He didn't come right and ask me what my intentions were with his daughter.

But that was the question he was asking. He wasn't being contentious about it. In fact, it was the sort of conversation that both Abby and I had anticipated beyond the conversations we had together in the spring as he faced the reality of the relationship between Abby and I.

This was not an unfamiliar experience for me as I had encountered this type of inquiry before, first with the parents of my high school sweetheart and then with the parents of my wife after we started dating. And I could understand where they were coming from and why. When I was in high school, my girlfriend's parents didn't want their other daughter to run off and get married six months later like her older sister had done. At that time, though, I was 17 and she was 16 and running off and getting married wasn't part of our plans. After high school, we were in a similar situation that confronted Abby and I, and we put any future relationship between us on hold as we went off to our respective schools to further our educations.

Then I met the woman who would eventually become my wife during my sophomore year at college. When we met, I didn't have any idea that there would be a relationship (she was in my ECON 205 class and was friends with other female friends of mine). There was a passage of time before we started seriously dating and truly became "a couple." But when we did, it was much like the way things started for Catie and I and Abby and I. I was her *prey* like I was their (Catie and Abby) *prey.* But, I also got the *inquiry* about my intentions with her. I came to understand part of that was as a result of her previous engagement to another guy before we started dating. But part of it was that it was 1972 - 1973 and her mother didn't think any of their daughters should be having sex with boyfriends.

In that case, their oldest daughter (my girlfriend) was "setting a bad example for her younger sisters." I was the sexual neophyte back then and my girlfriend knew what she wanted and I was just following her lead and delivering (much like I followed Catie's lead. Although, unlike Catie, she wasn't sexually involving her younger sisters with me).

I saw this inquiry about Abby and I as being entirely based in his love for and concern for Abby's happiness and well-being now and in the future.

But he was asking me and us what our plans were.

In many ways, he had been blindsided by the relationship between Catie and I. It wasn't only the rapidity of our developing relationship. It was his stroke and how that put him out of commission for a period of time. Then, as he returned home after his rehabilitation to resume life at Christmas and New Years, there was the car accident. Him finding out that Catie was pregnant after the accident was certainly unexpected, too. And then to find out the nature and the circumstances of the sexual relationship between Abby and I. Well, it had been challenging and a bit overwhelming. If there was anything that had surprised me and him about Abby, it was that she stood strong in advocating for what she wanted. And at the moment, she wanted me.

This was not lost on Abby's dad. He understood that I made Abby happy and that was clearly evident to him and had been for the past several months after Abby and I resumed the sexual part of our relationship. He knew that the two of us had been healing each other through our loss and grief. That, somehow, lightened his burden in dealing with his own loss and had actually brought he and Abby closer together. The little things I added, like suggesting having him involved in her prom preparations, made a huge difference. I was glad that the suggestion had worked out so favorably.

The age difference between Abby and I still weighed on him. His oldest son didn't think Abby being involved with me was a good idea. That was rooted both in the way that Abby and I had become sexually involved (with Catie's involvement and supervision) and the fact that I was much older than she was. His youngest son thought that our relationship was fine and that Abby and I would eventually figure out whether our relationship was an enduring one or one that Abby would grow out of. Their family therapist had suggested that, as long as I was treating Abby well and not *controlling her,* abusing her, or otherwise using her, that Abby and I should be the ultimate arbiter of our relationship.

I had never limited Abby on dating or on other sexual partners and, from my perspective, she was with me by her own choosing.

The thing was that Abby and I weren't going into this period of her life blindly. I did want her to experience her college life without feeling like she needed to be bound to me. I was aware of how profoundly I seemed to change once I arrived on a campus and I had a daily life and routine to operate while I was there. There were people to meet and friendships to be made with a whole new group of people who didn't know you from your past. And without direct parental control and intervention like at home, you could become and explore a different self-expression without the constraints of your past, if you were willing to let go of some of that past *baggage.* I saw it in myself and I saw it in the shared experiences of those around me living on campus. Through that experience, the experiences of my friends and acquaintances, and even what I knew about Catie, it was a common growth thread for most people going to live on a distant campus. Abby would go through her own version of this, of course, and everything could change dramatically.

