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We sat at the table together. Hazel had sauce on her chin before the second bite. Alex served himself and sat across from me, and for a few minutes the only sounds were forks and Hazel reading us riddles from a book she'd found at the library. Alex and I took turns guessing, getting half of them wrong, which delighted her. I reached over and wiped the sauce from her cheek with my thumb. She squirmed away and read the next one.

After dinner, Hazel wanted to wipe the table. I lifted her up and she went at it with the sponge while Alex rolled up his sleeves and started on the dishes. I was clearing the last of the plates when the knocking started.

I looked through the side window. The hallway light caught his face and my whole body went cold. I hadn't seen his face in over six years. He looked the same. Taller in my memory, but the same. Dark-haired, broad through the shoulders, wearing a coat that cost more than a month of my rent.

I cracked the door. "Declan."

"Janine. I finally found you, baby."

"You need to leave."

His foot came through the gap before I could close it. "I just want to talk, Janine." He wore the same smile I remembered from college, the one that had looked like warmth before I learned what lived underneath it. "You disappeared on me, Janine. I think I'm owed a conversation."

He pushed the door open. His hand went up against the frame above my head, and he was standing over me, close enough that I could smell his cologne. He looked past me into the apartment. Past the kitchen, past the counter, to where Hazel was standing on her chair with the sponge still in her hand.

He looked at her dark hair, her jaw, the features she'd inherited from him. The recognition moved across his face slowly.

"Well." He looked at Hazel one more time, then back at me. "That answers a few questions."

Then Alex was behind me. His hand came around my waist and pulled me back against him. I felt his chest, his arms, and the size of him between me and the man in my doorway.

"She told you to leave," Alex said. "If you have a problem, we can take this outside."

Declan looked at him. He sized him up for two seconds.

"We'll talk another time." He stepped back into the hallway. "Take care of my daughter."

He turned and walked toward the stairs.

Alex reached past me and pushed the door shut. The lock turned under his hand.

I stood there. His arm was still around my waist and I couldn't move. I couldn't think. The hallway was gone and the door was closed but Declan's cologne was still in the air.

"Mama?" Behind us, Hazel started to cry. "Who was that man?"

I turned. She was at the edge of the kitchen, her face crumpled and scared. I crouched down and pulled her against me.

"Someone Mama knew a long time ago, baby. He's gone now. He's not coming back tonight."

CHAPTER 12

The Arrangement

ALEX

It took an hour to get Hazel to stop crying.

Janine held her on the couch, rocking, murmuring into her hair, until the sobs thinned into hiccups and the hiccups thinned into breathing and the breathing slowed into sleep. Hazel's head was in Janine's lap, one hand curled against her chest. Janine stroked her hair and pulled the blanket up to her shoulder.

"Do you want to talk about what happened?"

Janine's hand kept moving through Hazel's hair. She took a deep breath as she held onto Hazel's shoulder.

"That was Declan. Hazel's father."

I looked at the girl asleep in her lap. Her dark hair was Janine's. But her jaw, the shape of her face, those belonged to the man who had just stood in the doorway.

"He spoke like he didn't know she existed."