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planning to stay at the Inn at Willow Lake. He wished Olivia and Connor well, of course, but being regarded as a perfect couple had its drawbacks—like trying to live up to an image that existed in other people’s minds. He and Sophie had been called the perfect couple, too, despite the rushed circumstances of their marriage.
    He hoped Olivia would have better luck than he had.
    Daisy shifted uncomfortably in her chair, folding her arms across her stomach. “So I wanted to ask you something, Dad.”
    “Sure, anything.” But of course, inwardly, he braced himself, wondering, Now what?
    “Classes start in a few weeks, and I thought…” Her voice trailed off and she got up, rubbing the small of her back. She turned, and the evening light from the window crisply outlined the incongruous curve of her belly.
    And with that movement, Greg saw his daughter as though through a fragmented glass. The illusion that she was still his little girl fell to pieces. Even now that he’d had months to get used to the idea, the sight of her extremely pregnant silhouette still sometimes shocked him. She was a bundle of contradictions. The untimely ripeness of her form looked wrong with her still-soft, vaguely childlike features. She had painted her nails a vivid red-black and wore ripped jeans and a top that draped over the arc of her belly. She was a little girl, teenager and grown woman all in one, and she regarded him with a need and trust Greg wasn’t sure he deserved. She was his kid. And at thirty-eight, he hardly felt ready to be a grandfather.
    Cut it out, he warned himself. He simply didn’t have a choice in the matter. Regrets and what-ifs were not an option, not at this point. “You thought what?” he prompted.
    “Could you be my coach?” she asked. “For the childbirth classes, you know, and for the hospital.”
    Her coach? The guy who stands by her in the delivery room? No, thought Greg, fighting a sick premonition. No way. Not in a million years would he be that guy, witnessing his child having a child of her own.
    “My doctor said it should be somebody I trust and feel safe with.” She paused, bit her lip, and her expression was one he’d seen a thousand times through the years. “That’s you, right?” she said.
    “But I’m…a guy,” he said lamely. A scared, freaking-out guy who didn’t trust himself to stay conscious in the delivery room or come through in an emergency. A guy who would rather have a root canal than see his daughter give birth. That seemed wrong on so many levels, he didn’t know where to begin.
    “What about your mother?” he asked, his mouth working ahead of his brain, as usual.
    Daisy’s expression froze, and although she would not appreciate knowing it, she looked just like Sophie. They both had that regal, withering ice-queen manner, able to belittle or intimidate with a razor-sharp glance.
    “What about her?” Daisy asked. “The classes go on for six weeks. You think she’s going to put her life on hold and camp out in Avalon for six weeks?”
    Sophie lived in The Hague, where she was a lawyer at the International Criminal Court. She came back to the States once a month to see the kids. After the divorce, Sophie had insisted that Daisy and Max live with her. Both kids, traumatized by the breakup of their family, had returned after just a couple of weeks, demanding to stay with Greg. He didn’t fool himself into thinking he was the preferred parent. It was just that the life he offered here in the States was a better fit for his two lost, hurting kids. So now Sophie had to make do with the visits, with phone calls and e-mail. The situation was sad and awkward, and Greg couldn’t tell if the kids had forgiven her or not. He figured his job was to stay neutral on the issue.
    Daisy made a lofty gesture around the house. “Will Mom live with us? Yeah, she’d love that.”
    “I own a hotel,” Greg pointed out. “We could put her in the Guinevere suite.” Like many of