“You didn’t ask me to go. You assumed I wouldn’t leave here.” She narrowed her eyes at him. Her mouth was a hard line. “Okay, so maybe you did ask. Sort of. And maybe I did say no.”

“You’re happy here. You have your daughter. Kelly says you two are a perfect pair. You got what you needed.”

“And so did you.”

“So why am I here now?” Her anger was returning. “Kelly told me I had to return for you, that you were in a very bad way.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Kelly thought your daughter and her son were going to get married. The whole family came apart when she dropped him. I got about twenty letters that were tearstained. I could hardly read them. Kelly said—”

“Cait and Jared are first cousins,” Miguel whispered.

“—that Jared was suicidal. He—” She halted. “What?”

“Robbie Hatten.” Miguel could hardly be heard.

“What are you saying?”

“That summer, Robbie was sneaking around with some woman. It was Gabby. She got pregnant.”

“He was a kid!”

“Old enough.”

Vera stared at him in silence, trying to comprehend what he’d just told her. “Kelly doesn’t know.”

“No one does. Just Cait and me and Gabrielle.”

Vera’s voice softened. “So Caitlyn isn’t...?”

“She isn’t my biological daughter,” he said. “We always wondered what ancestor gave her the blue eyes. And her skin tone is so light and...” He looked away. “I should have guessed.”

“I’m so sorry. Adam...”

When he turned back, there was fire in Miguel’s eyes. “She’s Adam Hatten’s niece. He always got everything, didn’t he? You, then my daughter.”

Vera was beginning to recover from her shock. “Tell me about Caitlyn. How did she find out?”

He took a moment to get himself under control. “Cait never had much contact with her mother, but when she was thinking about getting married, they began exchanging letters. Maybe Cait felt she needed a mother then, and—”

“Of course she told her about Jared.”

“Right. Gabby flew back here to tell me the truth.” He grimaced. “The bitch! When I think of all she put us through! That summer, she was banging the Hatten kid while trying to get me to marry her!”

“She could have used birth control but she didn’t. She...” Vera thought for a moment. “My guess is that it was the act of a desperate woman. If she got pregnant, yours or Robbie’s, she could probably get one of you to marry her. She wanted to stay in the US any way she could.”

“And I played into her hands when I used her to...to...”