Eleven

AS THE 757 MADE its final approach to Logan, David gripped the armrest and closed his eyes.

He had always hated flying. His mouth had been as dry as sand ever since they had left Gatwick.

The plane was packed to capacity, and, all journey, David had sat with his legs halfway into the aisle, and been kicked and tripped over regularly. It was holiday season: the schools in England had just finished their summer term. Opposite him, across the aisle, were a young family with four children: a teenage boy, who sat in front, welded to his Game Boy or his Walkman, and occasionally glanced at David with sulky defiance; and his three younger sisters, who sat behind him, arguing continually over each other’s seat-back videos.

David had tried to ignore them. He had also tried to ignore that he was thirty thousand feet above the earth, and kept his eyes firmly away from the window. Most of all, he tried to forget what was to come. What he was going to say to this man Garrett. Or Grace. Or Anna. And what in God’s name he could say to Rachel.

He tried to sleep; but the oblivion wouldn’t come.

Instead, he could only think that this was the trip he had always planned to make with Anna. Almost the last time they had talked—they were on Deadman’s Walk, alongside Merton, with the high stone wall on one side, and the iron railings of Merton Fields on their left—she wouldn’t look at him. She had been almost completely silent.

“Coffee?” said a voice.

Startled, he opened his eyes. The steward was standing next to him with a tray. The man nodded at the empty cup in front of David.

“Oh…no. No thanks,” David said.

He pushed up the seat-back tray, and then sat, awkwardly, with the cup in his lap. When the man came past again, he gave it to him. It was taken without a word.

He turned in his seat and closed his eyes again.

In those last days with Anna he had had an idea. Looking back, he had probably only thought of it as a way to keep her. To hold back this shadow that was coming toward him.

“After Finals,” he had said. “We’ll go to China.”

Maybe it was the fact that she had just kept on walking. She didn’t glance up at him. She didn’t unhook her arm from his either. But she just kept walking, looking at the frost-hardened ground.

“China,” she had echoed.

“We’ll go via Boston.”

Still, she hadn’t stopped. But she had looked. Glanced up at him, eyes screwed against the slanted, pale springtime sun. “Why the hell would you go to China via Boston?” she’d asked.

“We’ll follow in Wilson’s footsteps,” he’d told her. “What d’you think? Isn’t that a great idea? When we come back, I’ll do my thesis on it. I’ll write our book,” he’d said. He had failed to notice that he was almost dragging her along with him, in an attempt to match his stride. “We could follow his route,” he said. “Liverpool to Boston. Overland to San Francisco. Then Hong Kong. Veitch and Sons sent him to find Augustine Henry, the man who had first seen the dove tree. He had to travel into the Yunnan to find Henry, to get a map. To see exactly where it had been growing. Then he went back all the way to the Gorges, a thousand miles or more overland and by river, with this map…”

He had gone on talking, he remembered.

He had just gone on talking, insanely and selfishly talking, while the shadow deepened between them.

It had taken twelve days, not a mere airborne six hours, for Ernest Wilson to reach Boston in 1899. On the sixth of May, Wilson had sailed from San Francisco for Hong Kong, and then straight on to the province of Yunnan, via Haiphong. After that, it was by river to Hanoi; by steamer on the Red River to Yen Bai; a transfer to a shallow-draft steamer to Lao Cai; then by native boat to Manhao, and by road, on mule and sedan chair, to Mengzi. From Mengzi, he took a caravan of sixteen mules to Simao, and he arrived where Augustine Henry was living on the twenty-fourth of September, five months after leaving England.

At last, Anna had stopped walking. By then, they had reached the junction of the lane by Corpus Christi. “You want to sail to Boston, and then to China,” she had stated flatly.

“We’ll fly to Boston,” he had said. “We could get a train to the West Coast, like he did. Then take a tour. They do those tours. To the Gorges.”

“And how do we pay for that?” she’d asked.

“We don’t have to do it as a package,” he had replied. “We could take our time. Work our way west. Work in Frisco for a few months. If it takes a year, or two years, what does it matter? And then the tours aren’t too expensive.” He’d grinned at her. Fool. Grinned at her. “What a journey to tell our kids,” he’d said.

