He picked up his cell phone to call the attorney back, then caught sight of the street he was looking for and set it back down. A few minutes later he was parking the Mercedes SL 600 two-passenger sport convertible he’d bought with his sell-out money in front of a dingy bungalow in a run-down neighborhood. The car was too small for him, but he’d been deluding himself about a lot of things at the time, so he’d written the check and squeezed inside. Getting rid of it was the next item on his agenda.

As he approached the house, he took in the peeling paint, crumbling sidewalk, and well-used yellow Winnebago parked next to the overgrown lawn. Leave it to Sandy to spend her money on a motor home when her house was crumbling around her.

He stalked up the sidewalk, climbed one crooked step to the porch, then banged his fist against the front door. A sullen-faced, very young version of Winona Ryder appeared. “Yeah?”

“I’m Mat Jorik.”

She crossed her arms and leaned against the door-jamb. “Hey there, Pop.”

So that’s the way it was going to be.

She was small-boned and delicate beneath the makeup she’d applied with too heavy a hand. Brown urban-decay lipstick smudged her young mouth. Her lashes were coated with so much mascara, they looked as though black centipedes had landed on them, and her short dark hair had been sprayed maroon at the top. Tattered jeans hung low on her thin body, revealing more than he wanted to see of her ribs and stomach, and her small, fourteen-year-old breasts didn’t need the black bra that showed above the low neckline of her tightly cropped top.

“We need to talk.”

“We got nothing to talk about.”

He gazed into her small, defiant face. Winona didn’t know there wasn’t anything she could dish out that he hadn’t already heard from his sisters. He shot her the same look he’d used on Ann Elizabeth, the toughest of his siblings. “Open the door.”

He could see her trying to work up the courage to defy him, but she couldn’t quite manage it, and she stepped aside. He brushed past her into the living room. It was shabby, but neat. He saw a tattered copy of a babycare book lying open on a table. “I hear you’ve been by yourself for a while.”

“I haven’t been by myself. Connie just left to go to the grocery store. She’s the neighbor who’s been taking care of us.”

“Tell me another one.”

“You calling me a liar?”

“Yeah.”

She didn’t like that at all, but there wasn’t much she could do about it.

“Where’s the baby?”

“Taking a nap.”