LAURA DIDN’T SLEEP AT ALL THE NIGHT BEFORE HER APPOINTMENT with Dylan Geer and Heather Davison. In the morning, she nearly forgot to give Emma her breakfast, and Emma, of course, said nothing to correct her mistake. She finally made her an English muffin with jelly and a glass of orange juice.

“You’ll have to eat it quickly,” she told her. “I have to take you over to Cory’s so I can go out for a while.”

Emma stopped chewing her muffin, alarm in her eyes.

“Her father’s not there,” Laura said. “He won’t be back till the weekend.”

Emma relaxed and resumed her chewing.

“Though he’s really a very nice man,” Laura added, not wanting Emma to think her fear of Jim Becker was well-founded.

Emma dawdled over her food as she usually did, and Laura finally had to take the muffin away. “Go wash your hands and then we’ll go,” she said.

The phone rang as soon as Emma left the room, and Laura stared at it. She didn’t have time for a call. But what if it was Heather canceling the appointment? She picked up the receiver.

The editor from Ray’s new publishing house was on the line. He introduced himself quickly, his name instantly flying from Laura’s memory, then got to the point of his call.

“Listen,” he said, “we need you to send us a picture of Ray for the book jacket and for us to use in any promo we do. Do you have one?”

“Well, yes. I’m sure I can find one.” She ran her fingers through her hair as she tried to recall the pictures that had been taken of Ray in recent years. Most of them were casual family shots. There would be few of him alone. “I could use his university picture,” she said.

“Good. We need it as soon as possible. And I wanted to let you know that the marketing people will be in touch with you soon, and I know they’ll have a lot of questions for you. We’re all thrilled about this book,” the nameless editor continued. “I know it’s really ironic, and this probably sounds terrible to you, but the truth is, your husband’s book is more valuable because of his death. It makes him a martyr for his cause. Would you say that Ray killed himself over his frustration at not being able to do more for the homeless? Would that be an accurate statement?”

Laura was taken aback by the question. She had not yet absorbed the idea that Ray was a martyr for his cause.

“Um, I think there were many factors leading to his taking his life.” Primarily me, she thought.

“What exactly did he do for the homeless?”

“What didn’t he do would be an easier question to answer,” she said. “He organized a tent city. He set up tutoring programs for homeless kids. He—” She saw Emma reappear in the doorway of the kitchen and glanced at her watch. “He did too much to summarize right now,” she said. “I’m afraid I don’t have the time. I’m on my way out.”

“Well, all right then. I’ll have the marketing people give you a call. And you’ll get that picture to us, okay? Can you e-mail it?”

“Yes. I’ll take care of it.”

“Oh, and one more thing,” he said. “We need to change the title. No Room at the Inn doesn’t have the punch we need.”

She thought of all the nights Ray had lain awake trying to come up with the title for his book. “But I like it,” she said.

“We were thinking of For Shame.”

She frowned. “I don’t get it.”

“Well, as Ray points out in his book, the current social policy is cruel. It perpetuates the problem of homelessness. We should be ashamed of it.”

“Oh,” she said. “I’m not sure Ray would have liked it.”

“We think it works,” the editor said. “Listen, you get me that picture, okay?”

Laura shuddered as she got off the phone. It had been like conversing with a vulture. Forcing a smile, she turned to Emma.

“Come on, sweetie,” she said. “Let’s go see Cory.”

Dylan sat in Heather Davison’s waiting room, leafing through an old People magazine without really seeing the pages. The receptionist, a motherly looking woman whose name plate read “Mrs. Quinn,” occasionally caught his eye and smiled at him. He wondered if she knew why he was there. Did she know how crazy this whole thing was? Could she tell that part of him wanted to bolt out the door?

This was the right thing to do, he kept telling himself. Not the easy thing, certainly, but the right thing. The child was his; he had stared at her picture long enough to know that without any doubt. And as long as she was his, he had to do whatever he could to help her. No way around it.

He hadn’t seen or spoken to Bethany in a week, not since the night she delivered the picture to him from his mailbox. She’d left a few messages for him, and he’d left a few in return, carefully timing his calls to when he knew she’d be out. He was afraid she’d ask him more questions about Emma. It wasn’t that he was hiding anything from her. He just didn’t want to get into it. He missed her, but he wouldn’t see her until he had this situation clear in his own mind. So, instead of seeing Bethany, he’d gone out with a different woman, a woman he knew simply wanted to have a good time, someone who avoided heavy questions as much as he did.