I knew this change was coming and so did her dad. He and their mother had seen it in their own children as they grew up, graduated high school, and went off to college. Their children grew as a result of their college experiences and it changed the relationships within the family as everyone grew through these changes. For the most part, they were good and healthy changes as their children grew into adulthood. And though Catie did tell Abby about her experiences when she was in school and I could tell Abby about what the experience was like for me, she would have her own experience of it in different times (mid-1980's rather than the mid to late 1970's). I didn't want her to feel like it was an obligation that she had to keep (just like her dad didn't want Abby to feel obligated to stay and take care of him).

We told Abby's dad that we had agreed to what was, essentially, a pause in our relationship while keeping all our options open. We might emerge as a couple somewhere in the future knowing that we could make our lives work together. But I also knew that Abby could meet someone in the first couple of weeks or months (like my freshman roommate did) who ended up feeling like they were truly made for each other and a better match than Abby and I felt in this moment. If and when that time arrived, I would let her go.

It was at about this point that a question about my ex-wife came up. Specifically what would happen if she came back into my life. I used that as an illustration.

"I still love her and I always will. At the moment, she is the mother of my only child. Did I want the marriage to work out? Yes. She let go of the marriage to pursue the affair with a younger guy. I wanted to work things out. But ultimately, I had to let her go because it was what love really demanded of me. No matter what I tried or what I did to address what she was feeling, what she was missing, I just wasn't able to give her the happiness she longed for again. Someone else had that key and it wasn't me."

"The hardest thing I've ever done is love her and to let her go to be with a person that she wants more than she wants me and (presumably) loves more than she loves me, no matter how much I love her. This was more than just a rough patch in our marriage to work out. She couldn't let him go to work on our marriage and I was being displaced and replaced by him. She expected a terrible legal fight from me because she was "in the wrong" and North Carolina has some very interesting laws with respect to these types of affairs. She was surprised when I told her that she needed to go and really find out if this was who and what she wanted. I said it, not with anger, but with conviction that she needed to find out and choose what really made her happy. I also let her go with the understanding that I would be there for her if she changed her mind, at least for some period of time."

"Maybe if I hadn't been so parochial about fidelity and monogamy in the relationship, a different path would have been available to her and I." I didn't realize when I said this that there was an opening for a different conversation that would be occurring a few minutes later.

"You know that love isn't about getting everything you want or even what you want. It's about giving what the people you love and the relationships what they need."

Abby had heard me speak this before maybe without complete understanding due to her age and limited experiences. But her dad knew what I meant.

"And then I met Catie, and then Abby, and our lives changed in mere moments. But it wasn't until I met Catie that my views about monogamous relationships changed. She showed me and reminded me that what was really important was that our relationship was solidly grounded and that we were open and honest with each other in our love for each other. If we had other sexual partners in our lives, it wasn't "cheating" when such love was shared openly. But we needed to be committed to each other. I think I knew that all along and it took meeting them (Catie and Abby) to see that for some love relationships, this is what works."

"I didn't expect any of this happen. And I'm not saying that none of this would have happened if I hadn't gotten on that train and met Catie. You probably would have had your stroke and Catie would have come home out of her love and concern for you. I just wouldn't have been with her. I wouldn't have met any of you and our lives would have been on a different path. You brother-in-law would probably have had his heart attack and there probably would have been a visit to him at the hospital. Would it have ended up the same way? Would there have been the traffic accident and would have any or other family members died? Or would the accident have not happened? We have no way of knowing. There may be another universe where it happened some other way, but we have no way of knowing that."

I was showing my geekiness when I said that. But I grasped the idea of possible different quantum universes.

"I certainly didn't get on that train last year with the intent of changing our lives. For me, it was just going to be a train trip across the country to pass through a state I hadn't gotten to yet, and a number of counties for my map collection. And then Catie sat down beside me and that was the start of something special and wonderful. And you need to know, that when I offered to let her spend the night with me in the sleeping room that I had, I told her that she didn't need to have sex with me. She was very offended at that. Like I didn't want her or find her desirable. I did. I just wasn't that presumptuous that she would just jump in bed with me."

"But you did have sex with her?" he asked.

"Yes. A first for both of us on a train. And we became nearly inseparable during that trip. I didn't know what would happen at the end of the line in Chicago. The next thing I know, she's inviting me to stay with her when we arrive in Chicago. I said "yes"

and was sad to leave her after that long weekend. Yet, I knew there was something more than just incredible sex between her and I. And that's why I went back to Chicago to be with her again.

