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“What—no!”
He clearly saw the pained conflict before she could hide it. “I can’t handle losing someone again. I won’t lose you.”
His aching plea sliced her open.
“Do you have feelings for him or not?”
She started to shake her head but touched her mouth, where she still felt Taylor’s kiss. “What if Sofia came back into your life?”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
“I don’t understand your point,” he argued.
“I can’t control my feelings, and I honestly don’t know what I feel other than confusion—or maybe happiness that Penelope might have what I never did. A relationship with her dad.”
“So I wasn’t good enough?”
“This isn’t about you! You wouldn’t ask Julia to start thinking of me as her mom, would you? He missed out, too. He wants to be a dad.”
Dany tensed, every muscle in his face stretched thin.
“We’re seeing him tomorrow,” Analise continued. “He wants to spend the day with her—with us. Obviously, I’ll be with her. I’m going to take her out of school—”
“You arranged all this before talking with me?”
“I have to get your permission?”
“You know nothing about him!” he hollered and slammed the side of his fist on the cupboard so hard it splintered.
She flinched and then froze at his outburst. They’d never fought about anything. He’d made being in a relationship easy. Or perhaps she’d been the one who made it so.
He was quieter, but his words were no less emotional. “This couldn’t have waited till after the wedding?”
She didn’t back down. “If you just found out you had a daughter you never knew existed, could you wait even one second before meeting her?”
Dany stared at the floor.
Penelope’s voice cut through the silence. “Mamma? Dany?” She was in her pajamas, hair frizzled. The sight of her broke Analise all over again. How could she have missed Penelope in Taylor’s face the moment he walked into the café? She was there in his expansive intense eyes, those endless lashes, the quirk of his lips, and the cleft in his chin. All those ardent emails revealing his inner life, she could easily imagine their daughter writing such lengthy devotions.
Alarmed at her mother’s sobs, she rushed over, and in Swedish said, “What’s wrong?” They held each other. “Are you two breaking up?” Penelope, nearly crying, too, turned to Dany and said in English, “Please don’t tell me you’re breaking up.”
Analise pulled away, forcing a reassuring smile as she touched her daughter’s face, and tucked a blonde lock tenderly behind her ear. “Nej, min lilla älskling.” In English, she asked Penelope, “Would you like to meet your pappa?”
Penelope, attached to Julia at the hip, walked down the stairs to meet Taylor in the foyer. Her daughter’s questions from the day before were like a dripping, unrepairable faucet, demanding how her mysterious father could turn up out of the blue. “Am I going to get a DNA test?”
“No,” said Analise, the annoyance fueled by her sleep deprivation and crying-induced headache. She finally had to shout at Penelope, “Let me take a nap!”
Analise now focused on Taylor’s reaction, desiring to experience through his eyes what it might be like to rewind time, have someone present her with a beautiful human, and say, “This is going to be your daughter in eleven years.”
Taylor blinked and fingered one of his eyelashes as if he had something stuck in them. Analise cried for him but then saw Penelope’s embarrassed face. She pulled herself together.
When the girls reached the bottom of the stairs, Taylor appeared to grapple with his mouth, finally saying, “Hi, Penelope.”
“Hi.” Penelope pressed her cheek against Julia’s. “This is my sister.”
“The resemblance is unmistakable,” Taylor said with a smile, but Analise caught the flash in his eyes.
