“Sounds like a tough assignment,” Harlan agreed. “What is it?”

Jenny looked trapped. “A paper,” she finally blurted in a way that said she was ad-libbing as she went along. “On Edgar Allan Poe.”

Harlan leaned back. “Ah, yes, Poe. Now there was a writer. Pretty scary stuff, it seemed to me when I read him.”

“You read Poe?” Jenny asked in an insulting tone of disbelief that suggested she was surprised to discover that Harlan read at all.

“Poetry, short stories, just about all of it, I suppose,” he said, clearly unoffended. “Of course, by today’s standards, I suppose he seems pretty tame. Not nearly as graphic as some writers. It always seemed to me there was something to be said for leaving things to the reader’s imagination, the way Poe did.”

Jenny’s expression brightened. “That’s what I thought,” she said eagerly, then caught herself. “Never mind. You probably don’t care about what I think.”

Janet’s breath caught in her throat as she waited for Harlan’s reply. Her ex-husband had never been interested in hearing his daughter’s thoughts on much of anything. For the most part, Barry had believed children should be seen and not heard, unless showing Jenny off had had some professional benefit. He’d enjoyed being perceived as an up-and-coming lawyer and proud family man. When Jenny’s grades had slipped in direct proportion to the amount of arguing going on at home, he’d lost what little interest he’d ever had in her school days.

For a time, Janet had been fooled by her ex’s superficial evidence of concern and pride. Now that she’d observed Harlan Adams for a couple of weeks, especially when Cody was around to banter with him, she had seen what a genuine family was all about. What she and Barry and Jenny had shared had been a mockery of the real thing, more feigned than substantive.

She watched now as Harlan fixed an attentive look on Jenny. That was the gaze Barry had never quite mastered, an expression of real interest. Seeing it warmed Janet through and through and further endangered her already shaky determination to keep Harlan at a distance.

“Of course I’m interested in your opinion,” he assured Jenny. “And if you’re going to be in an advanced class, you must be pretty smart.”

“My teacher in New York said my short stories and essays are really good,” Jenny admitted, pride shining in her eyes. “She said I could probably be a writer someday, if I want to be.”

“And do you want to be?” Harlan asked.

Jenny nodded, her expression suddenly shy as she revealed a dream that Janet knew she’d shared with almost no one. It was a tribute to the fragile trust flowering between Jenny and Harlan that she was telling him.