Confused

What follows is a sleepless night of swirling thoughts and chaotic emotions. The morning light found you sitting in your kitchen staring down into your coffee as it slowly cooled in your hands.

What had happened that night should not have happened. You had poured everything you had into raising Penelope the right way, or at the very least NOT the Bailey way. And yet what you had let happen this night was a total betrayal of the values you had tried to ingrain into her…and into yourself. Nearly 20 years of work and denial dashed aside for a few minutes of pleasure. Yes, you could try to tell yourself a story about how she had **** her affections upon you and that she was so much stronger than you, but deep down you knew you could have stopped it.

So many things disturbed you about what happened. It bothered you that she would even do such a thing, particularly after what she’d experienced at college. It bothered you the way she’d teased you and the things she’d said. It bothered you how easily you became aroused and how quickly you’d orgasmed to her forbidden touch. Of all the things tugging on your conscience though two facts stood out from the rest. The first was how much you had enjoyed it. Her strength, her desire, her arousal pressing against your back, the sheer fucked up wrongness of it…even now it elicited a shameful stir of the very loins that fathered her. Riding along with that feeling however was a guilt that flayed your very soul. Try as you might you couldn’t actually summon genuine guilt at the act itself. Some twisted Bailey part of you was disturbingly comfortable with the ultimate taboo. No, the guilt you felt was for letting down Elsie. She had left you the most precious gift a woman could give to a man and you had defiled it. You had betrayed your soulmate and failed the one person in the world you would have done anything to protect.

It all left you feeling…unmoored. Like when after El passed on. You needed to find solid ground again. You needed an anchor. You needed to talk to someone, the one person you knew you could bare your soul to and receive the hard truths that you needed to hear. You needed your big sister.

“Goooood morning, Daddy!” Penelope’s cheery voice snaps you from your reverie. Acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened she prances across the room to lay a sweet kiss on your cheek.

“Good morning, Peanut.” You put the full mug of coffee down.

“Mmm!” She stretches. “Oh, it is good to sleep in my own bed again. I haven’t slept that good since I left.”

Looking at her you didn’t know what to say or do. Her acting like everything was normal only made it that much harder. “You’re dressed already?”

“Mm hm.” She scoops up Bonbon to give him a nuzzle and zoom through the air. “I’m meeting Brooke and Summer at the cafe this morning.” She sets down the kitten who stumbles off sideways befuddled as to what had just happened. “We might do a bit of shopping after.”

“Oh, uh…you said you were going to hang out here for awhile.”

“Yeah, but they really want to hear about Harvard and all that.” She says. “They’re gonna be so happy to hear I’m moving back. They really missed me, and I missed them too.”

“I thought we might head out to Auntie’s earlier today.”

“You go ahead, Daddy.” She says. “I’ve got the number for the chopper. I’ll meet you out there?”

“Uh, if that’s what you want baby girl.”

She smiles that big, beautiful, wholesome smile of hers. “I like when you can me that.”

“Penny.” You sigh. “Wait. We need to talk.”

“Later, Daddy.” She turns and walks to the door, her dress swishing behind her. “I’m already running late.”

“Penny…”

“They’re waiting for me…”

“Penelope!”

She stops in her tracks and slowly turns back to you. Only then, as her big blue eyes meet yours, do you see any acknowledgment of the sin she’d taken part in. Though not in the way you were hoping. In that gaze you see no regret and no remorse. What you see instead shakes you to the core. Lust, desire, and a hunger for what she’d only gotten a taste of. Your own precious child was now looking at you exactly like Mom and Fiona and Peg and Chloe and Charlie and all the rest, but with a depth you’d only experienced in the dark eyes of her mother. In stunned silence you stare before an ever so tiny and oh so naughty smile flits at the corners of her bubblegum lips.

“Is there something you wanted to say, Daddy?” Her sweet tone is innocence itself as she bats her big blue eyes. “Am I in trouble?”

“Uh…no, baby. Just…” At a complete loss as to what to say you buy yourself some time. “We’ll talk later, okay? We need to talk.”

Her face brightens. “Okay, Daddy!”

“Have…Have a good time with the girls. Tell them I said hi.”

“I will!” She says. “I’ll see you this afternoon!”

“Yeah.” You sigh. “See you later, Peanut.”

“Love youuuuu!”

She slams the door behind her leaving a tongue-tied father, a confused kitten and an ice cold mug of coffee in her wake.