"I had just arrived in Chicago when you had your stroke and your wife called to suggest to Catie that she needed to come home. I was willing to cut the weekend short and fly home, but I offered to come out here with her just to provide any emotional support I could. Then I met Abby and Catie introduced Abby to my sexual side. Wasn't even on my radar. But the things your daughters convinced me to try or do..."

"I'm not blaming them," I quickly added. I knew I was getting off track and I returned to the question at hand.

"So, I think it's unlikely that my wife will suddenly change her mind and want me back. I haven't told her about Abby because she'd probably think I was trying to top her pursuit of a younger man with a pursuit of a teenager. It's not that way at all, of course. But the guy she's involved with is seven years younger than her or I and is still in graduate school. She might also challenge my joint custody with my son."

He could see that could be a problem.

"No, the real problem comes seven to ten years from now. Abby and I have talked about this, too: what if we're still together and married? My son is sixteen years old and to him and his friends, Abby is the hot, sexy stepmom?"

We all chuckled at that mental image. But it was something that Abby and I had discussed if, through it all, we emerged together as a loving couple, creating a family, and adding to the one I already had. The term MILF wasn't in my lexicon then but a decade later with a teenage son and his friends? I could imagine a rather audacious scene.

The conversation drifted off to my career and goals. But what I had learned through the dissolution of my marriage that was still so fresh. I would never travel or be away from home like I had been the previous 2 - 3 years (in fact, 1985 was really a special case after our separation because of my expertise). I was finding a way to limit my travel to about one-quarter to no more than one-third of the time in any month. And if I couldn't, I would be seeking a different job position.

Through different events (my divorce) and shared events (the accident), Abby's dad and I had learned some valuable lessons about our work life and our personal life. We had that work/home/family perspective that Abby hadn't developed yet beyond life can be uncertain and nothing is guaranteed.

As the three of us sat there and talked, there was something else that Abby's dad and I shared: some sense of guilt from moving forward in our lives with other people after our primary lovers had died (and in this case, due to the same accident). My sense of being insensitive or unfaithful to the memory of Catie wasn't quite as profound as Abby's dad had for the loss of his wife and Abby's mother. After all, he had years in his relationship with her before and during raising a family. I had mere months to experience what I had with Catie.

For me, some of my extracurricular sexual activities with Catie's friends did generate some feelings of guilt (for me, at least) and I largely justified it knowing that Catie would want this for me (like she was still there with me telling me that it was okay and directing me in what she wanted to see me do next. I know, it's weird. But it's the only way I have to describe the sensation). But for those sexual experiences with persons who didn't know Catie, it wasn't guilt and it wasn't fatalism either. It was an extraverted sensuality; to experience and share the moment.

For me, Abby was the challenge. We had established a sexual relationship within the sexual relationship that Catie and I had shared (a dream within a dream?). While Abby's dad knew some of the particulars of how this threesome developed and progressed, he didn't know all that had transpired. He was more aware of the way the threesome started. I don't think he realized that all not all our activities were threesomes and that I was "allowed" to sleep with either of his daughters as circumstances allowed. This was the consensual, open, "no cheating" aspect of our relationships to and with each other.

Even before Catie died, I had no idea where the relationship with Abby was going. My initial sense was that she was going to become a secondary player to my focus on Catie through Catie's pregnancy. Before we found out that Catie was pregnant, we certainly thought that secondary role was going to happen after Abby graduated from high school and moved onto campus. Catie and I never had a chance to talk about Abby and her "role" in the context of Catie's pregnancy. All I had shared with Catie was that pregnant sex *could be* very hot.

After Catie and Marianne died, that framework had been ripped away with an uncertain role for Abby. Abby and I had both lost people we both loved (though with different relationships), with all the shock and grief associated with what had happened. In the immediate aftermath of the accident, my emotions were just too raw to want to be sexually intimate with Abby. Holding each other close, yes. Sexually intimate, no. As time passed and she and I spoke with each other on the phone, learning more about each other and healing, I knew that whatever relationship Abby and I developed and maintained had to stand on its own, even though it started with Catie. The sense of guilt that I occasionally experienced when thinking of or talking about Catie in Abby's presence gradually diminished.

