demanding to stay with Greg. He didn’t fool himself into thinking he was the preferred parent. It was just that the life he offered here in the States was a better fit for his two lost, hurting kids. So now Sophie had to make do with the visits, with phone calls and e-mail. The situation was sad and awkward, and Greg couldn’t tell if the kids had forgiven her or not. He figured his job was to stay neutral on the issue.
Daisy made a lofty gesture around the house. “Will Mom live with us? Yeah, she’d love that.”
“I own a hotel,” Greg pointed out. “We could put her in the Guinevere suite.” Like many of Avalon’s local establishments, the Inn at Willow Lake had an Arthurian theme with rooms named after characters from the old legend.
“Guinevere. Wasn’t she the one who cheated on her husband with his best friend?” Daisy asked archly.
“That was never proven. The French added it later.” Greg felt a strange and unjustified sense of solidarity with his ex. It was probably because of Daisy’s situation—unmarried and pregnant, with the monumental struggle of single motherhood ahead of her. Despite his differences with Sophie, he shared with her the sense that Daisy was going to need all the support and compassion they could offer. “I’m sure she’d be honored to be your coach.”
“And you wouldn’t?”
“Honey, of course I would. But I’m …” Damn. “It would be …” He paused, got up and paced the room, searching for the right word to describe attending your teenage daughter giving birth to your grandchild. “Weird,” he concluded. And that was putting it mildly.
“Listen, it’s just classes. You learn about the process and signs to watch for, and what to do when things start happening. And in the delivery room, everything is all draped, and you can just deal with me from the neck up. Maybe, um, hold my hand and talk to me, give me ice chips, stuff like that. It didn’t look like that big a deal in the video the doctor gave me to watch.”
“That’s assuming everything goes according to the video.”
“Okay, fine,” she said. “Whatever. A birth coach is optional, anyway.”
“Right, like I’m going to let you do this on your own.” Greg stuck his thumbs in his back pockets and stood at the window, looking out but seeing only memories of his own child being born. He hadn’t been there for Daisy’s birth, of course, thanks to the way Sophie had manipulated the situation. But he’d been present for Max. He remembered the long night, the glare of lights, the pain and the terror and the joy. God, it was yesterday.
Then he turned back to Daisy, his daughter—his heart. “I’ll do it.”
“Do what?” asked Max, coming in from the kitchen, trailing shoelaces and backpack straps in his wake. He was eating again. Of course he was. It had been a half hour since dinner. Max, who had the appetite of some hypermetabolic creature in a sci-fi flick, had taken to refueling a couple of times per hour. At the moment, he was eating a Pop-Tart, stone cold out of the wrapper.
“I’m going to be your sister’s birth coach,” he said. “What do you think of that?”
“I think you’re out of your freaking mind,” Max said with a shudder.
“Gosh, and I was going to invite you, too, Max,” Daisy said. “Having you there, holding my hand, would have meant so much to me.”
“It would mean you finally lost what’s left of your marbles. Geez.” He shuddered again.
Greg ground his teeth. Despite the fact that she was pregnant, she still bickered like a third grader with her brother. Although it took some restraint, Greg knew it was best not to intervene when the two of them went at it. The bickering usually played itself out and sometimes even seemed to relieve tension, oddly enough.
With an older brother and two older sisters, he understood the dynamics of siblings. The main thing was to stand back and let the fur fly. He found this surprisingly easy to do, zoning out while they picked at each other about everything from the way Max ate a Pop-Tart to their cousin Olivia’s upcoming wedding, in which Daisy was to be a bridesmaid, Max an usher.
“You know you’re going to have to take ballroom dancing lessons,” Daisy told her brother with a satisfied smirk.
“Better than birthing lessons,” he shot back. “You’ll be, like, the world’s largest bridesmaid.”
“And you’ll be, like, the world’s dorkiest uncle. Weird Uncle Max. I’m going to teach the baby to call you that.”
Greg figured if these kids could survive each other, they could survive anything. He left them to battle it out and went to his study to check e-mail. There was a message from Brooke with a noncommittal subject line—thanks for today …
He didn’t even need to click on it in order to guess the rest of the message: … let’s be sure we never do it again sometime. She probably wouldn’t be that blunt, but he’d belatedly figured out that Brooke Harlow’s interest in him was as a client, not a boyfriend. That was his conclusion after today, anyway. After the boating fiasco, she’d been all too eager to bug out with the lame-ass bank president in tow.
The encounter today with Nina had caused his confidence to falter. What the hell was he getting himself into? No. Greg was happy enough with the transaction. He did realize it could be a disaster—long hours, a challenge around every corner. Then again, it could be the second chance he needed for his family—an enterprise that kept him close to home, the kids engaged in family life, not avoiding it. He practically flinched as he remembered the end of his marriage, when he and Sophie had given up pretending for the sake of the children, who saw straight through them, anyway. Their unhappiness was like a disease that infected the whole family. They’d engaged in battles of bitter recriminations that usually ended in slammed doors, the four of them hiding from each other. Ultimately, Greg and Sophie attempted a trial separation. There was a sense of relief, sure, but the separation opened a whole new set of troubles.
Greg blamed himself for not seeing how troubled Daisy was by the divorce. If he had, maybe Daisy never would have gone to that weekend party on Long Island, and she never would’ve gotten pregnant. Well, not so soon, anyway.
He’d spent his entire marriage waiting for disaster and then reacting to it. He was determined to change now. Buying the inn felt right, and he was focused on making it happen.
The soft doorbell sound of an incoming e-mail distracted him. He glanced at the screen and then did a double-take when he saw who it was from—Nina Romano. The subject line read We need to talk.
Well, he thought. Well.
Nina looked at her best friend, Jenny, and then back at the computer screen. “I just hit Send. I can’t believe I just hit Send.”
“That’s the best way for him to get the message.”
“But I changed my mind.” Nina swiveled back to glare at the screen. She wished there was some way to dive through the digital ether and snatch back her message.
She and Jenny were in Nina’s office. It wasn’t properly an office but a small nook in her bedroom where the computer sat on a card table. Everything about the house was small, including the rent check she gave her Uncle Giulio every month. She’d lived in the modest, cluttered house since Sonnet was little, trying to balance school and work and motherhood. She was blessed with
