The story I’m going to tell you is a convoluted one. It comes together after the fact, and after talking to most of the people involved. It’s a tale of many viewpoints but one direction. It all started when my youngest daughter came to me with a problem. Eva was my second daughter and I have to say the more focused of the two. She went to college to become an accountant then, after making sure of herself and her decisions, married her longtime boyfriend.

Now I liked Bart, though he must have taken hell when he was a kid with a name like that and the popularity of the Simpsons. He was a good guy, caring, and even a little old fashioned. He came from a large family which was uncommon in that day as it is today. He treated my daughter well enough and was very respectful of me. Thus when Eva came to me to talk of her problems I was more than a little surprised.

“Dad, can I talk to you?” Eva asked as we sat down for lunch. We had made it a habit to have lunch together at least once a month since she moved back from college. It was a way for us to keep the family together. I had lunch with her older sister Grace about as often.

“Well isn’t that one of the reasons we get together?” she nodded.

“But this is kind of personal. It’s about me and Bart.”

I got a little concerned. “Anything you want to talk about is fine with me.” She hemmed and hawed for a little while then got around to it.

“Dad, I’m worried about having kids.”

I found that odd since she had always talked about having a large family ever since she was a little girl.

“Really?”

She nodded.

“But it’s not the whole being pregnant fears. It’s just that ... Have you looked at his family?”

I thought that an odd thing to say. “Well I kind of do. Are you having problems with any of them?”

She shook her head. “Any way I say it I sound so shallow, but I can’t think of a better way to say it. His family is a genetic wasteland. When we went to his family reunion it scared the hell out of me as a future mother.”

This was a little odd for her to say.

“I must have heard the names of a hundred different drugs that the people there were taking for different problems. They actually sit together to talk about doctors, drugs, and therapists. There must have been a hundred people there for the week and eight had to go to the hospital while we were there.”

She was getting worked up so I reached out and took her hand in mine. “Slow down love. Pull back and think, you’re getting emotional.” This was a way to deal with her since she was a teen. She took a deep breath and nodded.

“I know, but this was incredible. I had never heard of so many maladies in my life outside of a genetics course. Every kid there was always being watched over by a parent, five kids there were in wheelchairs and severely handicapped.” Her voice going a little shrill at the end.

“Ok, so why is that making you upset?” She looked at me and seemed on the edge of crying. “I know I want kids, but looking at the results of his family’s genetics there is a high chance of us having one or all of them being genetically screwed up. I want children, and so does he, but that is just too big a risk for me to take.”

I nodded and understood. When their mother was pregnant my friends always asked me if I wanted a boy or a girl and I always told them I just wanted the kid to have ten finger, ten toes and healthy. Now it looked like Eva was afraid that wouldn’t be the case if she got pregnant. “Have you talked to Bart about this?” she nodded.

“He got mad. He said he loved his family and that having a special needs person in your life makes them and you a stronger person.” She looked at me. “But is it wrong of me to want my child to be perfect? To have the best chance from the start? Three of his sister’s kids are on anti-anxiety meds and they are barely in their teens.”

I was at a loss. I mean what do you tell your daughter when she is not really that far off base? She wanted kids and wanted them to have a good start. I sat there thinking while we ate. I had nothing. I mean tell her not to have kids? Get a divorce from a guy she dearly loved? Take a chance and hope for the best? I told her my views and advised her to maybe talk to her sister Grace. Little did I know what would come of that advice.

Now this is from what I heard later so I don’t know how much of it true.

Eva met her sister Grace for lunch at a small bistro in downtown. As they sat down and ordered, Grace knew her little sis was nearing a break down. The girl had always been a neat person and had driven her crazy when she was a teen. I mean who folded their panties and put them in order of shades of color. But looking at Eva now she could tell something was very wrong.

Her hair was neat, but the braid was messy. She was well dressed but her shoes didn’t match her outfit. Most people wouldn’t even notice but as a sister it was like a police flasher in the rearview mirror. Something was desperately wrong. Then she saw Eva fidgeting and that was the last straw.

“So little sis, what’s wrong?” Eva looked at her. “How did you know?” Grace just raised an eyebrow. “Is Bart screwing around on you?” she asked “No nothing like that.” “Is he hitting you? Treating you bad?” Eva just shook her head. “Then why do you look like I should worry? I’ve never seen you looking so stressed out.”

Eva told her sister the same thing she told her father. While they ate Grace thought about her sister’s problem. “Ok so Bart is against doing it any other way? No sperm donor, adoption, nothing like that?” Eva took a deep breath. “No, he thinks there is nothing wrong with his family.” Grace rolled her eyes. It was all well and good to be supportive of special needs but wasn’t it the right for a mother to hope not to have them if it was avoidable?

“Well little sis there isn’t much wiggle room on this one. I figure you have to make a choice and I see three possibilities. One, you have kids with Bart and hope for the best. Dad has some strong genes and when my first boy was born everyone said he looked like dad more than his father. Two, just give up on having kids. It might stress the two of you and lead to a divorce, but that is a chance you would face otherwise. And last, find a nice, healthy guy and do the nasty. Make sure he looks like your hubby and no one is the wiser.”

Eva was shocked. “You mean cheat on my husband?” Grace shrugged. “Call it non-artificial insemination. I’m not talking about an affair, just do it enough to make sure you catch and then call it off. Didn’t you ever hear that song by Heart?” Eva shook her head. “That is almost as repulsive as the first alternative. No I just couldn’t do it with a stranger.”

They talked some more and then separated. Grace had given her sister as much advice as she had to give. There weren’t a lot of choices to be made, and in the end it was going to have to be Eva’s decision. She could talk it over with her husband till their opposite views tore them apart, or she could do something about it.