So far, this conversation had been about our plans and what Abby and I were going to do in the immediate and perhaps the intermediate-term future. And as we had indicated, we were going to pause our relationship. It didn't mean we weren't going to see each other. It did mean we had indefinite plans for *us.*

It was at this point Abby asked her dad what he planned to do, and more specifically with the woman he had been seeing (recently). Abby knew this woman and, in fact all these friends, were people her mom and dad knew since before she was born. Many of them lived (or had lived) in the Portland area and had cottages down along the coast. From time to time over the years, Abby's whole family had gone to the coast to stay with or near some of these friends near the towns of Cannon Beach and Seaside, Oregon. However, the woman her dad was seeing/staying with had lost her husband several years before and she was a widow. If anything, Abby was pretty sure that her dad was "getting some ass" because he seemed pretty mellow when he returned from seeing her each time and she seemed happy about it. If there were any issues or concerns about Abby's mom being "replaced," I wasn't aware of it. From everything that Abby had said to me, she wanted her dad to be happy and not be the lonesome widower if he wanted companionship in his life (again).

Here was where things got really interesting. Abby's dad was going through a similar sort of guilt experience with the woman he was seeing when he was with her and some of his friends out on the Oregon coast. In that sense, he and I had an empathic recognition of loss and filling that sense of loss. What he admitted to Abby (and I) was that this relationship with her had been more than just friendship for a very long time and that it had been sexual even before Catie was born.

Abby acted surprised to hear this.

"Did mom know?" Abby asked him.

"Of course she knew," he said. "Your mom would be sleeping with (her husband) while I was sleeping with her. Sometimes we'd be all together in the same room in the same bed. The four of us had a lot of good times together over the years."

For Abby, hearing this matched with some of the things she had seen over the years where the friendships seemed a lot more familiar and intimate. It wasn't overt (according to Abby). It was noticing the way they sometimes touched.

"What about your other friends? Were you and mom swapping and fucking them, too?" Abby asked.

"Not everyone," he replied. "Only a few others."

I didn't know if this was making sense to Abby, but it sure was to me. It explained why he didn't vehemently object to me being involved with Abby when he found out how that started between Catie, Abby, and I. As I was thinking that, he said he thought it would have been hypocritical for him and her mom to be sexually involved with other people (couples) and then to forbid their children's sexual exploration.

"As long as you do it safely," he added.

Abby was still trying to take this in. "So, you and mom were swingers," she said.

"No, swappers. There's a difference," he replied. "We don't pick up and have sex with random strangers. We share and swap partners between a few select friends and couples." I noticed the present tense of his sentence. He continued to explain the difference to us. While I was listening to this, my memory was comparing this to what I knew about Ted and Annie's group in Minnesota. It certainly was similar to the group that Catie and I got involved with.

"So, you and mom were sleeping with other people all this time?" I heard Abby asking.

"Sweetheart," he said to Abby. "It wasn't an everyday thing or even an every week thing..." he sounded defensive.

"I'm okay with it," Abby said, apparently aware of his defensiveness like I was, and trying to reassure him. "I'm just trying to understand it."

He went on to explain this to us further. It seemed as he went on, and Abby hadn't rejected him, he got a little more relaxed about telling us (like there was a burden being lifted). One of the key elements he mentioned was openness about who was having sex with who. "Your mom and I had no secrets about this. Both of us slept with other members of the group from time-to-time. I knew when your mom slept with someone else and who it was and she knew the same about me. I think that's true for everyone we've been involved with."

It was exactly the same thing I had said about Catie (and Abby) and I.

There was another pause. "Gangbangs?" Abby asked.

"Yes," he replied.

"MOM?" she asked.

"Yes, sweetheart," he said.

"When? How?" Abby asked.

"You remember some of those long dinners out with friends?" he asked.

"Yes," Abby replied.

"Sometimes they weren't long dinners at all and your mom and I went out to play with our friends. We weren't old fuddy duddies," he said.

"I guess not," she said.

Abby sat there quietly, and I could tell she was processing what she had just heard. She probably wasn't seeing or thinking about her mom and dad in the same way she had been just a few minutes before. Add to that what she and I had done earlier in the day with Peter and Trish and she was probably experiencing a certain sexual information overload.

