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here."
    "How come you didn't tell me you had called him? I mean, it seems like you would have mentioned it."
    "Well, I didn't actually call him. I, uh, called NASA and asked if I could use his face in my drawings. I guess they wanted to check me out before granting permission and sent him personally I was as surprised as you when he showed up here."
    She'd never lied to David in his life … unless one counted the hundreds of times he'd asked who his father was. Those had been lies of omission, kind lies meant to protect, not absolute fabrications like the whopper she'd just told.
    "Oh. Well, it was great meeting him. Did you think he was cool?" he asked eagerly.
    "Very cool."
    "I thought he might be stuck-up, but he was just like a real person."
    "He is a real person."
    "Yeah, but you know what I mean."
    "Yes, I know."
    "Do you think he'll remember me, that he'll ever come back?"
    Marnie went to him and smoothed back the hair that had fallen over his brow, having to stretch her arm up to reach it. She hated reminders like that of how much he'd grown.
    The time had gone by so fast. So fast.
    "I doubt we'll ever see him again, David" she said kindly.
    Her thoughts filtered back to that hostile drive from the coffee shop to her house, during which nothing had been said. She'd bade Law a curt good-bye at the curb. He hadn't tarried but had angrily peeled out, furious over the dressing-down she'd given him. She didn't regret a single word of it. He'd deserved it for intimating that she was a liar and blackmailer.
    "I wouldn't count on ever seeing him again. He's awfully busy and meets a lot of people."
    "I know," David said, "but I think he liked me. Wouldn't it be cool if we could, you know, be friends with him?"
    Her throat swelled almost shut, but she forced a smile and gave him a long hug. "You'd better get to bed. You need the rest. The big game is only a few days away."
    "Noooo problem." As he normally did whenever he exited a room, he jumped up to swat the ceiling, then dashed out.
    Marnie listened to his footsteps thudding on the hollow stairs of the old house as he took them two at a time. Instead of smiling fondly as she usually did, she blotted tears from her eyes.
    Letters. Anonymous letters. From the day Sharon had told her that she was pregnant with Law Kincaid's baby Marnie had fantasized about how the child might draw him back into her life. In her fantasies it was always for some catastrophic reason like David needing a kidney transplant, or a blood transfusion, never anything as innocuous as a letter.
    But Law had entered her life again. And he was larger than life, more heart-stoppingly handsome. The azure blue of his eyes hadn't dimmed, but if anything had become more vivid. His confident smile, the loose-limbed, cocky gait of a jet fighter pilot, the way sunlight shone on his hair, had all been achingly familiar because those images had been locked inside Marnie's heart for seventeen years.
    Those images hadn't been dulled by the grief she had suffered since: the loss of her sister and father, and her mother's declining health. Those images of Law had sustained her through her struggle to get a college degree, work at a job, and take care of David all at the same time. Those images had spelled doom for any love relationships with real potential.
    The only man she had ever loved now held sway over her life again. For the second time her future rested in his hands. Only now he was aware of it.
    She was partially to blame for the anxiety she was experiencing. She could have laughed off the letters' allegations, categorically denied them, and told Law that someone was playing a practical joke on him, no doubt a freeloader who had seen David and noticed the resemblance.
    But Marnie's moral code wouldn't have allowed her to take the easy way out. When asked, her conscience had given her no alternative but to tell Law the truth.
    Unfortunately how Law responded to that truth could seriously change their lives. If