Eva was beginning to feel trapped. Any way she looked at things all she could see was her marriage falling to pieces. Not having kids was a deal breaker for them both. They got married because they loved kids and wanted a large family. That is hard thing to find in a man or woman these days. Bart wouldn’t hear of having it done artificially, he wanted his kids, not a labs.

This left Eva with two possibilities and as time wore on they were the only ones left for her to consider. One was divorce and hope for the best, and the other was her sister’s idea of finding a “donor”. She loved her husband so much, she didn’t want to leave him, but was cheating on him any better? She thought about the alternative and disliked it more and more. She couldn’t see herself having sex with another man, especially a man she didn’t have a connection with on more than a physical level. Even in college she wasn’t a girl to look for one night stands.

Then one day it was all too much for her anymore. Eva was having lunch with her dad and the façade finally broke. For no reason at all she was sitting in the kitchen she had grown up in and it all came crashing down around her. The tears started and her father wrapped his arms around her and held her tight.

This only added to her sense of loneliness and she had a full-fledged breakdown. She couldn’t hold it back, she had run out of strength. The stress had built up to a breaking point and her father, as always was there to catch her. She didn’t remember much of it. She just remembered feeling warm and safe in her father’s arms. She didn’t remember how it happened but she was somehow transported into the living room and was curled up in her father’s strong arms.

She felt like a little girl again and it was wonderful. Nothing could hurt her here. Daddy would protect his little girl from the world and she was safe. For the first time in months, maybe years, she felt light inside. Like there was absolutely nothing wrong that she couldn’t handle with daddy there. Every time she got hurt, every heartbreak, every worry had lost its ability to bother her while her daddy was holding her.

Then out of nowhere it came back, the memories of puberty. Even though he wasn’t the most handsome of men, she had always had a fascination with her father. He was really her first love, and she remembered she had wished as a little girl she could marry her dad. Even Bart was still second place in her heart and at that moment she felt that love all over again.

As I held my little girl in arms I couldn’t believe how much this had torn her up inside. I knew this was important to her, but to have this much of an impact was ridiculous. She was so upset she didn’t move as I struggled to lift her bodily up and carry her into the front room. At my age I wasn’t used to carrying an adult woman around and I almost collapsed as I sat on the couch with her landing in my lap. Not bad for a fat old man.

She just sat there, for a few minutes crying like she had as a child. I could feel her anger and fear as she cried. I began to wonder if her marriage was as good as she thought it was. What kind of man, what kind of husband cares for his wife’s feelings so little that he would push her to the point she broke down like this? I hated to admit it but when their mom wanted to have kids I was nervous as hell.

At our age, barely out of high school, she came to me and told me she didn’t want to use birth control anymore. I balked at the idea but as gave me one look of her sad eyes and that was the last of it. After that I was overjoyed to be a father. When she told me she was pregnant the second time I couldn’t have been happier. Being a father was the most rewarding experience of my life. It had also been my refuge when their mom has passed away.

Eva laid there in her father’s arms and felt a warmth growing inside of her. Was this what love really was? This feeling of acceptance and comfort? Why was it she never felt this nearly as strong with Bart as she did right now? Why couldn’t Bart understand her fears and her needs? As she calmed down the warmth and smells took her back, into her memories.

She remembered all the times she would steal her dad’s shirts after he had worn them and use them to sleep in. She would go to bed alone, but it was like he had his arms around the whole night. When she learned to masturbate it was his scent that filled her head as she felt her body twist and turn in orgasm. Over time she would see her dad in her fantasies as the focus of her desires and then she began to see her father in whole new light.

Every time she would work up her courage to seduce him, or to call out her love to him she chickened out with one look of love from his big green eyes. She was more afraid of losing the relationship she had than the one she might or might not start. Even the thought of losing what she had was too great. Thus she kept her dreams to herself till they faded with age and reality.

But right now, in this place she felt it again. She felt her heart beating fast with nervousness. She felt her breasts ache and that ache spread through her body. Her mind began to whirl with the possibilities. What would it be like to have her father in her arms for a change? What would happen? Then her focus came back.

If she had sex with her father there was a chance of her children having just what she feared about having children with her husband. The negatives would get reinforced and her children would have the same problems as her husband’s family. She thought about it and she began to calculate things. Bart’s family seemed to have a genetic trend that reinforced negative traits. Even the women who married into the family seemed to have just as high a risk.

She began to think about the close relationship she had with her father and wondered if it was worth the risk, but from a statistical point of view. She knew this was the chance she needed. A man she loved, and who loved her. A man that understood her better than anyone else in the world. She would calm down, and take this as a sign that it was time.

I was glad when Eva calmed down and just sat in my arms. She seemed calmer and just rested her head against my shoulder. We sat like that for a long time and when she looked at me she was her old self again. She gave me a shy smile, kissed me on the cheek, and thanked me for being here for her. “Littlest love, that’s what a dad is for. No matter what you need, or when you need it I am here for you.” “Thanks dad, I need to think about some things, but I may be asking for your help later.”

Eva spent days on her computer researching everything she could about incest children. What were the risks of genetic problems? What kind of things happened later in life to them? She learned that interfamilial relationships were much more common than she had thought. There was also much more information available than she had ever imagined.

There were of course the horror stories of rape babies, but there were also the stories of the children of those relationships. There were, when you looked deep enough and hard enough, stories of people who had chosen to live secret lives. Of the children that had few problems in life. Brother and sisters, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons. Their children rarely had major problems, and their occurrences were not much higher than the norm. All of this gave her a hope she dared not speak of to anyone, but it was still a great hope. The next time she had lunch with her dad she kept her request inside, but she still began a campaign to seduce him.