I was wondering if Catie knew this about her parents. Or, had she shared what we had been up to in Minneapolis with her mom? Catie was very explicit in her writing about our experiences after Thanksgiving in Minneapolis. She hadn't written anything explicit in her journals about something that she knew or discovered about her parents, though. Nor had she told me on the phone.

But it made me wonder about some of what Catie had written about her parents in December 1985 and seeing their love in a different light. I had assumed that it was about the health scare that her dad had given all of them and the way her mom had rallied together all the resources to see him through his recovery, as an expression of the love that her mom had for her dad. She had written that she wanted that for us while she was in Portland but before she knew she was pregnant.

I also wondered whether Marianne knew or had figured out what was going on between Catie, Abby, and I.

"Were you gangbanging this weekend?" Abby asked her dad. This was certainly more in keeping with the sometimes precocious Abby I knew.

"No, it was just [the name of the woman he was seeing] and I together all weekend, just like you, sweetheart," he said. Neither Abby nor I were going to correct him on that point. "We were probably just as naked and spending just as much time in bed as you and Gary."

Abby giggled. I thought she was giggling because of the amount of time we had been sexually engaged and not spent in bed.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"Thinking about you and her prancing around her cottage naked all weekend. You chasing each other around..." Abby was giggling through her response at the thought of that.

"What do you think your mom and I were doing here when you kids weren't here?" he said. Abby hadn't thought of that. He went on to explain that they had a rule about lovers in the house while their children were living in the house: "Neither your mom, nor I would bring one of our lovers here to the house to be alone. If you kids were all out for some period of time somewhere, your mom and I might be here "entertaining" one or more friends. But we didn't want a situation where any of you might be here and we'd have to explain why Uncle Billy or Aunt Alice were here in our bedroom.

He turned to me and told me they weren't real aunts and uncles, they were sometimes called that by their kids.

"Your mom and I had agreed to change that rule and start entertaining here at the house after you started college because we'd have this big house to play in with our friends."

And who were these friends that her mom and dad had been having sex with over the years. Before he listed them out for her, he told her that some of the people had moved away, there had been a couple of people who had died, and some who decided that they weren't going to be involved at a sexual (and sometimes at a social level, too) with this group. And in the larger circle of family friends there were many who did not know about this or participate

At any given time over the span of their marriage and swappers life there were usually 8 - 10 couples that were part of the larger active group. But Abby's mom and dad had a deeper friendship and tended to have more frequent sexual relations with three other couples. Of course, Abby knew all these people and, more importantly to her, their children who were her friends and acquaintances (some of whom were having sex with each other). To me, they were just names of people I didn't know, people I had heard of, or people I met briefly at the funeral.

But there was one real stunner for Abby; Stephanie's parents. The parents of her best friend and soon to be roommate had been sleeping with her mom and dad all these years. She knew that her parents and Stephanie's parents were good friends and that was part of the reason why Abby and Stephanie were good friends. But the thought and knowledge of her mom and dad fucking with Stephanie's mom and dad was completely unexpected.

"Does Stephanie know?" was Abby's immediate question that she wondered out loud.

"Yes," her dad said. "She found out about it quite recently when she overheard her mom and dad talking. Her parents called me to let me know. Stephanie agreed not to tell you until I had a chance to talk to you. That's part of why I'm telling you this now."

"I hope you're not too disappointed in us," he said.

Abby assured him that she was not disappointed and she would always love him. Surprised? Yes! She wasn't accustomed to thinking about her parents and the specifics of their sex life (even though she existed due to their sex life). And the revelation about Stephanie's parents and her parents was a real stunner. He (actually Stephanie's parents, too) thought it might be better for Abby and Stephanie, as roommates, to both know rather than just Stephanie knowing and keeping the secret truth from Abby.

"You have a lot to talk about and maybe a bunch of questions. But do be careful about talking about it in the open," he said.

He pointed out that how they lived their life and their marriage was not for everyone. But it worked for him and Marianne and it kept their marriage and their love strong for each other as it did for most others in their sexual friendship circle.

"One more question," Abby said. "Did Catie know? Do my brothers know?"

"Not as far as I know, unless your mom told them and I think she would have told me if she had."

