“No.” She didn’t bother to elaborate. “I think you’d better go down to the barbershop this week.”

“I want to go to the wedding,” Christina insisted. “I want to see brides.”

Stephen snorted contemptuously. “There’s only one.”

“So?”

“You don’t even know who’s getting married.”

“Who is it?” the little girl demanded.

“Our grandfather, that’s who,” Stephen said.

It was on the tip of Tiffany’s tongue to argue with her son and tell him that John Cawthorne would never be his grandfather, but she held the hateful words back. Why lie? Who knew what the future would bring? Though she saw no reason to celebrate his marriage to his longtime mistress, she hoped she wasn’t so bitter about her lonely childhood that she couldn’t someday be civil to the man and his wife.

“Have you considered going?” J.D., seated across the table from her, cut into his stack of pancakes with the edge of his fork.

“Fleetingly.”

“But—”

“I’m not ready. Not yet.” Using her fork, she shifted her scrambled eggs around on her plate and realized the turn of the conversation was affecting her appetite. “I’m not sure I ever will be.”

“I think we should,” Stephen said, settling low on his chair.

“Why?”

“Why not? He wants you to.”

“I know, but—”

“Are you chicken?”

The light banter fell away. Tiffany’s heart squeezed hard. “No,” she replied. “It has nothing to do with fear. I just don’t think I should . . . honor—if that’s the right word, or maybe validate would be better—this man’s decision.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a long story. Goes back to when I was a little girl and he wasn’t around.”

“But he wants to be around now. Doesn’t that count?” Stephen asked, eyeing her with such scrutiny she wanted to squirm out of his line of vision.

“It counts. A little.”

Stephen reached for the syrup and poured a rich purple river over his stack of pancakes. “I thought you always said it’s important to forgive.” Tiffany’s throat constricted. Her son had a point and there was more going on here than the typical teenager-parent argument. Stephen might be trying to tell her that she was lucky to have a father—even a latent, unconventional one like John Cawthorne. After all, Stephen had lost his own dad and was a little like a ship without an anchor, drifting emotionally. He probably needed a positive male role model in his life. Somehow John Cawthorne, who had kept a mistress for years while married to another woman and who had fathered two children out of wedlock, didn’t seem the best candidate.

“I’ll probably forgive John someday.”

“But you won’t call him your father?” Stephen prompted.

“Being a father is more than a question of biology and genetics.”