“Too right.”

As they got onto the highway, Amelia frowned. “So what is it?”

“I’ve gotten an annulment from Richard Pford.”

“Thank you, God. He was a total douche.”

“Yes, I’m afraid my decision making has not been the best at times. I’m trying to make up for it, though.”

“Well, you’ve never picked me up before. For anything. So there’s that.”

“Ah, yes, it’s true. And, ah, I’m really going to try to make a lot of things up to you.” Gin glanced over and then refocused on the traffic. “Along those lines . . . so you and I have never really spoken about your father.”

Even as Gin made her way into the center lane, she was very aware of the girl going completely still and staring across the seat.

“I want to be very clear here,” Gin said into the suddenly thick air. “It was my bad choice not to tell him about you and my bad choice not to tell you about him. I am . . .”

As tears threatened, she cleared her throat. “I will never forgive myself.”

“He didn’t know about me, either?”

“No.”

“So it wasn’t . . . that he didn’t want me,” Amelia said in a small voice.

Gin reached over and squeezed the girl’s hand. “No, not at all. I’m the bad person here, I was in the wrong. It was not your fault and it was not his fault. And you don’t need permission from me or anybody else to be really angry at me for that.”

Amelia took her hand away and put it in her lap. Then she shrugged. “It just kind of was the way it was, you know?”

Gin gripped the steering wheel hard. “I guess my question to you is, would you like to meet him?”

Amelia jerked back around. “Like . . . when? Where?”

“We can do it right now, if you want—”

“Yes. Yes, now. I want to know now.”

Gin briefly closed her eyes. “I had a feeling that was the way it was going to be.”

“Do I know him?”

“Actually . . .” Gin took a deep breath. “You do.”

“Getting ready for someone special?”

As Samuel T. checked his bow tie in the glass door of the microwave, he tried to smile in the direction of his estate manager. But his throat was dry, his eyes were wet, and his digestive tract seemed to be on the verge of letting lunch out prematurely.

It was just a question of which end it was going to use.

“She must be someone real special.” The woman nodded at the fruit and cheese plate he had made. “I mean, for you to cook for her? Wow.”

Okay, so “cook” was maybe taking things a little far. But he had certainly unwrapped the Brie, washed the green and purple grapes, and taken the sleeve of Carr’s water crackers out of the box. What the hell did teenage girls eat, anyway?

“We’ll see how it goes,” he said.

“Well, I appreciate the afternoon off. I’ve got some shopping to do. ’Bye now—oh, and the dry cleaners called to say they got the stain out of those white pants of yours. You must have had a heck of a weekend.”

“It was interesting.”

“I’ll bet. Have fun. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

As the woman left through the garage door, Samuel T. reread the text that Gin had sent and rechecked the time it had come through.

Any minute, they would be here.

He re-examined his bow tie in the micro-mirror and then headed out onto the porch. Proceeding down to the end with the stairs, he sat on the steps and stared off across his land to the county road they would be coming in on.

His weekend had been interesting. That was no lie—just not for the reason his estate manager thought it had been. In fact, it had been the first time ever that he’d not had a drink during a rager, and what do you know, that kind of changed the whole experience. As it turned out, his friends were not quite as fun when you were the one sober guy out of twenty. And Prescott had further surprised him by proving to be a far more well-rounded person than he had expected. She was a marathon runner, a classics major—and the reason she had been eyeing his hills as she had after that first night? She was a fox hunter and had been wondering if he might be amenable to her club coming onto his land in the fall for a lease fee.

That wine stain?

A waiter had tripped on the corner of a rug and had dumped a glass of Pinot Noir on Samuel T.’s thigh.

Prescott had wanted them to stay together, but he had gotten them separate rooms—and not just because he didn’t feel like having sex with anybody. He had stayed up all night, both nights, trying to remember what his parents had done right with him for all those years. And then he’d reviewed how other folks who had raised halfway-decent human beings had approached things.

He had read articles on the Internet.

Watched episodes of Full House and Home Improvement—because he wasn’t a TV watcher and thus had no idea what contemporary family shows were good to see, and those two had been what was on when he’d been a teenager.

No Facebook back then. Or cell phones. Or Twitter, Insta—

Yeah, those shows were maybe not real relevant as it turned out. But then again, he’d saved them for the four-to-six-a.m. insomnia shift when he’d been brain-dead anyway.

This meeting with Amelia today was happening sooner than he’d thought it would, and he wished he had more time to prepare. Then again, with the way he was feeling at the moment, he could have had another twenty years and would still have felt like he had his head up his—

Out on the county road, a large convertible with a massive grille slowed and then turned in to the allée of trees.

As the Phantom came cruising slowly up the gravel drive, a boil of fine dust kicking up in its wake, Samuel T. fumbled in his suit pocket and popped another Tums in between his molars.

Bad idea. Chalk and dry mouth?

Whatever, too late to fix it, he thought as he got to his feet and went down onto the grass. Overhead, the sun was shining magnificently, the sky was a bright blue, and under his feet, the lawn was green as shamrocks. A light breeze was blowing across the bluegrass, and birds were singing in the trees.

The Phantom stopped halfway around the circle in front of the farmhouse and both doors opened at the same time.

As Amelia got out, she stared at him, her face wary, her eyes narrowed.

Samuel T.’s heart pounded so hard, he was dizzy as he walked toward her. And other than a quick glance at Gin, he didn’t take his focus off the girl.

With long strides, Amelia came foward, too, meeting him halfway by herself, Gin seeming to know, for once, that things were not about her.

They stopped with about five feet between them.

“Hi,” he said. “I, ah, I’m Samuel Theodore Lodge—”

“I know.” Amelia nodded over her shoulder. “She told me—I mean, I know you from around.”

They just looked at each other.

“You’re tall,” the girl said. “Is that where I get this from?”

He glanced down at her long legs. “Yes, probably? And our hair is—”

“The same color.”

“Do you like mayonnaise?” he blurted.

“Oh, God—no. No, no, no.”

He laughed a little. “My father? He can’t stand it, either. His brother was the same. He gave that to me.”

“Everyone puts that stuff on everything.”

“Unbelievably disgusting.”

“Do you—okay, I know this is weird, but do you have trouble with threes?”

“They flip on you, too?”

“All the time! I’m, like, who else deals with this?”

“Phone numbers, right? Receipts? Wait until you start paying for lunches and dinners. It’s a pain.”

They fell back into silence. After a minute, he gestured over his shoulder. “Do you want to, ah—come in? I mean, I know you’ve been traveling and all. But maybe I could show you some photographs of your—my family. My side? And, ah, the house has got some hidden rooms that are—I’m babbling here. Do whatever you feel comfortable with. You probably have a ton of friends you’re meeting out. I know that’s what I did whenever I got home from school.”