She’d suddenly pulled her arm away from him. “If there’s one person I’m sick of hearing about, it’s Wilson,” she’d retorted. “Wilson, Wilson, Wilson! I hate this crap! Don’t you ever think of anything else? Don’t you see anything else?” She had put both hands to her eyes, then dropped them, and started to walk away, pushing him back with the flat of her hand.

He caught her arm, pulled her to him. For a moment, she relaxed into him, and he wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her neck. “I love you,” he whispered urgently. “I look forward, and I see us. I just see all these pictures of us doing things together.”

He kissed her, and it seemed to him that she merely submitted. It was not that usual urgent joining, the meeting of spirits. For months, he had loved her. Autumn days, winter days. Now he felt she was drifting from him. His head was full of her. Frost on the windows of her room; the two of them naked, with a blanket pulled over them, and her kisses as strong as his, her longing as deep. Nights where they didn’t sleep, hungry for each other. Dawns on the long walks, meeting only early morning runners. He remembered being in the library, and feeling that he couldn’t understand the words on the pages of books in front of him, because the shape of the paragraphs, the look of the letters, even the grain of the paper, seemed to be soaked in her presence. She reached up from the books, alive, lingering…

“I love you,” he repeated.

She suddenly pulled away from him again, wiping her eyes. “And you think this is a reasonable thing to do,” she demanded, “to travel all that way, with a fresh degree, and a mountain of fucking debt?”

It was the first time she’d ever sworn at him.

It was the last time.

He shifted in his seat now, feeling the plane altering course. Dropping in height. Pressure popped in his ears. He tried to pull himself away from the here and now. Backward, backward, to where he had last seen her.

He had bought a map of China to show her. Still bought the damned thing, even after such a conversation. Even after her objections. He had still bought the stupid bloody map. He had been brushing away that shadow. It was like whistling in the dark. Just plowing on, pretending that all the signs meant nothing.

Why didn’t you just ask her.

Why didn’t you just ask her what was wrong.

The plane lurched. David opened his eyes. The seat belt sign had come on, and a steward was standing above him, checking that the overhead bins were closed. He smiled at David.

“How long until we land?” David asked.

“Ten minutes or so,” the steward said.

David shut his eyes again. He didn’t want to be smiled at. He wanted to be on good, solid ground. And he wished that Augustine Henry—that soft-spoken Irishman who had lured Wilson to China—could have been there waiting to meet him. That was someone he felt he knew already.

In 1899, Augustine Henry had already been working as a medical officer for the Imperial Chinese Customs Service for eighteen years. He was eventually sent to Yichang, a Customs post at the entrance to the Yangtze Gorges, in 1882. And had been utterly smitten.

He had first seen the Gorges in winter, and it was an amazing sight. In total contrast to the country on the flood plain below, this place was savage and uncompromising, like some sort of prehistoric landscape. The Yangtze tore under two-thousand-foot cliffs, and hundred-strong teams of trackers hauled boats by hand over the rapids below. It was the land of Maeldune’s ballad for Henry, perhaps: the Irish legend that Henry knew by heart—…and the topmost spire of the mountains was lilies in lieu of snow…—for the first thing that Henry noticed, on a bare limestone ledge that extended for a quarter of a mile or more, was a huge winter flowering of Chinese primula, their colors merging from palest lilac to pink, like a drift of pastel snow hundreds of feet above his head.

But it was in the even more distant mountains of Hupeh that he had found the dove tree, the Davidia involucrata.

He never forgot it. He wrote to Kew and urged that botanists be sent to China in search of it. He was sure that it flourished on higher passes, and in ever more remote areas. He dreamed of finding its seeds, and shipping them back to Europe; and of the dove tree finally growing in Ireland, and America, and England. But the fruit that he finally sent back didn’t germinate, and, ten years later, under Augustine’s still persistent encouragement, the horticulturists Veitch and Sons sent Ernest Wilson to find the tree.

But first, Wilson had to find Henry, who was the only reliable European who knew where the Davidia grew. And by then, Henry was no longer in Hupeh. He was in Yunnan; and Yunnan was far, far west of Hupeh.

Circular journeys, David thought.

The search for the beautiful, the unattainable, and the lost.

The pursuit of impossible dreams.

In his head, he saw the passes far above Yichang: the narrow valley north of Xiangtan where the foxglovelike flowers of Rehmannia henryi grew; the peak of Wan-tiao Shan, where the lilac flourished on the very highest summit; the remnants of the Great Salt Road as they reached Sichuan.

