Bobby sat with the phone in his lap for a long time after hanging up with Lacey, a numbness settling over him as he replayed the conversation in his mind. He reached for the pack of Marlboros on the broad worktable, set up in what was supposed to be his dining room, and shook one of the cigarettes into his hand. He lit it, inhaled deeply and let the smoke out of his mouth in a long, slow stream.

Lacey O’Neill. He remembered how she had chopped off her beautiful, if out-of-control, red hair that summer. Chopped it off to within an inch of her scalp and then dyed it jet black. Yet every time he’d looked at her with that short, dark mop on her head, his mind had painted in the missing red hair. That’s how much that long hair had been part of her: he could see it even when it wasn’t there. He should have asked her what she looked like now. Was her hair long, or did she still try to hide who she was with dye and scissors?

And Jessica Dillard. Very young. A petite blond seductress. How easily a seventeen-year-old boy could be seduced. Although he’d always found Lacey’s personality and big blue eyes and deep dimples more engaging than Jessica’s sultry looks and provocative nature, Lacey’s quiet fragility had scared him off. He’d made love to her once, if you could call deflowering a virgin on the beach making love. It had hurt her, that much he remembered. She’d yelped in pain and he’d stopped, but she told him to keep on going. He knew she wasn’t having any fun, that she just wanted him to get it over with, but he was too far gone to get into a long discussion about the matter. He’d finished what he started and the very next night, turned to her best friend, who didn’t seem to have a fear in the world, who did not yelp, who liked to wrap her body around his, her blond hair splayed out on the sand. Jessica had been an animal, bucking beneath him. They’d done it every which way. Most of the time with a condom. Some of the time without. What a goddamned asshole he’d been.

Sometimes you looked back at the person you once were and wanted to throw up. He’d tried so hard to hide from the past, but every now and then, a reminder would pop up that he just couldn’t shake. Like Lacey’s phone call. Like a child she said was his.

With a sigh, he set the phone back on the corner of the table, then reached for the piece of mammoth ivory he’d been working on when the call had come. The ancient piece of ivory, now plain and smooth and off-white, would become a belt buckle decorated with a delicate color portrait of three beloved dogs, a gift from one of his customers to her husband. It was going to be beautiful, and it would take him weeks to complete. It would also cost the woman a pretty penny.

He couldn’t get into working on the ivory, though. He would mess it up if he tried now. He took another drag on his cigarette and looked through the dining room window. His view was of the alley behind his small house, and beyond the alley, the garage of one of his neighbors, the one with the dog that barked and snarled at him every time he took his garbage out.

A year ago he’d wanted a kid so badly he just about cried every time Claudia got her period. They’d been trying for nearly three years, and if they’d succeeded he would have married her and they would have made a go of it. He tried not to let his disappointment show, but she knew how much he longed for a child. Someone to pour his love into. Someone to raise better than he had been raised. He would correct all the mistakes his parents had made. Mackenzie. Funny name for a girl. It made him smile. So, she was belligerent and obstinate and all those other negative adjectives Lacey had used to describe her. She was still a real, living, breathing child in need of a father.

But he was as sure as he could be that she was not his.