He had never been to a therapist before. Not of his own volition, at any rate. After the crash, it had been required, but one session had been enough for him, and he’d quit therapy and the airlines the same afternoon. It had seemed ludicrous to him then that talking could do anything to help him. Talking wouldn’t have brought Katy back.

The front door to the office opened and Laura Brandon walked into the waiting room. He saw the relief on her face when she spotted him, as if she hadn’t actually expected him to show up.

“Hi,” he said, getting to his feet. Her face was flushed and she looked pretty. He could understand why he might have been drawn to her at that party years ago. Her long, thick brown hair was laced with gold, and her brown eyes were large and dark-lashed. Emma looked far more like him than she did her mother.

“Thanks for agreeing to come,” Laura said.

“You’re welcome.” He was about to take his seat again when another woman walked into the room.

“Hi, Laura,” the woman said. She held her hand out to Dylan. “I’m Heather Davison,” she said. “And you must be Dylan?”

“Yes. Hi.” He shook her hand, surprised. She looked like a kid. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she wore burgundy overalls over a pink T-shirt.

The three of them walked into Heather’s office. The therapist plunked herself down in the large leather chair, while he and Laura took the two upholstered chairs, neatly angled side by side. He felt odd sitting next to Laura, as though they were supposed to be a couple.

“Well, Dylan,” Heather began, “I have to compliment you. I have a lot of respect for you, coming in here like this. It takes guts.”

He shifted in his seat with discomfort. “I’m not feeling particularly gutsy at the moment,” he said.

“What’s this like for you?” Heather asked.

“Uh…terrifying,” he said, and the two women smiled at his honesty.

“Well, I’m very glad you’re here, but I want to be certain you understand the gravity of the situation before you make any decisions that could affect the rest of your life. And Emma’s.”

Dylan swallowed. He couldn’t believe how nervous he felt.

Heather leaned forward. “It’s critical that you don’t agree to come into Emma’s life unless two things exist. One, that Laura feels completely comfortable with you doing so, and two, that you feel absolutely certain you can commit to Emma. She’s already lost one father, and it’s left her shell-shocked. The trauma of losing a second father could be too much for her.”

She sounded like a genuine therapist now in spite of the overalls, and Dylan nodded.

“I understand that,” he said. “But what I don’t understand is what’s really going on with Emma. Laura said she hasn’t talked since her father died.”

“That’s right,” Heather said. “Not only doesn’t she speak, but she’s regressed in a number of other ways, as well. She’s become very clingy, hasn’t she, Laura?”

Laura nodded solemnly.

“She’s uncomfortable around men, and that’s the main reason I wanted to see what sort of guy you are and if you might want to help her out. She thinks of men as angry, hostile beings. You’ll have to be careful how you handle your anger around her.”

He nodded again. Why was this kid so screwed up?

“She also suffers from nightmares,” Heather continued, “or at least we assume that’s what’s happening. It’s difficult to know exactly, since she can’t talk to us about them. And she wets the bed. She’d been completely dry for nearly three years.”

“But why?” Dylan asked. “Other kids lose their fathers and it doesn’t cause them to…regress that much.”

Heather turned to Laura. “Doesn’t Dylan know how Ray died?” she asked.

Laura shook her head. “I haven’t really had a chance to tell him,” she said. Dylan braced himself. This wasn’t going to be good.

Laura looked at him squarely. “My husband committed suicide,” she said. “I was out of the house. Ray was supposed to be watching Emma. He shot himself in our bedroom. When I got home, Emma was standing at the bottom of the stairs, screaming. She was inconsolable. I don’t know if she saw him do it, or if she only saw him after it happened, but one way or another, it left her…the way she is now.”

Dylan saw the sheen of tears in Laura’s dark eyes. Emma was not the only person scarred by her father’s suicide.

“God,” he said. “That was cruel of him to do it when she was home.”

“He was really depressed, and I think depressed people don’t think too clearly,” Laura said.

She sounded only mildly defensive, yet Dylan wished he could take back his words.

