“Yeah. He married Maddox’s mother and by all accounts was a pretty active father. At least in the public eye. And I think that my mother always just kind of thought that getting remarried herself would sort of put an all’s-forgiven stamp on what he did, how he left us like that. I think she wears her single status with a sort of pride. That he left and she carried on as a single mom just fine. Even though she paired up with Cormac when I was a kid.”

“What do you mean ‘in the public eye’?”

John grimaced. “Yeah. He’s, uh, John Whitford.”

Mary stopped walking. “Your father is John Whitford, the mayoral candidate?”

“The former mayoral candidate.”

“Oh, my gosh. I’m such a dummy. You even have his name. John Modesto-Whitford. I never put two and two together.”

“The Modesto tends to throw people off the scent. If it were up to me, I would have just gone by John Modesto, but my mother hyphenated it, out of defiance, I think. She wanted to remind my father, in some small way, that he had a responsibility to me.”

She thought of the airbrushed subway ads she’d been subjected to for months during Whitford’s mayoral run. His smarmy expression and light brown hair. He looked like the exact person who would show up for a newscaster casting call in some B-level movie. His teeth were too white, his jaw too sharp, his smile ever present and dishonest. “Gosh. The two of you don’t really look much alike at all.”

“And therein lies the problem.”

“What problem?”

“It’s why he left my mother.”

“Because you don’t look like him?”

“Bingo.”

Mary stopped walking, her hands covering her mouth. “He thought she’d cheated?” Oh, Estrella. She could only imagine how devastating that must have been.

“Yeah. I have blue eyes. Both my parents have brown eyes. He thought it was clear that she’d cheated.”

“I didn’t think that brown-eyed people could have a blue-eyed baby.”

“It’s rare, but it depends on your genetics. I’ve got family members on both sides of my family tree with blue eyes. It was a pretty slim chance that I’d end up the family Sinatra. But here I am. John Whitford’s blue-eyed son.”

“That’s awful,” she whispered.

“It’s not quite as dramatic as it sounds, at least not anymore. He and I reconnected a while ago. Laid a lot of it to rest. That’s when I met Maddox.”

“How did you reconnect?”

John groaned and pushed heavy fingers to his forehead, like he was kneading away a headache. “Can’t believe I’m telling you my whole sad story.”

“You don’t have to if it’s too private or something.”