“Excuse me?” he says.

“Even before all of this, when you first met him, he wasn’t your choice. For your daughter. This poor kid from South Texas, wanting to marry your only daughter. That couldn’t have been what you wanted for her. He could have been you. He grew up in a town like the one you came from. He was a little too much like what you had organized your life to be better than.”

“Are you a therapist?”

“Not at all,” I say. “I just pay attention.”

He looks at me amused. Apparently he likes this. He likes me throwing his words back at him.

“So what are you asking me?” he says.

“Everything you did, you did so your children would have different choices than you did. Kate. Charlie. Easier choices. So they’d have a promising childhood. The best schools, the greatest possibilities. So they wouldn’t have to struggle so hard. And yet, one of your children drops out of architecture school and decides to take over your wife’s family bar. Gets divorced.”

“Careful,” he says.

“And the other one chooses someone who was the last person you’d want for her.”

“As my wife used to say, we don’t get to pick who our children love. I made my peace that she chose Ethan. I just wanted her to be happy.”

“But you had a feeling, didn’t you? He wasn’t the best person for Kate, he wasn’t going to make her happy.”

Nicholas leans forward, his smile gone.

“Did you know when Kate and Ethan started dating she didn’t speak to me for a year?”

“I didn’t even know Kate existed yesterday,” I say. “So the details as to how that relationship played out aren’t something I’m familiar with.”

“She was a freshman in college and she decided she didn’t want to have anything to do with us. With me, rather… her mother she never stopped talking to,” he says. “That was Ethan’s influence on her. We came through it though. Kate came home again and we made peace. That’s what daughters do. They love their fathers. And Ethan and I…”

“You came to trust him?” I say.

“I did. I clearly shouldn’t have,” he says. “But I did. I could tell you one story about your husband and you’d never see him the same way again.”

I stay quiet. Because I know Nicholas is telling the truth, at least the way he sees it. Owen, in his eyes, is bad. He has done bad things to Nicholas. He betrayed his trust. He stole his granddaughter. He disappeared.