“She did. I won’t say I’m not angry with her. It was very wrong. But she’s sorry, Jordan. She was crying her eyes out upstairs, saying it over and over.” His voice was thick. “People have reasons to lie, to hide things. Since the war I see refugees in my shop every week, selling their last antique brooch or bit of silver—men with names they’ve obviously changed, women holding children who don’t look anything like them, people making excuses for their scars or their accents. Every week I see people who were ashamed of what they did in the war, or what their friends did. War makes millions of people like that. Yes, she was wrong to lie. But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand why she did it. That I don’t still love her.”
It wasn’t like her dad to speak so frankly, so emotionally. He’s hurting, Jordan thought. He’s hurting so much. “So you believe her?”
He spread his hands, helpless. “What’s more likely, missy? That she has a father and a name she’s too ashamed to claim, and a child who isn’t hers? Or that she’s some kind of Nazi schemer out of a Nuremberg headline?”
“I never said that!”
“You said she was dangerous.” He spoke gently. “You said she could be anything, a murderer. You say she lied to cover up something terrible; she says she lied to cover up something she was ashamed of. Now, we’ve lived with her for months. We know her. She’s never been anything but good to you, and to me she’s been everything I could possibly . . .” He paused, swallowing. “We know her, Jordan. So I ask you: Which explanation is more likely? That she’s dangerous? Or just ashamed?”
Jordan’s eyes spilled over then. She stood with tears streaming down her face, not even trying not to sob. Her father put an arm around her shoulders, pulled her against his side. He still sounded defeated. “I don’t blame you for wanting answers. You were right to ask. I just wish you’d—come to Anna about it differently. Willing to listen, as well as question.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Jordan managed to say. “I was just—following what I saw.” And you did see something, she thought, but so what? Her dad was right; she’d looked immediately for the worst explanation possible.
Jordan and her wild imagination. Where had it gotten her? Here, watching her father struggle so painfully with his disappointment.
“Maybe I should have sent you to college, after all,” he said. “Anna was all for it. She said it would help you grow up, get your head out of the clouds. But I was hoping so much that you’d want to take the shop over from me. You and Garrett both, maybe. It was only a curio junk-room when I took it over from your grandfather, I wanted to make it into something special for you. A real future . . .”
His voice trailed off, but not before Jordan heard the naked hurt. The note in his voice of why isn’t it good enough, what I made for you? She felt like she’d been kicked in the stomach.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” he said again, and she could see he was close to tears. Her rock-solid father, who had never shed a tear before Jordan in his whole life.
“I’m the one who needs to fix it.” She let her head drop on his shoulder. “I’ll—I’ll apologize to Anna when she wakes up. I’ll make it right with her, I promise.”
“She’ll need to make it right with you too. She needs to be more forthcoming with you, and she and I will talk about that.” He kissed the top of Jordan’s head. “You’re my girl, and you were looking out for your old dad. I know that.” He turned away, toward the stairs. He wanted to hide the tears in his eyes, Jordan knew. He couldn’t bear for her to see that. “I should put Ruth to bed.”
As he tramped up the stairs, Jordan could see the first touches of gray in his hair.
GARRETT ANSWERED JORDAN’S KNOCK, framed by the doorway. Jordan’s eye automatically composed the shot, but she had no camera, and anyway, his smile fell away when he saw her face. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything.” Jordan chafed her cold hands together; she’d run out of the darkroom straight into a cab, no coat or gloves. “I just needed to get away from home for a little