothing happening when, for example, an attack was expected. Confusion may also be invoked by acting unpredictably. The enemy will always be trying to second-guess you; typically by studying your past moves. If you deliberately break past patterns then their predictions will be wrong and their counter-moves counter-productive. In other words, fool them with diversions.

I tried to think about our patterns of behavior. For one, Penny and I started to have all our meals together, and spend all our free time together as we fell in deep romantic love with each other. We wanted to be where we could touch each other frequently and be in each other’s sight. The solution to that seemed simple. Either or both of us needed to be sure to eat with others, and develop outside friends we were frequently with. Penny should return to doing sleepovers at Misty’s home or her other girlfriends. Misty could stay with us, even when I was out somewhere. They hardly needed a babysitter at this age.

I was consumed the rest of the day with the fact that Penny and I had been ‘discovered’. The details of how we got to where we were in our father-daughter relationship would be irrelevant to the authorities. All that would matter to someone would be that we had entered into an incestuous relationship, and that the female in the relationship, which included copious quantities of sex, was seriously underage.

Julie – my late wife – and I had been married for eighteen years. One day she felt ‘off’ and stayed home from her job. The next day she was so weak she couldn’t get out of bed. With a rare plea to our family doctor, she came and made a house call. Julie was in the hospital an hour after the doctor’s visit with the doctor and many others tending to her. She went into intensive care with an autoimmune disease that no one knew how she contracted or what to do about. Julie was dying – rapidly, and no one could save her.

Three days later I made the hardest decision I’d ever made: whether to allow the medical team working on her to put her in a medically-induced coma and keep her on life support for the rest of her life or let her expire naturally. She’d all but died, and medical science could keep her body functioning to some degree for the rest of time. Julie and I had talked about not wanting to be kept alive when the end was obvious and the signals that our bodies were providing clear. The doctor then told me to say goodbye. I did. Penny did, too. We were shattered as a family. Julie died a few hours later. Her body had consumed itself.

My and Julie’s parents had flown in the day before she passed. They got to see her in her barely alive state, and fortunately for me unanimously agreed that the decisions I’d made regarding life support were the right ones given the terrible circumstances. They were very supportive. Penny, her parents, my parents, and I were all reduced to blubbering and sobbing wildly. I hurt to the point I made myself sick.

Julie had been a wonder in life. Everyone loved her. She’d walk down the street and make a new friend. Her friends were loyal to her to a fault. The funeral at the church we attended sporadically was attended by almost five hundred people. The insurance company where she worked shut down for that morning. The three charities where she volunteered also closed for the day. The soccer team and girl scouts she coached and supported showed up by the dozens. The school excused over a hundred kids and teachers where she was a teacher’s aid or where Penny attended. People flew in from thousands of miles away, even from foreign countries. Her obit was on page one of the local papers. Julie was loved and sorely missed.

A week later, Penny and I were left staring at each other and the hole in our lives. I tried to be brave and become the ‘complete’ parent for her. In private I cried. I couldn’t eat; I lost weight rapidly. We had several serious talks about what Julie would have wanted to happen in her daughter’s life. I explained that I had to try to be both mother and father to her and how daunting that task appeared to be for me, and how I prayed for guidance and her tolerance and understanding.

Julie and Penny had been very close, as Penny grew up, but a couple of years earlier Penny had become a little contentious and unruly. She entered a rebellious stage early in her teenage years. She wanted to carve out her own niche in the world and not have ‘Mom’ intervene or helicopter around her. It was pretty normal and with some laughter Julie’s parents told how Julie had done the same thing as a teen, to the point they were very happy when she left to go away to college.

Nonetheless, Penny and I were devastated.

I called in the artillery. I hired a grief counselor for Penny, but I also knew that I’d benefit from my role in the experience. We went through part of it together, and part of it alone with the woman counselor. I think the counseling helped both of us.

Time and the suggestions and exercises the counselor gave us helped us through the grief and the shock of our loss. We gradually spaced out the visits with her until we just stopped at her recommendation. It was the right time and we felt some degree of closure over the death. We’d coped.

Penny aged twenty years in those six months between Julie’s death and when we took stock one weekend. Penny agreed that we stop the counseling, whereas I wondered if it was too soon. “Dad, we’re done. I don’t think we’ll get any further value from this. We have to do the rest on our own. We’ll remember mom with love. We have to move on. I’m up to the challenge; are you?”

Penny became the woman of the house, although I continued the guise of trying to be both mother and father to her. Penny taught herself how to cook. She’d never had the interest with Julie except to make chocolate chip cookies, but suddenly she was consumed with cookbooks and techniques, especially those that resulted in gourmet meals in forty-five minutes or less. I even saw her watching the cooking channel on TV!

Penny had been mostly a ‘B’ student before Julie’s death. We had every reason to believe she’d suffer academically. The opposite occurred. Overnight, Penny became an ‘A’ student in every subject. She was driven to get good grades and prepare for college with a strong academic foundation. She also wanted me to be proud of her. I was.

She’d been disorganized, consistently late to everything, and often forgot important appointments or commitments. Overnight, Penny became a disciple of Marie Kondo. There was suddenly an online family calendar and prioritized ‘to do’ list. Penny was never late. The mishmash of meaningless photos and sayings on the refrigerator was replaced with carefully organized Post-It notes to direct her or me to the right places and activities at the right time. She’d have me sit with her Sunday night to review the coming week and our commitments for each day.

Penny revised her friendships slightly. Misty became her BFF, but mainly because she was the most mature of any of the girls that she’d hung out with in school. Her other friends were not forgotten, but their visitations with each other were less frequent.

Now, the commitment to Misty had paid off with her cautioning remarks.

After Penny seemed to have turned the corner and ‘things’ were kind of returning to a new normal, I woke up one morning to find her sleeping cuddled up next to me in bed, one leg over mine, and one of her breasts in contact with the side of my body. Not only was she sleeping next to me, but also she was as naked as I was.

I panicked for a moment. Had I done something with her – violated her in some way I didn’t remember. After testing my memory and my sanity, I was certain I hadn’t done anything with her. My blood pressure had risen to something about like a thousand over nine hundred; my pulse was also in the thousand range.

Penny woke up and gave me the best smile I’d seen in months. “Morning, Dad. I love you.” She moved so she was even more over my body and kissed me – hard and then softly, testing each kiss and how it felt.

I resisted a scolding, but did say, “Penny, this is kind of inappropriate, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, but it’s so nice and is going to be part of our new normal that we talked about last night. I love you and you love me. I want to be close to you – very close – as close as we can get.”

She sat up and stretched. Her small teenage breasts consumed my view. She went on, “I am not getting all weird on you. I know that we have to keep this to ourselves, and I have no dream of marrying you and having children. I’m realistic, believe it or not. That said; things change as of today.”