was playing at my neighbor’s house the other day when her friend’s father came home,” Laura said. “He’s a nice guy, but gruff, and Emma ran out of the house when he walked in.”
Heather didn’t look surprised by that information. “One thing that’s really obvious to me, although I know you may not be ready to admit to it, is that your husband and Emma did not have a good relationship. When I asked Emma to use the face drawings to describe her dad, she pointed to the yelling face and the angry face.” Heather leaned toward Laura, her brown eyes earnest. “In Emma’s mind, men yell,” she said. “And men kill themselves.”
“So what can we do?” Laura felt helpless.
“Well, play therapy can go only so far.” Heather sat back in her seat again. “I have a question for you,” she said. “Something I’ve been wondering about.”
“Yes?”
“Emma’s birth father. What can you tell me about him?”
Laura laughed. “Essentially nothing. I met him one time, at a party, and that was it. Believe me, I’d never done anything like that before. I was upset that night, and—”
“That doesn’t matter.” Heather dismissed her excuses with a wave of her hand. “But I wonder if there’s a chance he might like to know he has a daughter.”
“Oh, no.” It was Laura’s turn to interrupt. The idea of tracking down Dylan Geer and announcing to him that he had a daughter was unthinkable. “I’m telling you, he probably wouldn’t even remember me. And I don’t know where he lives. Or even what he does for a living. And—” she laughed again “—I don’t want Emma to have a father who’d sleep with someone the first night he meets them. She’s already stuck with a mother depraved enough to do that.”
Heather laughed herself. “All right,” she said. “But I’d still like you to think about it. I wouldn’t want him involved, either, unless he’s good father material and willing to commit to her. But he just might be someone who could correct her notion that all men are snarly beasts. You never know. It might be worth a shot.”
Laura had designed the skylight room at the lake house herself. It was a medium-size, square room on the second story, its ceiling formed by large, Plexiglas panels. The floor was completely covered in huge pillows, except for one corner where she had her desk and computer. Lying on the pillows, looking up, a person could almost pretend they were outside. Laura’s telescope stood in one corner of the room, ready to be wheeled onto the wide deck that ran around all four sides of the second story, giving Laura the ability to search nearly any part of the sky.
She had fallen asleep in this room on many nights, and tonight would probably be one of them. She was dressed in her summer pajamas and nestled on top of one of the soft pillows, staring up at the constellation Hercules. And thinking. She’d been doing a great deal of thinking since her appointment with Heather Davison that afternoon.
Dylan Geer. The thought of him embarrassed and enticed her at the same time. Embarrassed her because of the way she’d behaved that night long ago. Enticed her because, well, Dylan Geer had been one irresistible man. Sleeping with him had been crazy and completely out of character for her. She had never been the sort of woman who melted at the sight of a good-looking guy. She’d grown up with a father whose idea of a great time was an afternoon in the science section of the library, and that had become her great time, as well. In high school, other girls thought she was strange. She was strange. She was the president of the astronomy club, the only girl in the science and chess clubs, and while she had plenty of male friends, few of them saw her as anything other than that—a friend.
Even in high school, career plans had been her primary focus. Her father would spend evenings looking through college catalogs with her, having her make lists of her strengths and skills. Back then, she’d doubted she would ever get married. There would not be enough room in her life for a husband and children as well as the sort of career she wanted. That had been an accurate assessment; she had not given enough of herself to Ray and Emma.
She had sex for the first time in college, with a male friend who wanted to show her what she was missing. She enjoyed the experience, especially the sense of closeness to someone she cared for, but she rarely had those feelings other girls talked about that left them unable to say “no” when an attractive guy came onto them.
That was, until six years ago when she literally stumbled into Dylan Geer at a party.
The party had been given by Rhonda Giddings, a woman who had then worked with Laura at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum. Rhonda was little more than an acquaintance, but she’d invited the museum staff to the housewarming for her new mansion in Potomac.
It was beginning to snow when Laura arrived at Rhonda’s spectacular home, and she was in a rotten mood. Just that day, she’d been turned down for a research grant she’d worked hard to obtain. Angry and frustrated, she drank. An infrequent drinker, she was tipsy almost instantly, and as she walked from the living room to the kitchen, she wove directly into the arms of a man who took her breath away. She knew in that instant what other women were talking about. She knew, too, that she would sleep with him.
Staring up at the stars from the oversize pillow in the skylight room, Laura allowed herself to remember him. The penetrating blue eyes. The dark hair. The amused smile. They must have talked before they ended up in one of the upstairs bedrooms, but she couldn’t remember a word that passed between them. She couldn’t recall what he did for a living, or where he lived, or how he knew Rhonda. What she did remember was her excitement—the visceral thrill of kissing him, of lying naked with him in the four-poster bed, while snow fell furiously outside the bedroom window. She remembered every touch, every movement of his body. It was possible, though, that she had embellished those memories over the years, because each time she and Ray made love, she drew upon them to become aroused. What she’d had with Dylan had only been sex, though. What she’d had with Ray was a love rooted in friendship.
After that night, she’d wondered if she’d always had that desire but had kept it tightly under wraps to avoid stealing energy from her work. It had taken the alcohol to free her. Maybe she’d only been fooling herself into thinking she did not have those feelings, just as she’d fooled herself into thinking she didn’t care about having children. When she learned she’d gotten pregnant that night, she felt sudden, pure, unadulterated joy—tempered by the awareness that her career and motherhood would not be an easy mix. Her father was quick to point that out to her, suggesting she strongly consider an abortion. It was the only time in her entire life she defied him.
Her thoughts were interrupted by crying from Emma’s room down the hall. She looked at her watch as she rose from the pillow. Eleven-fifteen. Poor baby.
Emma was standing in the hallway outside her room, barefoot in her shorty pajamas and shivering despite the warmth of the night.
“What is it, honey?” Laura asked her.
Emma sucked harder on her thumb in response to the question. Her cheeks were red and tear-streaked.
Laura crouched next to her. “Tell me what it is, sweetheart. Did something frighten you?”
Emma put her head on her mother’s shoulder, her small body sighing with the aftermath of her tears. It broke Laura’s heart that Emma could not give words to whatever had frightened her.
She looked over Emma’s head to the child’s dark bedroom. “Your night-light went out. Is that it? You woke up and it was dark?”
Emma nodded against her shoulder.
Laura stood up. “I’ll put another bulb in the fairy light and then you can go back to bed.”
In Emma’s room, Laura discovered that her daughter’s bed was wet, again. She changed the sheets and gave her dry pajamas to put on, then gave up on the idea of getting her back to sleep in her room.
“Do you want to watch the stars with me in the skylight room?” she asked.
Emma