“Landing!” one of the girls cried, across the aisle of the plane. “We’re there—we’re landing!”

The wheels suddenly bounced onto the runway at Logan; the engines roared.

Immediately, every notion of Wilson and his journey vanished from David’s mind. Mountains, gorges, lilies, rapids, rivers, and the ghostlike, supernatural Davidia disappeared from his head in a flash.

Forgetting them all entirely, he dug his fingernails into the armrest, and silently, feverishly, prayed.

It took him a long time to get through Customs, and even longer to find his suitcase. When he finally emerged into the main airport, David was dazed and disoriented. He could feel that it was hotter—much hotter—than England. The crowds swarmed past him. Even in the air-conditioning of the terminal, he was already sweating.

He stopped, and put his bag on the floor, and took the guidebook that he had bought in Gatwick out of his pocket. He thumbed through it, while other passengers pushed past him. It had a map on the inner leaf: Logan was marked, northeast of the city. He had to get to a place called Back Bay. That was where the hospital was. That was where Grace Russell would be.

He didn’t know where he could find a bus, but he supposed that, if he just walked out of the airport, he would see something. A bus, or a taxi. Maybe someone could tell him which one you had to get to reach Back Bay. Which number. Which route. He felt in his other pocket for the dollars he had put there. He pushed his bag to one side with his foot, and started doing what he should have done on the plane; transferring the dollars to his wallet, and putting the sterling in the pocket of his flight bag.

“David Mortimer?” said a voice.

As he looked up, surprised, he dropped the pound coins that had been in his hand.

“Yes?” he asked.

The man standing next to him, behind the rope of Arrivals, smiled. “Your money is escaping,” he murmured.

David went after it, stamping on the rolling coins, fishing them off the floor, and turning back to see his bag being lifted over the rope.

The man held out his hand.

“James Garrett.”

Oh, shit, was David’s instinctive reaction. He wiped his own palm on the seam of his jeans, before extending it. “You knew who I was,” he said.

“A lucky guess,” Garrett replied.

David looked at him. Garrett, the older man, had that indefinable air of the rich: effortlessness and ease. He was wearing a gray lightweight suit, white shirt, gray silk tie. David was Garrett’s height, but there any similarity ended. David didn’t own a suit, let alone something as elegant as Garrett’s outfit. He was broad-shouldered, not dark and slim. Garrett looked almost feminine in his suavity. It was almost as if, David suddenly thought, as if Garrett had been polished: steam-cleaned, polished, and manicured. Next to him, David felt suddenly too big, too untidy, too young.

“Why don’t you come around the barrier,” Garrett said.

David did so, after waiting his turn behind another family.

“Good flight?”

“Yes,” David replied. “Thanks.” He smoothed down his hair self-consciously.

“I thought I would come and meet you,” Garrett said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“No. Of course not.”

Garrett walked ahead a little way, then stopped to make a call. “I’ll just get the driver to come up to the ramp,” he said. “I was stranded the other day, and had to make do with a taxi. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

By the time that they got to the exit doors, David saw what was waiting for them. It was a silver Mercedes, new registration. Garrett opened the rear passenger door for him.

“Is this yours?” David asked.

“No,” Garrett said. “This company drives me.”

They sat for some time in silence as the airport was left behind. It was only once they were on the turnpike that Garrett turned to him.

“Grace telephoned you, I understand,” he said.

“Yesterday.”

“And…” Garrett paused. “This would be the first time that you’ve seen Rachel?”

“Yes.”

“First time in Boston, also?”

“Yes.”

Garrett nodded. He looked out of the window for a moment, then asked, “What is it that you do?”

David hesitated. For a second, he thought that Garrett was asking him what anyone did in the circumstances of meeting a daughter one had never known about. Then, he saw that it was simply a question about his work.

“I’m a scientist,” he answered.

“Really?” Garrett replied. “In what field?”

“Biological sciences. Botany.”

“You’re a researcher?”

“I was once.”

“That would be at Oxford?” Garrett asked.

“My Ph.D.,” David told him.

“You have a Ph.D.?”

“No,” David said. “I didn’t finish.”

The traffic was stop-starting. The air-conditioning hummed.

“Do you teach?”

“Sometimes,” David said.

