Suddenly, it seems silly not to. She isn’t a baby. She heard what Anne said Sunday night on the dock. The fact that she’s waited this long to ask speaks of a respect for my needs that is actually quite mature. How can I make her wait longer?

Without elaborating on what was wrong with my parents’ marriage, I give her a short, cleaned up version of the story of my conception and Chrissie’s misconception of it. Joy is far less interested in the Chrissie part than the other.

“Paul?” she asks with a curious smile. “That’s so nice.”

Her calmness startles me. I might question her loyalty to the man she so recently called Papa. But I know my daughter. Her way of dealing with loss is to fill the hole. Besides, parentage has always been a vague concept to her, given that she knows nothing of her own biological dad.

But I don’t have time to dwell on that, with her bolting onward. “And there’s another reason for my staying here. If he is my grandfather, shouldn’t I spend time with him?”

“Joy—”

“He can drive me home.” She pauses, eyes suddenly keen. “Or Jack, what about Jack?”

“What about him?” I ask, though my heart knocks. I know where she’s headed with this one.

“I mean, here we are in his house, and in an hour, there you’ll be in his room. Are you seriously going to pack up and leave in two days?”

“Are you seriously going to pack up and leave in two days?” Jack asks so identically that I wonder if he and Joy discussed it earlier.

Granted, several hours have passed since such a discussion would have taken place, and last I checked, she is asleep down the hall. Prior to that, though, we lie in her bed and talk. There’s no reading here. I’m not sure if she fears Jack will think she needs a goodnight story. But how can I argue with talking? Guy seems to agree, since soon after we settle into it, he rouses enough to jump up onto the foot of the bed, stretch out on Joy’s lime tank top, and go back to sleep.

The thought that he might wake in the night and lunge at her throat has crossed my mind. But Jack is right. The vicious pit bull is a stereotype that does not seem to apply to this dog.

And the stereotype of a headstrong Jack? Headstrong can be good or bad.