“Hey,” he goes on, “you’re going through a rough patch. You’ll get through this. Tell me about your little girl.”

“I doubt I’ll get through it,” I tell him. “She’s three. She’s great. Smart as can be. Cute like her mother. Her name is Aubrey. She’s wonderful, but I can’t raise her.”

“You don’t want to do this,” Dan says, pushing back. “You’re just in a bad place at the moment. Maybe you could get some help. A relative? A nanny?”

He’s trying to be helpful. That’s Dan Jr. to a T. I remember how he served as equipment manager when he didn’t make the basketball team. Always there with a clipboard and an earnest expression.

“I have a nanny. It isn’t that I can’t take care of her. Like I said, she’s great. The fact is that—and don’t think less of me because I’m honest—I don’t want to be bogged down. I don’t want the life of a single dad. Dan, we both grew up in Shelton, where most families stuck together; and honestly, they were better for it. A mom and a dad. Traditional, right? But still the best way.”

“Is there a relative?” Dan asks. “Grandparents?”

I shake my head. “God, no. I can’t have Sophie’s folks take Aubrey. Not after how her dad molested my wife when she was a girl.”

Another blast and this guy will start ducking whenever I say something.

“Jesus,” he says, now a little flustered. “Of course not. You can’t have your daughter around a pedophile.”

“Sophie hated her parents,” I say. “Her dad for molesting her. Her mom for putting up with it.”

“I hear you,” he says. “Were there any charges brought against her father?”

“No,” I say. “It was more than thirty years ago, when no one really talked about what sick fucks like Frank Flynn were doing to their daughters.”

“Has he heard these charges before?” he asks. “From you? Your wife?”

I nod. “Yeah. Sophie confronted him years ago. She acted like she forgave him, because she let him come around and we had to go to their place for Christmas. Not sure why she did that. But that’s what she did.”

He puts his glasses back on, gets out a notepad, and starts writing. “And what about Mrs. Flynn?”

“She’s like a scoop of Crisco,” I say. “She’s weak. No backbone. Won’t stand up to her husband.”

He sets down his pen. “They’ll fight for custody,” he says. “Those freaks often do. See it as a pathway to vindication.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” I say. “He’s threatened it. But I doubt he’d go balls to the wall if he was going to be exposed for being a pervert.”