“In Oxford?”

“No.”

“But you live there.”

“No,” said David. “I haven’t lived in Oxford for nine years. I live in a place called Morton Abbas.”

Garrett smiled again. “I’m giving you the third degree,” he murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

They descended into the city.

They drew up outside the house in Beacon Hill.

Garrett got out, and held the door for David. Inside the car, David looked up at him, questioning.

“This is my home,” Garrett explained. “The hospital is just five minutes’ walk away. I thought you would like to leave your bags.”

David hesitated. He would much rather have gone straight to the hospital. He wanted to see Grace. But he felt awkward, churlish, to refuse Garrett’s suggestion. He got out.

He followed Garrett up the stairs, and into the second-floor rooms.

Garrett went to the galley kitchen. “A beer?” he asked. “Coffee?”

David was still looking around him. He thought he recognized one of the paintings on the walls, but couldn’t be sure.

“You like art?”

David glanced at him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is quite a place.”

Garrett smiled. He was holding up the coffeepot.

“Oh—something cold,” David said. “Water is fine.”

Garrett took a bottle of Perrier out of the fridge. “Sit down,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable.”

David sat on the edge of the couch, and took the glass offered to him.

Garrett leaned against the worktop, and crossed his arms. “Did you know that Anna was an artist?” he said.

“Yes, she painted.”

“I mean now,” Garrett said.

David glanced back at the walls. “She painted these?”

Garrett laughed softly. “No,” he said. “But she’s very talented. I represent her.”

David said nothing. He sat wondering exactly what this meant.

“She has an exhibition at the moment,” Garrett continued. “Perhaps you’d like to see it. See her work.”

“Yes,” David answered. He looked at his watch.

“How long were you two together?” Garrett asked.

David looked up. “I’m sorry?”

“You and Anna.”

“A few months,” David said.

Garrett regarded him speculatively. “Really?” he said, in a light conversational tone. “A short time?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re married to someone now?”

“No,” David said. “I’m not married.”

“You must forgive this rudeness,” Garrett said. He took off his jacket, and placed it carefully on the back of the couch. “But I’m trying to catch up. You all know each other.”

“I don’t know Grace,” David said. “And I certainly don’t know Rachel. You’ve got quite a lead on me there.”

Garrett nodded. “Of course, yes. But I’m actually asking you if Rachel has any other family.”

“I don’t have a wife and I don’t have children,” David said. “But she has cousins. My sister has a son and daughter.”

In the silence that followed, David could hear the gentle, measured ticking of a clock. He stood up. “I ought to get to the hospital,” he said. “I ought to ring Grace, at least.”

“You must be hungry,” Garrett said. “Let me get you something first. There’s nothing at the hospital to speak of.”

“I’m not hungry,” David replied.

Garrett was pouring himself a drink. “Morton Abbas,” he said, over his shoulder. “Where is that?”

“It’s on the south coast.”

“Portsmouth…Brighton…?”

“Lyme Regis.”

“Ah,” Garrett said. “Yes, I know that. I’ve been there.”

David finished his water, stood, and handed Garrett back the glass. “Have you seen Anna today?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“How is she?”

Garrett looked at the floor for a second before replying. “She’s stable.”

“And Rachel?”

“Rachel is fine,” he replied. “She has an arm in a cast. She has a multiple fracture.”

“I see,” David said. This was news to him. He hadn’t known. More specifically, he realized, he hadn’t asked.

“Did you ever meet Grace?” Garrett inquired.

David put a hand to his forehead. Garrett’s air-conditioning was chill. He felt clammy, almost cold. “No,” he said. “But I ought to see her now. I promised I would go straight there.”

Garrett nodded, but didn’t move. “Perhaps we should talk about Grace before we go,” he said. “Grace and Rachel.” He indicated the sofa. Very reluctantly, David sat down again. Garrett took a chair opposite him.

“This must be very difficult for you,” he observed quietly. “This whole situation. After so many years.”

David said nothing. It occurred to him that this was simply stating the obvious.

“To come into a crisis like this…cold, as it were,” Garrett continued. “Without any information at all.”

David looked steadily at him. “I feel as if I’ve had all the information I could handle in one day,” he replied.

