He took out Curtis’s final school photo. It was tattered, a little faded, the word PROOF still faintly visible across his T-shirt. Curtis was smiling, his adult teeth a tad too big for his mouth. Bree took it from him and studied it carefully. “He … looks like my brother Doug.” Her eyes filled with tears again. “My brothers need to know about Curtis. And they need to know about you, too. When you’re ready, I want you to meet them.”

Something else unexpected. “I’d like that,” he heard himself say.

As she held out the photo to return it, her thumb moved gently across the image.

“Keep it,” he said. And somehow that felt exactly right, too.

HE WAS OUT ON A run late the next morning when his cell rang. He never used to bring a phone along, but now that he had people working for him, he had to stay in touch, and he didn’t like it. His business might be thriving, but he still preferred working alone.

He glanced at the display. An East Coast area code. He didn’t recognize the number, but he knew that area code. He immediately slowed and answered. “Patrick Shade.”

The voice he’d been yearning to hear came buzzing through, very clear, very loud, and very angry. “I’m pregnant, you son of a bitch.”

And then the connection went dead.

He staggered to the side of the road, dropped the phone, snatched it up, and hit redial. His hands were shaking so badly, it took two tries.

“What do you want?” she screeched.

Oh, God. He had to be the grown-up. He opened his mouth to say—who the hell knew what?—but she was still yelling, and he never got a chance.

“I’m too furious to talk to you right now! You and your vasectomy.” She spit out the word.

“Where are you?”

“What do you care?” she retorted. “I’m done with you, remember?” She hung up on him again.

Jesus … Lucy pregnant. With his baby. He felt as if he’d been plunged into a pool of warm, rippling water.

When he tried to call back, he got her voice mail. He already knew where she’d moved, and not much later, he was at the ferry dock. Six hours after that, he was in Boston.

It was evening and already dark when he pulled his rental car up to the apartment where she was supposed to be staying. There was no answer when he hit the buzzer in the lobby.

He tried a few other buttons and eventually hit gold, an old guy with nothing better to do than spy on his neighbors. “She left this morning with a suitcase. You know who she is, right? President Jorik’s daughter? Real nice to everybody.”