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the first, then another filled with all the things I’d wanted to say but didn’t. For the next hour I went over the call in my mind, my embarrassment greater each time. When Evan finally called last night, I felt so bad for going against his advice, I couldn’t even tell him. He’d checked out the links and agreed that Julia Laroche did look a lot like Karen Christianson, but he still wasn’t convinced the Campsite Killer was my father.
    I said, “So what should I do?”
    “Only two things you can do—tell the cops and they’ll look into it, or just let it ride.”
    “If I tell the police they’ll probably do a DNA test and I’m sure it would come back positive. What if the results got out? He could find me. I don’t want anyone to know about this.” I took a deep breath. “Does it change how you feel about me, knowing who my real father is?” I hated myself for asking, hated how weak it made me feel.
    “Depends. Are you going to get him to knock me off?”
    “Evan!”
    His voice was serious when he said, “Of course it doesn’t change anything. If he is your father, then it’s scary he’s still out there, but we’ll get through it.”
    I let out my breath, pulling his words over me like a soothing blanket.
    Evan said, “But if you’re not going to talk to the police, then you have to just accept it, forget it, and move on.”
    If only it was that easy.
    *   *   *

    Evan also doesn’t think I should tell anyone other than you—he’s just as afraid as I am that it will get out and all hell will break loose. I thought about telling Lauren, but she likes things light and fluffy—she doesn’t even watch the news. How can I tell her about this? I’m scared to read anything more about him myself.
    When I first started seeing you after I pushed Derek—the first man I allowed myself to care about after Jason died—down those stairs, I was afraid I might have some horrible genetic predisposition, but you suggested I might be looking for something or someone to blame, so I didn’t have to take responsibility for my own actions. It made sense at the time. I wasn’t proud of what I did, even if the cheating bastard wasn’t really hurt. But it scared me.
    I can still hear the words coming out of Derek’s mouth, still feel the pain of them: “You knew I wasn’t over her when we met.” And he was right. I did know, but it didn’t stop me from going after him. Did I tell you how we met? It was at a party when Ally was a few months old—I hated leaving her, but Lauren forced me to go. Derek was smart and funny, but that’s not what attracted me. The minute he said, “I’m not ready for anything serious right now. I just broke up with a girl,” I was hooked. That was my catnip in every relationship: unavailable with a high chance of breaking my heart. It wasn’t until the brutal ending of that one that I finally realized I owed it to myself—and my daughter—to get some help.
    I wish I could say it ended there, but as you know, I bounced from bad relationship to bad relationship for the next few years. I guess that’s why I gave Evan such a hard time when we first started dating. You probably don’t remember the story because I stopped seeing you not long after I met him, but he sent me a message through Facebook. Thinking a man as good-looking as him who also owned a fishing lodge had to be a player, I brushed him off. But he kept sending little How was your day? notes, asking about my work and my daughter, commenting on my status updates. Because I wasn’t viewing him as a potential boyfriend, I’d tell him about my problems, my fears, my jaded view of men and relationships, anything that was on my mind.
    One night we talked on MSN until three in the morning, drinking wine, getting half blitzed in our own homes. The next day he sent me a link to his favorite love song—Colin James’s “These Arms of Mine”—which I must have played ten times in a row.
    After a month of talking