Garrett smiled sympathetically. “There’s a little more you ought to know,” he said. “About Rachel.” David sat back. Garrett’s expression was noncommittal, hard to read. “I don’t suppose that Grace mentioned to you,” Garrett said, “that Rachel is a very gifted child.”

“Is she?” David said. “In what way?”

Garrett sat forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped. “Rachel has all sorts of gifts,” he replied. “She’s musical. She’s very intelligent. Her IQ is high. She has mathematical ability.”

“Musical,” David repeated.

“She plays by ear,” Garrett said. He nodded toward the back of the room; for the first time, David saw the piano there, set in a small alcove.

“Did Anna teach her?” David asked. “Does Anna play?”

“No,” Garrett answered. “Rachel doesn’t read music.”

“But…” David paused.

“Rachel,” Garrett told him, in a measured voice, “isn’t a typical student. She isn’t even typical of a gifted student.”

“I don’t understand,” David said.

“She is completely self-motivated,” Garrett told him. “She’s an innovative child. She needs something more than an ordinary school. She needs individual care.”

David leaned forward now, too. “I don’t know what you’re telling me,” he said. “Are you saying that Rachel can’t go to a normal school?”

“That’s right.”

“Because she…she’s what?” he asked, puzzled. “She’s too clever? Won’t they have her?”

“It’s not a case of the school system not having her,” Garrett replied. “It’s a case of us finding something more suited to Rachel. Suited to her abilities.”

“She’s not in school,” David said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes, she’s in school,” Garrett said. “But that will change. I’m arranging a private tutor.”

David rubbed a hand over his forehead. “You’re allowed to take her out of the school system,” he said. “And you’ll do that?”

“Yes.”

“Here?”

“Here in Boston. At Anna’s home.”

David paused. He sat back, trying to assess what this meant. “Anna doesn’t live here with you?” he asked.

“No. They live in Jamaica Plain.”

“And Rachel lives with Anna, and she’ll have a private tutor come to Anna’s house?”

“That’s right.”

There was a pause. “That would be very expensive,” David said.

Garrett smiled, and spread his hands in a gesture of modesty.

David tried to think, to work it out. “She’d miss other children,” he murmured, finally. He looked up. Just for a second, he saw something in Garrett’s face. A flash of something. A defense mechanism.

“Rachel doesn’t really need other children,” he said.

“Every child needs other children.”

“You don’t understand,” Garrett countered.

“Yes, I do,” David responded quickly. “My sister has children, and I see how much they need other kids. Play school, school…”

“You don’t understand,” Garrett repeated. “Rachel doesn’t want other children.”

“What do you mean?” David demanded.

“She’s autistic,” Garrett said.

David sat back. He felt winded, as if someone had punched him. He couldn’t think of a single response.

“Grace didn’t tell you,” Garrett murmured. “I didn’t think she would.”

Still, David said nothing. He had no idea of what autism meant, only that it was one of those words that carried a threat of the unknown. He remembered Sara being worried about Thomas having the MMR vaccine, because of the rumor that it was somehow linked to autism. He tried to think. To remember what the hell he knew about this subject. Autistic children were talented. There had been a boy in England, famous for his architectural drawings. There had been an article on the TV news one night, and another little boy there was spinning; just spinning around in the background while his mother was speaking.

“Autism,” he repeated, slowly. “I thought it was something that just boys had.”

“More boys than girls,” Garrett corrected.

“Autistic,” David said. Then folded his arms across himself, and pressed his lips tightly together. He was afraid that something sublimely stupid would come out of his mouth. Something that showed his ignorance to this calm, polished man in front of him who knew only too well what autism was, and who had tended his daughter through it.

“David,” Garrett said softly. “Forgive me. But is there anyone in your family with such a condition?”

David blinked. “My family?”

“It’s…” Garrett paused, apparently choosing his words carefully. “As far as I know, this condition comes down through the male side,” he said. “Would your father, your grandfather, your brother…?”

“I don’t have a brother,” David said.

Garrett was looking steadily at him.

David got up. There was no way he was discussing his father with Garrett. “I think I should go now,” he said.

Garrett got up also. “David,” he said. “I’ve offended you.”

“No,” David replied. “I’m shocked. That’s all.”

“I wouldn’t have offended you for the world.”

