Amanda winced as much from the accusation in the words as she did from a fresh stab of pain. “No, not then. I was barely showing and careful to hide it or I would have lost my job. Times were different then, and an unmarried pregnant waitress wouldn’t have lasted in a rich man’s playground.”

“You let him fall in love with you.” Shannon’s voice was cold, cold as the ice that seemed slicked over her skin. “When you were carrying another man’s child.”

And the child was me, she thought, wretched.

“I’d grown to a woman,” Amanda said carefully, searching her daughter’s face and weeping inside at what she read there. “And no one had really loved me. With Tommy it was quick, as stunning as a lightning bolt. I was still blinded by it when I met Colin. Still grieving over it, still wrapped in it. Everything I felt for Tommy was turned toward the child we’d made together. I could tell you I thought Colin was only being kind. And in truth, at first I did. But I saw, soon enough, that there was more.”

“And you let him.”

“Maybe I could have stopped him,” Amanda said with a long, long sigh. “I don’t know. Every day for the next week there were flowers in my room, and the pretty, useless things he loved to give. He found ways to be with me. If I had a ten-minute break, there he would be. Still it took me days before I understood I was being courted. I was terrified. Here was this lovely man who was being nothing but kind, and he didn’t know I had another man’s child in me. I told him, all of it, certain it would end there, and sorry for that because he was the first friend I’d had since I’d left Kate in New York. He listened, in that way he had, without interruption, without questions, without condemnations. When I was finished, and weeping again, he took my hand. ‘You’d better marry me, Mandy,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of you and the baby.’ ”

The tears had escaped, ran down Shannon’s cheeks as she turned back. They were running down her mother’s cheeks as well, but she wouldn’t allow herself to be swayed by them. Her world was no longer tilted; it had crashed.

“As simple as that? How could it have been so simple?”

“He loved me. It was humbling when I realized he truly loved me. I refused him, of course. What else could I do? I thought he was being foolishly gallant, or just foolish altogether. But he persisted. Even when I got angry and told him to leave me alone, he persisted.” A smile began to curve her lips as she remembered it. “It was as if I were the rock and he the wave that patiently, endlessly sweeps over it until all resistance is worn away. He brought me baby things. Can you image a man courting a woman by bringing her gifts for her unborn child? One day he came to my room, told me we were going to get the license now and to get my purse. I did it. I just did it. And found myself married two days later.”