What could it be? What could make your world even better? And then it hit you: a little girl! But Alison didn’t want to go through another pregnancy, so after spending a lot of time and money you adopted Jessie.

Adopted her!”

I sighed. “This sort of talk isn’t productive.”

“I was still out there, David, only eight years old, worrying all day what might happen to me after the last lights were turned off. Your perfect little family required a cute little girl? Well guess what, Dad? I was a cute little girl! I mean, I only have a couple of photos to prove it, but if you saw them I don’t think you’d accuse me of being a beast.”

For the first time she looked like she might cry as she said, “You guys wanted a sweet little girl, you could have adopted me.”

22.

“I GET THAT, Nicki. But you’re right: we didn’t adopt you. And now you’re punishing me for it.”

“Like I said, I’m giving you the chance to make it right. Two million dollars won’t bring back my innocence. It won’t give me the childhood I never had. It won’t allow me to have children of my own someday…but it could help me have a future.”

I let her vent some more before saying, “I’ll make you a deal: if the DNA results prove conclusively that you’re Katie, I’ll pay the two million. But you’ll have to agree to move away and never contact our family members again.”

She shook her head. “Why am I not surprised to hear that your solution to ‘what should we do with Katie?’ is to banish me from your family again, while not bothering to consider I am your family?”

My turn to vent: “You want to know why? I’ll tell you: it’s because you didn’t knock on our door eighteen months ago and say, ‘Hi Dad, I’m Katie, your long lost daughter.’ Instead, you seduced your biological brother and used him to get closer to me. Then you seduced me, your own father, and got me to participate in the most disgusting sexual acts imaginable. I don’t even think there’s a word for what you’ve done. It’s the most degenerate thing I’ve ever heard of! The highest possible degree of perversion.”

She looked at me as though seeing me through different eyes. Then, very calmly said, “You’re a hypocrite, David. And by the way, there is a word for what I’ve done, and it’s a common one. It’s called incest. And here’s something interesting: I don’t recall ever hearing you define our relationship as perverted until today. Thirty minutes ago you couldn’t get enough of me. For the better part of a year you wanted to be inside me. And when I finally let you, you felt like you’d died and gone to heaven. Well maybe you hate to admit your own daughter gave you the best sex of your life, but it doesn’t change the fact I’m the exact same person I was thirty minutes ago when you offered to do anything to keep our sexual relationship alive.”

“You find that strange? That I could enjoy having sex with a woman right up to the moment I found out she was my daughter? And she knew it all along?”

“Yes. I do find that strange. Because in our case, daughter is just a title. It means nothing. You’re 42, I’m 23. We never saw each other till last year. You fell in love with me. And whether you want to acknowledge it or not I’m still the woman you wanted to have sex with as recently as noon today. You were willing to leave Mom for me!”

I stared at her in disbelief. Then lowered my voice and said, “You knew what you were doing.