“It’s OK,” David said. It was true that he was affronted by Garrett’s implication. It was as if Garrett were telling him that Rachel had inherited a gene from him that he, Garrett, had been forced to tend. He looked around for his things. He wanted to take his bags and go. He had a sudden overwhelming feeling that he shouldn’t be in this man’s house. The sensation of being a trespasser in a world he couldn’t understand washed over him.

“I felt you ought to know,” Garrett was saying. “To be forearmed.”

David said nothing. He was thinking of Anna. He was thinking of her hearing this diagnosis for the first time. He was thinking again, for the thousandth time, of why she had never rung him. He could have helped her. He could have done something.

What were you going to do, said a small voice inside his head, on the other side of the Atlantic?

“Thank you for the glass of water,” he said. “I have to go.”

Abruptly, Garrett gripped his arm. “David,” he murmured. “There’s Grace.”

“What?” He was standing at the head of the stairs. Behind Garrett’s head, the painting loomed, an exclamation of design in the white box of the room. It was lurid, dominant. Faces leered from the canvas. Colors fought for space. Yellows, blues, reds.

“You know…you can see how Anna has had her problems,” Garrett said. “And Grace…well, frankly, to phone you like this, to bring you over here without any discussion, without any thought…”

David raised a hand to his eyes. “Is there something about Grace?” he asked.

“You know her background?”

“No,” David said.

“That she and Anna’s father were never married?”

David looked up. “Does that matter?”

“That Anna’s father was, in fact, a married man, and that Grace had been his mistress? And she lived in a house he had given her, but that Anna never once saw her father?”

David’s eyes ranged over Garrett’s face. “No,” he said. “She never told me that.”

Garrett shook his head sadly. “She never saw her father because he abandoned Grace, giving her an annuity as soon as he knew that Grace was pregnant,” he murmured.

“That’s very sad,” David commented. Anna had never told him this. He mused on it for a while, thinking of Grace struggling to bring up Anna alone. How many echoes she must have seen in Anna’s situation.

But, when he looked up, there wasn’t an echo of sympathy in Garrett’s face, rather disapproval. “This is Anna’s mother,” Garrett told him. “This is her background.”

David frowned. “You don’t like her.”

Garrett laughed shortly. “David, as you will see,” he said, “it’s not a case of liking or not liking, it’s a case of trying to make sense of this woman. She’s an enormously difficult person to get along with. In fact…I worry about her.”

“You worry?” David said. “Why?”

Garrett looked embarrassed. “Well,” he said. “She’s an odd lady. She…she can forget, she’s a very heavy smoker…and her language…”

“You’re saying she’s senile.”

“No,” Garrett replied swiftly. “No, no, not at all…”

He left the denial hanging, unconvincingly, between them.

“Where does she live now?” David asked. “Does she live with Anna?”

“Oh, she has a house. In Ogunquit. It’s north of here.”

“And she and Anna…”

“David,” Garrett interrupted. “I’m going to be perfectly honest with you here. Grace will do everything she can to divide you from both Anna and Rachel. I should know. I’ve seen this for the last five years. I’ve been at the receiving end of this treatment.”

“But she rang me,” David said.

“Because she resents Anna’s relationship with me. She resents the things we have done for Rachel.”

“Do you mean that she rang me because she wanted some sort of leverage with Rachel?” And his conversation with Sara came back to him. I won’t be used like a bloody pawn.

Garrett hesitated. “David, I’m sorry,” he said. “But Anna and I have agreed on Rachel’s care, and Grace has not agreed. And I would have consulted you. Naturally, I would have consulted you. If I had known who you were, or where you were.”

David bit his lip. He could feel the unspoken insinuation: that Anna hadn’t wanted him to know. That Garrett would have spoken to him willingly, but Anna had prevented it.

“And you think that Grace sees this as an opportunity to stop that happening,” he asked dully. “By recruiting me?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way. I wouldn’t think even Grace could be so crude.”

“But that is what you think,” David said. “That’s what you’re afraid of.” He looked directly at the other man.

You’re worried I’m going to break up your family, he thought.

“Look,” he added, “I didn’t come here for any other reason than someone rang me and told me I had a daughter. I couldn’t ignore that. I just couldn’t ignore it. I don’t want to come between you and Anna.”

Garrett smiled at him. “Oh, you won’t come between Anna and me,” he told him softly. He reached for his jacket from the back of the couch. “There isn’t a chance of that.”