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“Is he my dad?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SAVANNAH STARED BLANKLY at Katie, her head trying to catch up hat just happened

“Your dad?” she asked “Why in the world would you think that?”

Katie’s little chin caot were talking aboutabout him And then he made you cry and you wouldn’t answer me when I asked if you had sex with him”

All of that was true, Savannah thought, but it was like adding apples and oranges and getting elephants

“Honey,” she breathed “I had no idea you were thinking this”

“You never tell ,” Katie said

“I thought I was protecting you,” she said The salier aspects of Tyler or their mother

She felt awful that she’d never seen the pain not talking about Eric was causing Katie Other single mothers probably didn’t have this proble and—rubbing salt in her guilt—she i the absent father a bastard

“Marybeth, at school,” Katie said, “she doesn’t have a dad but her mom told her he lives in New Orleans with a hooker”

Savannah sed her laughter—clearly there was a spectru

“But she gets to go visit hinets for dinner and I don’t even knohere my dad is And then when you caot so weird”

Matt stepped past Savannah and collapsed on the bed as though his knees had just been broken “I’reen eyes sincere and earnest in a million different ways

“You’re not?” she asked, and he shook his head “You’re sure?”