“I’m seeing a doctor on Monday,” she said.
“You haven’t been yet?”
“No. I did, you know, the home pregnancy test, like, four times. I kept hoping maybe it was wrong but…” She shrugged her shoulders. “Then I was so freaked out, I didn’t say anything.”
“To anyone?”
“No. I’m not sure, but I think Nina Romano might have guessed.”
God. Nina, of all people. He felt a surge of anger to know a stranger was in on the secret before he was. How is Daisy, anyway? That was what Nina had wanted to know this morning in the bakery. How’s your pregnant teenage daughter?
“I didn’t tell her,” Daisy reiterated. “I didn’t say a word, though. I couldn’t lie. I’ve never been much of a liar.”
That sure as hell was true. One reason she got in so much trouble was that she tended to own up to things.
“Have you talked to your mother about this?”
“No.”
So this was a surprise. She’d told Greg but not Sophie. “You’re going to have to.”
“I know.”
“And the, uh, boy.” Greg felt something akin to murderous rage. If the little fucker was here right this moment, Greg would kill him slowly and deliberately, with no qualms. “You need to tell me about the boy,” he prompted.
“Logan O’Donnell,” she said.
O’Donnell, O’Donnell, O’Donnell. Oh, God. “Al O’Donnell’s boy.”
She nodded her head.
Great. They were one of New York’s big-money, shipping-fortune Irish families. The O’Donnells were rich, powerful and ferociously Catholic.
Again, Greg schooled himself to say nothing. He needed to figure out how Daisy felt about the boy first. The little turd who had knocked her up.
She began to talk, her voice insulated by the snow all around them and carrying clearly through the stillness. She told him about the parties she and her friends had had in Manhattan apartments and Long Island weekend homes. Greg felt queasy, not because he was shocked but because it all sounded so damn familiar. He and his friends used to do the same thing and for all he knew he’d knocked up some girl and she’d never told him.
There was no denying the separation and divorce had been rough on the kids. And Daisy’s reaction had been classic—a full-on rebellion complete with substance abuse and unprotected sex. The precise date of conception, she confessed, seemed to coincide with the weekend Sophie had flown overseas.
That weekend, Daisy had come to him with a forlorn expression on her face. “Can I go with some friends to Sag Harbor on Friday? Bonnie Mackenzie invited me.”
“Are her parents there?”
“Of course. You can call them if you want.”
“No need. I trust you, honey.”
And—God help him—he had. He had stupidly trusted her to go where she said she was going. He’d probably figured maybe there was going to be some drinking and fooling around. It was what kids did in high school. Telling her she couldn’t go would not stop her.
She studied him, and apparently was reading him like a book. “Don’t blame yourself, Dad. Or Mom or Logan. It was me. My stupid decision.”
“So what do you want to do about Logan?” he asked her. Greg knew what he wanted to do to the kid, but it was illegal and probably wouldn’t help Daisy.
“I’m not telling him anything until I decide what I’m doing,” she said. “If I decide not to have it, then there’s no reason to say anything.” She stabbed the toe of her ski boot into the snow. “Is it horrible, that I might want to have an abortion?”
He studied her, and could clearly see his towheaded little daughter, so proud of her first lost tooth, or crawling into his lap for a story, coming down the stairs all dressed up for a school dance…. She was gone now. Gone forever, as if she had died. In her place was this shamefaced stranger, and just for a second, the sight of her brought on a flash of dislike—maybe disgust?—and the feeling was so powerful that it scared him.
No, he thought. No. He was not going to let this thing cause him to waver. No.
“Dad?” she said, looking up at him. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“There’s something I forgot to say,” he told her. “I love you, and that will never change.”
A little shudder rippled through her. “I know, Dad. Thanks for saying so. But…you still didn’t answer my question,” she reminded him.
He didn’t know. He honestly didn’t know. “My days of making your decisions for you are over.” He studied the camera, which she held carefully cradled in her hands throughout the conversation. Later, he knew, he would look at the pictures she had taken today and remember that this was him and his daughter before.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
After Jenny went to the city, Rourke returned to a life that felt strangely hollow. He told himself he ought to be happy to get his routine back. He was used to living alone, on his own terms. Bringing Jenny to stay with him, even temporarily, was a huge disruption.
Really, she was a pain in the ass. She took long showers and cluttered the bathroom with a mind-boggling array of soaps and shampoos and beauty products. She insisted on eating a nutritious breakfast and she watched the most god-awful TV shows he’d ever seen—Project Runway and America’s Next Top Model. Who thought up these things?
So it was a relief to get back to his uncluttered bathroom, uncluttered life. Hostess Ho Hos for breakfast and boxing on TV. Definitely a relief.
Yet for some reason, he was restless and irritable. He snapped at his coworkers, snarled at his assistant and yelled at both deputies. Memos and paperwork pressed down on him like a great weight. During a budget meeting with Matthew Alger at his city hall office, he discovered he was on his last nerve.
Alger made no bones
