me angry and you miserable."
"Don't say that."
"Why not? It's true."
"Neither of you should be trying to make the other angry," Ron said. "I'd hoped you'd use this opportunity to come to an understanding of what's important to each of you."
"And you've made that so easy, telling Kerry you'd bankroll him."
"I asked him," Kerry said, "but he said you'd want me to go into business with you."
"He's giving you ideas, making you feel too big for your britches."
Kerry mumbled a couple of oaths under his breath. "I'm going to sit with Lisette. There's no point in staying here. You won't listen to anybody but yourself."
"Kerry, come back here," his father shouted. "If you don't, you can find some other place else to live."
"Shamus!" his wife exclaimed.
Kerry turned around. His expression had lost the anger of a moment ago. He looked tired. "I already asked Uncle Mike. He said I could stay with him until you came to your senses."
"You call him back right this minute," Mrs. O'Grady said to her husband. "If you don't, you can live in that house by yourself." When Shamus hesitated, she turned and walked off after her son.
"See what you've done!" Shamus said, turning to Ron. "You with your big promises."
"Nobody could have done anything if you hadn't driven Kerry away first."
"I'm not driving him away, you daft fool. I'm trying to save him."
"By denying him what he wants? Would you have listened to your father if he'd told you you couldn't become a contractor?"
"He did tell me," Shamus said, his voice slightly less belligerent, "but I knew it was my way out of poverty."
"Then why should you expect your son to be any different?"
"Because I've done all of this for him. He won't have to fight his way up the way I did."
"I said something very much like that a few days ago. I didn't understand when my daughter didn't instantly throw her arms around my neck and thank me."
"What did she do?" Shamus asked.
"Pretty much what Kerry just did. Those were my goals, my reasons - not hers. I never asked her what her goals were. I still don't know. She doesn't trust me enough to tell me."
Shamus was quiet a moment. "Do you think she'll tell you?"
"I don't know. I didn't exactly ignore her, but I saw what I wanted to see, and ignored all the warnings along the way. Now I find myself estranged from my daughter and my professional career in danger of collapsing. It strikes me you're in pretty much the same situation."
Shamus was quiet for another moment. "What are you going to do?"
"First I have to decide what is more important. Even if I manage to save both, everything I do in the future has to be guided by that decision, or I'll find myself in the same predicament before long."
"You trying to tell me something?"
"You've got to decide which is more important to you, your pride or your family. I think your wife and son have already made up their minds." Mrs. O'Grady had joined her son. "I've got to circulate. Can't have my guests saying the host didn't make an effort to speak to everyone. Bad manners."
"Like you care."
"I'm discovering I care for quite a number of unexpected things."
Like Kathryn Roper. He saw her talking to Julia Mingenmeer's parents while Julia stood by looking uncomfortable. He wondered all over again what could have induced a young woman with Kathryn's advantages to devote so much of her time and resources to these girls. He now knew it was Kathryn's sister's pregnancy, rather than her own, that was the reason Kathryn established her shelter, but there was something else that bothered Kathryn, something that caused her to divert all her maternal feelings to the daughters of other women. Ron was determined to find out what it was. Kathryn deserved the chance to have her own family.
Ron wanted more family. He hadn't known it until he'd started talking to Kerry and the families of the girls. He and Erin - both only children - had wanted at least three children. Maybe more.
He wondered how Kathryn felt about large families.
Such thoughts were premature, but he already knew he wanted her to be part of his life after he and Cynthia were back home. He hadn't dated much since Erin's death. People constantly offered to fix him up with a perfect woman, but Ron preferred working late - even all weekend - to blind dates.
But his feelings for Kathryn had been different