didn't want for anything. That's why he had a staff of four just to take care of her. That's why he'd bought a house in the Eastover neighborhood, why he'd put her on the list to attend Charlotte Country Day School the day she was born. That's why he paid for any private lessons she wanted, why he sent her on vacations with friends to places he didn't have time to take her.
"I don't understand," he said. "When have you ever wanted something that I didn't get you?"
"I don't think you understand what she's saying," Kathryn said.
"No, I don't." Ron hadn't meant for his voice to be quite so sharp. He paused, leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath. "I'm trying, but I don't understand."
Kathryn looked to Cynthia, but the girl shook her head, unable or unwilling to explain further.
"Let me tell you what I think Cynthia is trying to say," Kathryn said. "Cynthia, stop me if I'm wrong."
Cynthia nodded.
"I think she's trying to say she feels you did all of this for her because you thought you were supposed to, that it was your idea of what she wanted. But you never asked what she wanted, never did anything just for her."
"Of course I did. Who else could I have been doing it for?" He was trying to contain his frustration, but this didn't make any sense. He couldn't understand. What in the hell was she talking about?
"For you," Cynthia said, some of the anger she'd bottled up coming out. "And for Mama. Margaret tells me all the time what Mama planned for me and all the other children she hoped to have. I know it all by heart. But you never once asked me if I wanted something different."
"Did you?"
Her anger and the energy it produced disappeared. She looked almost apologetic. "No, but you never asked me."
He could feel control slipping away, the pressure of his frustration on the verge of breaking out of his restraint.
"Are you sure I never asked you?" he asked.
She nodded.
"Not even once?"
She shook her head.
"I asked you about going to Exeter," Ron said. "You said you'd rather stay with your friends."
"And you never forgave me for it, either."
"Of course I did."
"You haven't been home once since that you haven't mentioned some connection you made through somebody you went to boarding school with. You've told me at least a dozen times you'd never have known what a brilliant tactician Ben Archer could be if you hadn't been on the debate team with him."
"Ben's a tiger. I couldn't be here right now if he wasn't in Geneva."
"That's something else. I feel like I'm forcing you to sacrifice all the work you and everybody else has done because I got pregnant."
"I'm not sacrificing all the work we've done just to be with you. But if that's what I had to do, I'd do it. There's nothing in Geneva that's as important to me as you."
He'd always known that, but he'd probably never acted like that because he'd never been forced to put the two up against each other. "You don't believe me, do you?"
She dropped her gaze, wouldn't look at him. "It's what you say."
"But it's not what I do? Is that what you're saying?"
"I think you try, but your heart isn't in it."
"What do you mean?"
"When you're away, you always call when it's a good time for you. I usually have to wake up out of a sound sleep to talk to you. When you're home, you're in the office or on the phone."
"But we go lots of places together."
She lifted her head. "And you spend the whole time talking about business. You talked about this meeting all through the homecoming football game. You called Greg on the cell phone four times. Leigh's mother asked me why you even bothered to come to the game."
"I have to make sure Greg writes down my ideas when they occur to me. If I don't, I might forget them."
"I'm sure that's good business, but it makes me feel like I'm in the way."
"You aren't."
"It feels like that."
"Is that how you'd feel?" he asked, turning to Kathryn.
"I walked out on a date just a few weeks ago who insisted upon talking on his cell phone during dinner."
"Sometimes you have no choice but to take care of business."
"He initiated the calls," Kathryn said.
Ron felt the heat of embarrassment in his face. He'd initiated the calls, too. "So you're saying when I'm with family, or out with you, I