“He did.”
That word hit harder.
Noah looked angry now.
Not teenage angry.
Protective.
“She told me her dad abandoned her.”
“I know what I told her.”
“He said he has birthday cards he never got to send.”
I looked away.
“Rebecca.”
My eyes snapped back.
Teenagers usually called me Mrs. Dalton.
Hearing my first name from him changed the balance somehow.
“You have to tell her.”
“I will.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“No.”
My voice sharpened.
“This is between my daughter and me.”
“And now it’s between her and my family too.”
That stopped me.
Noah’s mother, Sarah, had married Mark eight years earlier.
I knew he had remarried.
I had never known her son’s name.
Never asked.
Never cared.
That ignorance had just put my daughter on a prom date with her father’s stepson.
Life had a vicious sense of timing.
Noah continued.
“She spent the last hour thinking she did something wrong.”
“She didn’t.”
“Then tell her that.”
“I need time.”
“You’ve had fourteen years.”
I flinched.
He noticed.
His expression softened slightly.
But he didn’t back down.
“She deserves the truth before she wakes up tomorrow and starts wondering whether tonight was another thing everybody understood except her.”
The faucet stopped.
Noah glanced toward the kitchen.
