The Sinner (Notorious 1)

“Then who is he?” Katie asked. She shook, her eyes direct, her hands in fists, and I wondered if this was more than jealousy over the amount of time and attention I’d been giving to Matt.

“He’s a friend,” I said. I mean, weak sauce but I was floundering here.

“Is he my dad?”

14

SAVANNAH

I stared blankly at Katie, my head trying to catch up with what just happened.

“Your dad?” I asked. “Why in the world would you think that?”

Katie’s little chin came up. “That day outside the library you and Margot were talking about my dad and then Matt said you guys were talking about him. And then he made you cry and you wouldn’t answer me when I asked if you had sex with him.”

All of that was true. But it was like adding apples and oranges and getting elephants.

“Honey,” I breathed. “I had no idea you were thinking this.”

“You never tell me anything,” Katie said.

“I thought I was protecting you,” I said. The same way Carter always tried to protect me from the uglier aspects of Tyler or our mother.

I felt awful that I’d never seen the pain not talking about Eric was causing Katie. Other single mothers probably didn’t have this problem. They probably told their kids the truth from the beginning and—rubbing salt in my guilt—I imagined they were able to do it without calling the absent father a bastard.

“Marybeth, at school,” Katie said, “she doesn’t have a dad but her mom told her he lives in New Orleans with a hooker.”

I swallowed my laughter—clearly there was a spectrum of bad single parenting.

“But she gets to go visit him,” Katie continued, getting worked up. “They eat beignets for dinner and I don’t even know where my dad is. And then when you came—” she looked at Matt then shrugged “—everybody got so weird.”

Matt stepped past me and collapsed on the bed as though his knees had just been broken. “I’m not your father, Katie,” he whispered, his green eyes sincere and earnest in a million different ways.

“You’re not?” she asked, and he shook his head. “You’re sure?”

“Very sure. If I was your father, I would have been here your whole life,” he said. Katie’s chin dropped a notch, and my whole body started to shake. “I never would have left you.”

I could not look Matt in the eyes. Actually, I really could barely stand to be in this room with him, the embodiment of everything I refused to want but wanted anyway.

I took a deep breath and stepped right over the dark, bottomless, treacherous cavern that was the who is your father conversation. The conversation that I’d feared and dreaded and run away from. The conversation that I’d put off time and time again, thinking I’d get to it when Katie was older or when she asked.

That time was now. Actually the time was probably years ago.

“I’m going to let you guys talk,” Matt said. His gaze brushed mine then clung as time froze to a halt.

I could love you.

I thought that. Or he did. It was in the air between us as real as Katie.

Matt cleared his throat and broke eye contact. Then he crouched in front of Katie, his gaze serious. “Wherever your dad is,” he said, “he’s missing out on a great girl.”

He stood, his fingers brushing my shoulder, sending flashes of heat and pulses of light through my entire body, as he left.

I took a second to pull in all the ragged edges and loose ends and compose myself.

Here we go.

“Your father,” I finally said, hugging my daughter close, “is a man named Eric Carlyse.”

MATT

The trees were planted, the saplings’ tender branches and bright new green leaves swayed in the late afternoon breeze. Without much growth the pattern of the maze was pretty clear, but in a few years when the trees were mature…I smiled. Well, then it would perfect. Nooks and crannies. Dead ends. Hidey-holes. The maze, though small, had it all.

I couldn’t even begin to imagine all the trouble a girl like Katie could get into with this in her backyard.

It would be something to see.

Lifting my arm, I scratched at the worst of the grit and dirt that clung to my neck and face. I needed a shower and a change of clothes, but as far as I knew, Katie and Savannah were still planted in my room.

Man, what a weird day. I didn’t like seeing those girls so hurt, wished I knew a better way to help than to step aside and build a maze.

Katie needed a father. And after last night - to be totally caveman about it—Savannah needed a man. And I wanted so bad to be both.

The door opened and shut and I turned to find Katie standing in the sparkly bright light that signaled the end of the day. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her cheeks flushed, but she wasn’t bristling with anger.