The three of us agreed to keep this to ourselves unless and until he wanted to share it with his sons.

"I think I want to go talk to Stephanie," Abby said at last. I asked if Abby wanted me to come along, thinking she might be going over to Stephanie's house.

""No, you stay here. I'm just going upstairs to call her," Abby told me.

I watched her leave and turn up the stairs towards her bedroom. She quietly closed the door to her room to make the phone call to Stephanie.

"I bet this is a real surprise to you," he said to me. "I hope this didn't bring up any issues for you around marital infidelity."

"Yes, sir. It is a surprise," I said. But I assured him that while marital infidelity was a core issue for my wife and me, I could see the beauty and the love expressed between two loving partners. As I had said earlier, my wife was replacing me through the affair, not trying something different to strengthen or choose a new path for our marriage.

However, this information put some of the experiences with Catie and even with his into a new light; the conversation with Marianne in the car on the way back to the house after dinner in October. She seemed to know quite a bit about Catie and I without coming right out and saying so. At the time, it did have me wonder what Catie was telling her mom about her and I and what we were doing. Or the time when Marianne encountered me naked in the hallway. At the time, I just figured that she had seen her boys naked and that I was just "another boy." Maybe it was more than that and I just didn't realize it. I could be pretty clueless at times.

My mind was racing through these different items and experiences.

We couldn't really tell what was going on upstairs in the phone conversation.

"Do you think Catie knew?" he asked. "I know you and she did some 'interesting stuff' while you were together."

"Man, I have no idea," I replied. And I didn't know. Abby and I had been the guardians of Catie's journals and, as far as I knew, Abby had held on to them. Catie hadn't written anything explicit that I could recall that would indicate what her parents were up to. Still there were a lot of coincidences that would suggest that Catie knew about their lifestyle and was patterning her life similar to the way her parents lived theirs once she found a willing partner (me).

I couldn't let the 'interesting stuff' just go by and I asked him what he meant or what he wanted to know.

"Enemas," he said.

"Oh, that's me," I said. I told him that Catie saw my enema bag in my suitcase when we were in my sleeper room and that we ended up sharing enemas as we rode across the country.

"Back in the day, enemas were quite the thing. Not so much anymore. Some of us still use them," he said. "Marianne and I did. Besides a good clean out, we loved giving them to each other." I wasn't going to volunteer what Abby and I did (and I would rather have Abby telling him rather than me without her there beside me). But he did have some knowledge of Catie and I and our enema bags.

"How about you and your woman friend this weekend?" I asked.

He almost seemed embarrassed to admit it, but yes, the did share some enemas over the weekend. I thought sharing some small part of the experience for Catie and I might alleviate any sense of embarrassment.

"Well, Catie and I loved sharing enemas...both the giving and receiving. When we met, she told me that she only used them in certain instances from time to time, like during her period to help with cramping. It was my impression that I was the first person, the first guy, she knew who would use them as part of a very sensuous and intimate part of sex."

"Great for anal, too" he said.

"True, " I replied. "But, for Catie and I it was more than that. The thing she and I loved to do together was giving each other enemas and then holding them while we made love with each other." I realized, in the moment, that it felt weird sharing this experience about his dead daughter.

"Sounds messy," he said.

"It could have been, but we were lucky and it wasn't," I replied. "For Catie and I, it was one of the most intimate, sensuous, erotic things she ever did with anyone and she was so glad it was with me."

He sat there and thought about that.

We heard the door open from Abby's room and Abby came back downstairs.

"While I was talking to Stephanie, I came up with another question. How do we know who the biological fathers are?."

"We were all very careful about birth control and time of the month. And when we were ready to have children or another child, we would not swap with anyone else for several months prior until our target pregnancy window started and it was achieved."

They talked about Stephanie and the phone call. I just listened to them talk. Stephanie was okay. Abby was okay. They were still processing the idea of their parents having sex with each other and other people they knew.

This new information would dominate the conversations between Abby and I over the next few days. But later that night, when she and I crawled into her bed, she (and I) saw her parents from a completely different perspective. I couldn't be sure, but the knowledge that her parents were, in her mind, swingers made the desire for sex even greater than it normally was for us. We had another slow, intimate lovemaking session before we drifted off to sleep in each other's arms with my cum leaking out of her.