Kathy smiled when he said 'dad' which was an unfamiliar reaction. When the word had come up before, she'd had to try to control a grimace.

What would she have been like if she had been raised by Eliot? Or, at least, this Eliot?

"I'm sorry to be such a trial of a daughter," she said. "I really am trying to do better."

But he'd been the shoulder she'd cried on from the beginning.