“It’s true that Ray suffered from clinical depression for most of his life,” Heather said, her eyes on Dylan, “but Laura has a strong need to defend him. Yes, Ray did some very good things during his life, but from what I’ve gathered, he wasn’t a very loving or attentive parent for Emma.” She looked apologetically at Laura for exposing that fact.

“He was also trying unsuccessfully to get a book published,” Laura said, continuing her defense. “And he was upset with me because he thought I was more dedicated to my career than I was to him.”

“What kind of work do you do?” Dylan asked. He realized he knew almost nothing about this woman.

“I’m an astronomer,” she said. “I work at the Air and Space Museum and teach at Hopkins, and I do research that requires me to travel a lot. At least I did all of that until recently. I’m taking time off for Emma.”

Dylan saw the guilt in her face and felt a weird desire to reach out and squeeze her hand in an effort to erase it. He kept his hands to himself, though. “I used to fly for the airlines,” he said. “I know how hard travel can be on a relationship.”

“If you were to get involved in Emma’s life,” Heather interrupted their conversation, “it wouldn’t be as a substitute for Ray, but as a completely separate, unique individual. Her birth father.”

“Can Emma have picked up her problem from her father somehow? From her adoptive father?” Dylan asked. “I mean, if he was mentally ill, could she have—”

“No.” Heather sat forward, legs apart, elbows on knees, the picture of sincerity. “And this is important for you to understand, Dylan. Emma is simply a healthy, normal child who suffered a trauma. She has what we call post-traumatic stress disorder.”

The words healthy, normal child reassured him. Not that it would make a difference in what he had to do.

“Well,” he said, “I’d be lying if I said this doesn’t make me more than a little anxious. I mean, I have zero experience with children. I was the youngest in my family. My sister has two children, but I rarely see them.” Even when he did see his sister’s kids, he was never sure what to say to them. “And taking on the responsibility of a child, especially one like Emma, wasn’t exactly part of my plan for my life.” He smiled. “But nothing I’ve heard changes the fact that she’s my daughter. I have an obligation to her, maybe even more so now that I know all she’s gone through. I want to meet her.”

Heather did not look so sure. “I’m worried you might have a romanticized notion about her,” she said. “What if she drives you crazy? What if you just plain don’t like her?”

He drew in a long breath and let it out. “You know, I didn’t want this,” he said. “I didn’t want any of it. I tried not to look at her picture, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out. And then I looked at it and…that was that. She’s mine. And maybe she will drive me crazy sometimes. But don’t all kids do that? Isn’t that part of the parenting package? I’m not expecting perfection, in her or in myself. But I want to help her. I can’t know that she—that my flesh and blood—is out there, struggling, and do nothing to help her.”

He looked at Laura. She had turned away from him, and he saw that she was fighting back tears.

“I want Emma to meet him,” Laura said suddenly. “I want her to know who her father is.”

Heather looked less certain of the decision but nodded nonetheless. “Is there anyone,” she asked Dylan, “a woman, maybe, who would be upset by the sudden appearance of your daughter in your life?”

“No.” He shook his head, thinking only briefly of Bethany. “I’m unattached and have no plans to change that.”

“Well, then,” she said. “Let’s figure out the best way to handle your meeting Emma.”

The three of them talked awhile longer. Heather suggested a book Laura could read to Emma to help the little girl understand the difference between her adoptive father and her biological father. She suggested a couple of books for Dylan to read as well, and he wrote down the titles.

“Sometimes,” Heather said to him, “a new person stands a better chance of getting a voluntarily mute child, like Emma, to talk. If the stranger simply acts as though he expects the child to talk, she may sometimes comply. I tried to do this when I first met Emma, but it didn’t work. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

Driving home, Dylan thought of how both women had described Emma. He hated the idea that her adoptive father had not treated her well. Aside from that, what had her childhood been like? Had she needed anything he might have been able to provide for her if he’d known of her existence? She had a wacko mother, that much he knew already. A mother who would sleep with a guy the first night she met him. Watch the double standard, Geer. A mother who would trick him into taking her up in the balloon to tell him about his daughter. Furious though he’d been at the time, the memory of her misguided ruse made him laugh out loud.

This was nuts. He had friends, mostly men, who had children they never saw and they viewed their noninvolvement as a blessing. Well, maybe they didn’t know what it was like to grow up without a father. If anyone had asked him a year ago how he would feel if he found out he had a child, he, too, might have expressed indifference.

But that would have been before he saw her picture.