Eventually, he stopped in front of her. “How do you know it’s mine.”

“Amelia,” she corrected sharply, “is definitely yours. There is no question.”

“You told me you were on the pill.”

“I was. But I had that sinus infection. I was on penicillin during the vacation. It caused the pill to fail. I didn’t know, Samuel T. I did not know.”

He went back to the pacing, and the distance he covered grew longer and longer, until he was traversing the entire length of the porch.

“I was a child, Samuel.”

“So you’re saying this is my fault. Because I was two years older than you?” He shook his head. “Why the hell did you make the story up about your professor? Why did you lie?”

“Because the weekend we got home, you hooked up with that girl, Cynthia.”

“What?”

“Don’t play dumb.” She felt her own anger rise. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. We got into that fight on the plane on the way home. And to pay me back, you took Cynthia to Aspen the next week. You picked her because you knew she would tell me.”

He pushed his hand through the air as if he were erasing everything. “I don’t remember any of that—”

“Bullshit! You know what you did! So yes”—she sat up and then got to her feet, too—“I made up that story about my professor.”

“You got him fired!”

“He was fired because he was sleeping with three of his students!”

“But you lied about him and you didn’t care! You never fucking care! You use people, you don’t give a good goddamn about how their lives are affected by your—”

“Really! What about you? You’re just as bad. I had to comfort Cynthia after she got back and you refused to answer her calls. You do that, you sleep with women knowing damn well you don’t give a shit about them, and then you leave them out to hang because God forbid if someone doesn’t like you. And meanwhile, you’re on to the next. Don’t pretend that’s not how you operate.”

She must have hit a nerve of truth because Samuel T. didn’t immediately come back at her with anything.

His quiet didn’t last, however: “You are the most self-centered person I have ever met. You’re spoiled and you’re entitled and you should have aborted that poor child when you had the chance—”

Her palm went flying before she was aware of wanting to hit him, and the smack of the impact was so loud her ears rang.

Then she jabbed her finger right in his face. “Amelia is not a mistake. She is a smart young woman who’s had a really shitty mother and no father to speak of. Hate me all you want, but don’t you ever suggest she is a waste.”

“No father, huh. And whose fucking fault is that? You want to poor-me that girl on the basis that she didn’t know her dad, but you did that, Gin. That is all your fault!”

“And how would that have worked for you? You think you would have been a stand-up guy and been there when she was up in the middle of the night? You think you would have stopped getting your degree and moved in to Easterly to change diapers? That you would have manned up back then and given her what she needed? You excelled at two things in college, drinking and fucking. The fact that you got into law school at all was only because your father begged them to take you—”

“Wait, wait, wait, are you saying you are mother of the year? As far as I understand it, you had a baby nurse for the first six months and then nanny after nanny after nanny. Exactly what did you do for her? Did you even change a diaper yourself? Hey, answer me this. When you ran out of wipes, did you put her in the back of your father’s Rolls-Royce and drive her into the ’burbs to Target? Did you, Gin? And when you got there, did you put her in a cart and push her around in your Chanel dress and your Prada heels? No? I didn’t fucking think so.”

In the back of her mind, Gin was very aware that they could just keep going back and forth all night with this no-you’re-shittier-than-I-am, no-you-are, no-YOU-are. But at the end of the day, this was about Amelia.

“You win,” she heard herself say. “I was a horribly negligent mother who cared more about her life than her child’s. I ignored Amelia and I was relieved when she went off to prep school because all we did was fight. I have been . . . unforgivably selfish. There is no way I can make up for those years, and I will have to live with that reality for the rest of my life. Amelia is who she is in spite of me, not because of any good example I’ve set.”

Samuel T. seemed taken aback at the candor and she took advantage of his surprise. “I decided after my father died that enough was enough. She’s coming back home because she told me that was what she wanted to do, and I’ve helped her figure out how to make it happen. I don’t have any clue how to be a good mother, but goddamn it, I’m going to give it a shot—and part of my change is coming clean with both of you. I would like her to know who you are and spend time with you—and I’m hoping you will agree, because it is the best thing for her.”

Wrapping her arms around herself, she looked toward the storm clouds that had gathered on the horizon.

As silence reigned between them, she knew that she had been right about one thing: Samuel T. was never going to forgive her. She could tell by the way he was staring at her, as if she were a stranger he didn’t want to be anywhere around. She had earned this animus, however, and was going to have to live with it as a consequence of her failures.

What she was truly terrified of, though? How Amelia was going to react. They had talked all the way to New England about nothing, and everything, and Gin had come to truly appreciate the girl. If Amelia shut her out now? It would be like losing her just when Gin was getting to know her.

But she had earned that, as well.

“She is up north finishing her exams,” Gin said. “Then she’s coming home. She’s going to ship her things and fly back.”

As she spoke in short sentences, Gin prayed that Samuel T. would agree to meet with the girl. Get to know her. Maybe . . . after a while . . . learn to love her.

After so many years of demanding things of the man, it was the only thing she would ever beg for from him. And his answer was life and death to her.

Samuel T. was ready to keep arguing. He was so fucking beyond ready to keep throwing shit at Gin, to continue marching down the road of their previous mutual indiscretions, to spiral directly into the full force of their conflicts.

It was so much easier than dealing with the reality that he had a child.

He had a child, a daughter, on the face of the planet earth. And not only that, he had had her with Gin.

Gin had given birth to their child.

Gin . . . and he . . . had had a baby. Together.

And she had cheated him out of sixteen years of knowing his own flesh and blood.

As a renewed blast of white-hot anger hit, Samuel T. opened his mouth to point out another transgression of hers—but something about the way she was staring across at him made him stop: Standing before him, she had become a perfectly self-contained unit, her arms wrapped around herself, her body unmoving, her expression remote and calm. It was as if she had unplugged from the socket of their electricity, and somehow, this drained him as well.

Dimly, he thought of what he knew of Amelia.

Not much. The girl hadn’t been a big topic of conversation for Gin, and he had certainly never felt compelled to ask her how her child by another man was doing. Amelia had been smart enough to get into Hotchkiss, though. That was one thing.

From out of nowhere, an image of the girl in that crypt at the cemetery came to him. She had been looking up at the lineup of plaques, reading the names of her ancestors, her head tilted to one side, her long, thick brown hair down way past her shoulder blades.

As a vague feeling of panic threatened to overwhelm him, Samuel T. went right for the bottle of bourbon, finishing what was in his glass on the way. He poured himself a second serving only because his fine breeding prevented him from guzzling the stuff directly from the open neck.

If he’d had any medical training, he would have run himself an IV of Family Reserve.

With the booze burning its way to his gut, he opened his mouth again. What stopped him from lobbing more insults this time was what Gin had called him out on. Preston/Peabody/Prentiss had indeed been phoning him and texting him, using excuses as original as inviting him out to meet her and her friends, asking him to a birthday party, wondering if he’d lost her number.