I gesture to the draped prints. “So, this is the secret project? Any chance you’ll give a hint to a good friend?”

“None at all. I trust you, but I don’t want to risk a leak before I’m ready.” He looks at me meaningfully. “I’m sure you understand.”

“Yeah,” I say, putting a hand on my belly. “I do.”

I’m smiling as I head to the back of the studio and the stairs that lead to the much smaller area that Frank has sublet.

He’s standing over a light board, using a magnifying loop to review strips of negatives. He’s in his early sixties, with hair that’s gone gray at the temples. He has the ruggedly handsome, weathered face of someone who spends a lot of time outdoors. And when I look straight at him, I can see my own blue eyes looking back at me.

“I thought you shot digitally,” I say as I cross the room to look over his shoulder. Photography has been my hobby since high school, and though I love working with film, in this day and age, it’s become impractical. I also hate dark rooms—too many memories of my mother locking me in my room at night and disabling the light switch. And while I know Damien would build me the biggest and best darkroom in the history of photography, I do so little behind the camera that it doesn’t seem worth asking.

Besides, I’ve gotten pretty proficient with editing on the computer, and that’s fun, too.

“Mostly digital,” he says, as he passes me the loop so that I can take a look. “But sometimes you just need to go retro.”

I laugh as I bend to look at the lush photos of Santa Monica at night, and even from looking at the negative, I can see that he’s captured an aspect of dark and shadows that you simply can’t claim with a digital format. “These are wonderful,” I say, returning the loop to him. “Are you going to print them?”

“When I get back. I have the trip, remember?” He glances up at me. “That’s when I’ll shoot digitally. And when my app comes in so handy. I would have come to your office today. I’m the client, remember?”

“True enough. But I wanted to see you here.”

Frank is a travel photographer, and so he spends most of his time bouncing around the globe. He recently hired me to design an app by which he could display and sell his work even when he’s on the go, and I came today ostensibly to go over some of the tweaks in the programming with him.

“Is something wrong?” He looks at me with a furrowed brow. “I’ve got a lot of subscribers now—we’re not going to have a chunk of downtime while I’m in Europe, are we?”

“The app’s fine. Honestly, it doesn’t even need any tweaks. I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh.” He stares at the loop in his hand, then puts it down on the table before looking at me. “Are you okay? I heard about you fainting. In Dallas.”

I make a face. “On the front lawn of our old house.”

“You’re sick?”

There’s so much concern on his face that I’m certain he hasn’t heard any of the other rumors.

“I’m not sick,” I assure him as I keep my eyes fixed on his face. “I’m pregnant. You’re going to be a grandfather.”

At first, his expression is entirely blank, and I’m afraid that I’ve made a horrible mistake. That he’s been fine knowing me—a daughter who’s really more of an acquaintance. Someone he can point to and say that he has some connection with, but nobody real. Somebody he can just walk away from again if he feels the urge.

But a grandchild will be different. So small and trusting. So easily hurt.

My breath hitches in my throat. I’d been a baby when he walked away. And it’s with a sudden burst of horrible clarity that I realize the risk I’ve taken opening my heart even a little bit to this man. It’s one thing for him to walk away from me, but I don’t know that I could survive the pain if he eased his way into my child’s life, and then blithely turned his back.

“I—” I’m planning to say that I’m sorry. That I shouldn’t have presumed he would care.

That I never should have come at all.

But he cuts me off, and when he speaks, I see that his eyes are glistening. “Nikki—oh, Nikki, that’s wonderful. I can’t—” His voice breaks and he clears his throat. “I’m very, very happy.”

A wild, crazy relief cuts through me, and I realize a tear is trickling down my own cheek. I wipe it away, sniffling a little, but smiling. “Wow. We’re kind of a pair, aren’t we?”

He chuckles, then pulls me into an awkward hug. For a moment, I’m limp, and with a quick shock, I realize that this is the first time that he’s really held me like a daughter. I draw in a breath filled with hope and love, then squeeze him tightly. “Thanks,” I whisper.

“For what?”

I lift a shoulder, not really sure myself. “For coming back.”

“No,” he says. “Thank you for letting me back in.”

I sit down on one of the gray, folding chairs, feeling a little wobbly and emotional, then wipe my nose. “I thought I saw Mother yesterday.”

It feels like a complete non sequitur, but Frank seems to understand the way my mind works even better than I do, because he cocks his head, pulls a chair close to me, and says, “Do you want to let her back in, too?”

“No.”

The word is sharp and fast and firm, but even as I say it, my heart aches. Now that I’m going to be a mom, the absence of my own mother seems doubly painful.

“No,” I repeat, this time with less certainty. “But I want to know what she’s doing. She left Dallas. I think she came here. I think she’s watching me, and I don’t know why.”

He rubs the side of his mouth with his thumb, something I’ve noticed that he does when he’s about to say something he’s not sure I’ll like. I first noticed it when he asked me to change the menu configuration on the app. I didn’t mind doing it, but apparently he thought I’d be irked that he didn’t care for the way I’d laid out all the elements.

“What?” I press, when he stays silent.

“Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but maybe you imagined her. Your mother’s not exactly the type to hide in the shadows, is she?”

I hesitate, because the times I’ve seen her she’s seemed so real. But he’s right—Elizabeth Fairchild is not the kind to hide. “I don’t know,” I say. “But you might have a point. I’m not keen to think I’m hallucinating, but that’s better than having her be real,” I tilt my head from side to side. “So thanks. I think.”