“It was the first time I had ever . . . but that doesn’t matter,” I said. Right now, I felt like I had to keep talking, or I would start screaming and crying. “I thought we were just going to be a little romantic. He was so impressed with me and I with him, right from the first time we met at the Wexler gala.”

He folded his hands into fists. They had never looked so big. They were more like mallets. I had never seen my father violent, but from the way his neck tightened, I thought he was on the verge of being just that.

“Who else knows about this?” he asked in a very deliberately controlled voice, punching out each word as if it was a sentence unto itself.

“Just Nurse Rose knows. I haven’t told Mother. She doesn’t know I went there, went to Foxworth Hall, either, of course.”

He shook his head and smacked his lips. His upper body rocked a bit. “I warned you. I told you that you had so many young woman’s years yet. I was telling you to be careful. I thought you were smarter than this, wiser for your age.”

“I know, Daddy. I’m so sorry and so ashamed,” I said, the tears now trickling faster and faster down my cheeks. I flicked them off and sucked in my breath.

He froze and now was simply staring at me. I wondered if he was seeing his little girl again or if he was now seeing someone he didn’t recognize or want to acknowledge. Maybe he would send me out of the house, have me taken somewhere so I’d be out of sight and out of mind. I couldn’t blame him.

“You’re only sixteen,” he said. “Garland Foxworth is a man of the world, a man in his twenties. It must have been like fishing in a bathtub for him,” he said bitterly.

“It wasn’t entirely his fault,” I said.

He looked at me askance. “What? You are still fond of this man, a man who had his way with you and seemingly discarded you as so much used goods?”

“If I hadn’t drunk so much, maybe—”

“Maybe that was exactly why he brought you to his home.”

“I thought . . . he was so charming, and he cared for me.”

“Oh, he cared. I’ll grant him that.”

My father’s face hardened in a way I had never seen. His eyes looked like they had frozen, his teeth clenched and the bones of his jaw pressed so hard against his skin that I thought it might tear.

“I’m sorry, Daddy.”

“I’ll destroy him,” he said through his still-clenched teeth. “Every business he has, every investor who had joined any of his enterprises . . .”

He stood up—shot up was more like it.

“But, Daddy . . . maybe you shouldn’t.”

His eyes softened with confusion. “You really still care about this man?”