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whispered to her every minute of every day, telling her that people didn’t like her, that they looked down on her, that she wasn’t good enough.
    But the worst of what the demon whispered was that her husband was cheating on her.
    And though it was untrue—Keith had never betrayed her, had never even contemplated doing so—Diana had believed the demon within her. She had begun questioning his every move. When he wasn’t with her, she sat alone at home, imagining him in the arms of another woman. Eventually she’d come to the conclusion that a baby was the answer to their problems, and Keith had finally agreed with her. It had occurred to him that Diana’s jealousy might be rooted in her deep-seated conviction that Keith didn’t truly need her. A baby might change that, giving Diana both the self-esteem of being a mother and a new focus for her energies.
    And so they had conceived Cassie.
    But Diana’s jealousy had only worsened, until finally, unable to deal with it any longer, Keith had left.
    Diana had never forgiven him. When the divorce had finally come, he’d given up his rights to partial custody of Cassie rather than subject the child to what Diana swore would be an unending fight through the courts. As soon as she’d won, Diana had taken Cassie to California.
    Each year Keith had gone by himself to Los Angeles for a week, checked into a hotel, and spent as much time with his daughter as Diana would allow.
    But on that last trip Cassie had barely spoken to him, and toward the end of the week Keith had finally discovered that Diana had convinced the child, too, that the loss of her stepfather was her father’s fault.
    One week a year, Keith had decided, was not enough to repair the sundered relationship. The following year, when Diana had told him that Cassie didn’t want to see him, he and Rosemary had decided it would be better for Cassie, if not for Keith, to stay out of the situation entirely.
    Then, four days ago, Diana had gone out after work for dinner with some friends, but never made it home.
    It had been three o’clock in the morning when Rosemary had sleepily answered the phone, to be told her husband’s first wife was dead.
    Cassie, not knowing what else to do, had given the police her father’s phone number, but Rosemary had learned the next day that Cassie had also warned them not to be surprised if Keith hung up on them. Her exact words were, “He hung up on my mom and me a long time ago.” When Rosemary had repeated them to Keith, he’d winced with a pain that was almost physical.
    Had it been any other time, Keith would have been on a plane to Los Angeles immediately, but when Rosemary was finally able to reach him, he was two days out of False Harbor, with no one else on the boat who was capable of skippering it alone. And so, through a series of tense radiotelephone calls, arrangements had been made for Cassie to fly to Boston, where he would meet her and bring her to False Harbor to live with him and his second family.
    As for Jennifer’s question, he had no simple answer for it.
    As far as he knew, no, Cassie did not like him.
    On the other hand, she hadn’t seen him for five years, and hadn’t lived with him since she was two.
    But he was still her father. He still loved her, and now that she needed him, he would be there.
    “She’ll like me,” he finally told Jennifer. “She’ll like us all.”
    Then, after kissing his younger daughter and giving his wife a hug, he left the house and hurried out to the car. Five minutes later he was out of False Harbor and on the highway to Boston.
    Cassie felt a gentle tap on her shoulder, and glanced up from the book in her lap to see a stewardess leaning over the two vacant seats between her and the aisle. She reached up and pulled one earphone of her Walkman away from her head.
    “Your seat belt,” the stewardess said, pointing to the sign that glowed on the bulkhead three rows ahead. “We’re making our final approach. We’ll