It occurred to him that Caddie’s failure to come home could be the result of some accident, and for a moment he was actually relieved to think this might be true. Then fatherly concern overrode this temporary reprieve, and for a time he truly did consider the various possible emergencies that might be keeping her from returning. His thoughts flashed upon scenes of auto accident, sickness, even murder, all of them with Caddie playing the central figure. He tried to remember, was she diabetic or allergic to bees?

Again, it was some fatherly instinct, long dormant but not dead, that told him that none of these things were anything more than random thoughts. Caddie simply hadn’t come home because she didn’t want to. Wherever she was, she was there because she preferred it to being with him. The real question was whether this was simple thoughtlessness or deliberate cruelty.

He thought suddenly of the T-shirt that Caddie had been wearing at breakfast that morning. She’d said that she’d bought it, but he was almost certain she was lying. Remembering the size of it, Ben realized that he’d overlooked the obvious. And she had sat there, teasing him, maybe even hoping he would realize that she’d been with some boy.

He wasn’t angry, not about the boy. He wasn’t naive enough to think that a sixteen-year-old, especially an attractive one hell-bent on expressing her independence, was still a virgin. That it was his daughter who was the girl in question made it slightly more unsettling than if it had been someone else’s daughter, and he fully intended to ask Carol if she’d had a talk with Caddie about the subject. But it wasn’t the possibility of sex that bothered him; it was the knowledge that Caddie had wanted him to be upset, that she might have slept with someone just to spite him.

Maybe that’s where she was, out with the same boy, hoping that her father would come looking for her or, more likely, wait up for her to return so that he could tell her that under no circumstances was she to behave like some backstreet whore while living under his roof. Was that what she wanted—a scene? Something to justify her loathing for him?

Well, she wasn’t going to get it. Ben stood up, took a final glance around the room, and returned to his office. He’d moved from hurt to fear to guilt, and now had arrived at indignation. If Caddie wanted to play games with him, she would have to do better than this. Not only wouldn’t he wait up for her, he wouldn’t even gratify her by being angry. It would be a hollow victory for her, and he hoped she would be wise enough to, if not end her war against him, at least call a stalemate.