As the only one who remained clueless about the scene before him, it was Doug who finally broke the uneasy, charged silence that had settled over the three in the kitchen. Looking back and forth between Amy, whose eyes were fixed on Jack's face, and Jack, whose eyes were fixed on the paper in Amy's hand, he said, "Does anyone care to fill me in?"

They didn't answer. With what looked like a giant effort, Jack tore his gaze away from the wrinkled paper and met Amy's steady, accusatory stare. In a faltering voice, he tried to decide what to ask first. "Where—how did you—when did you—?" And then he gave up on that tack. "Baby, are you okay?"

"No," she said, a thin edge of hurt in her voice. "Not really."

Jack took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair in that distracted way he had. Then he raised the hand to his mouth and pressed his fingers against his lips thoughtfully, looking back at the paper Amy was still holding out to him.

Frustrated and confused, Doug reached for it. "May I?" he asked Amy, raising an eyebrow. Her fingers slackened to allow him to take it from her. He skimmed the letter quickly enough, and when he was done, he too turned to look at Jack, struck speechless for one of the few times in his life.

Jack looked at each of them in turn and finally said, "Amy, it's not what you think. I didn't keep this from you intentionally, okay? I was—I've been waiting for the right time."

"When would that have been?" she asked, fighting to keep her voice from rising. "Because I'm sixteen and mature for my age. Everyone says so. You didn't think I could handle something like this? You didn't think I'd understand the importance of it, or the responsibility that comes along with it? That's funny, Dad, because the only thing I don't understand is why you felt the need to hide something this huge from me."

Jack closed his eyes. "That wasn't what I was doing."

"Oh really? You stuck this letter from my mother in the very back of your file cabinet for safekeeping, right, and you were going to give it to me tomorrow, and, irony of ironies, I happened to find it first. Is that what you're going to tell me?"

Doug stepped toward Amy and put his strong hands on her shoulders, squeezing gently. "Let's just calm down, all right? Let's try to sort this out without doing any more damage."

Amy shook herself free and returned her hard gaze to Jack. "How could you do this to me?" she asked. "You've always told me you wanted me to know everything about my family that there is to know. I have relatives out there somewhere, Dad. I have a biological father, and grandparents that I've never met, and you've kept them from me. How could you do that?"

"Amy…" Doug said weakly.

"Please, just stop for a second. Hear me out," Jack said. "I understand that you're angry and hurt right now, and I'm sorry. But you have to believe that I was doing what I felt—what I feel—is right for you by waiting until I was sure you could deal with this. And no, I don't think you're ready to take this on yet, Amy. I don't think you realize how badly you could get hurt here. I—you're just not ready."

"No, Dad, it's you who's not ready!" she spat. "It's you who you're afraid will end up getting hurt. But that's not fair. It's not fair for you to withhold the other side of my family from me just because you're scared of losing me to them."

"That's not it," he said, but his tone was weary. "I hope you think better of me than that."

"I did," she said coldly.

"Enough," Doug intervened, his tone gentle but firm. "Amy, you're getting close to that line, and if you keep going you're going to say things you don't mean and can't take back."

She turned her glistening eyes to Doug. He reached out with his thumb and wiped a tear off her cheek before it fell. She was silent for a few moments, and then she nodded. "I'm going to take a walk."

"Want some company?" Doug asked her softly. She shook her head, but he followed her anyway, glancing back over his shoulder at Jack as they left the kitchen. He was staring at the floor intently, his hands closed into fists so tight that his knuckles were white. Doug resisted the urge to go to him and pull him into his arms. He looked so lost, so vulnerable. But that would have to wait, because right now Amy needed him more, whether or not she knew it. He followed her out the back door and into the calm night.

She turned to face him when they were on the porch. "I'll be okay, Dougie," she said. "I really just want to be alone."

"I know you do," he said. "But just give me a second here."

She sighed but waited for him to go on.

"You know how much he loves you, right?"

She hesitated, then nodded.

"And you know that he would never do anything to hurt you. He'd rather endure a lifetime of torture than cause you a moment's pain. You know that too, right?"

She shrugged. "I guess."

"But sometimes we misjudge situations because we're trying to avoid hurting the people we love, and it backfires on us. That's what happened here, Aim. Your dad kept that letter from you, not to hurt you, not because he wanted to keep you all to himself, but because he still can't look at this young woman you've become and not see his blonde-haired baby girl. I have trouble with that too, you know. You're still my princess, I don't care if you are sixteen and mature for your age," he said, teasingly emphasizing her words.

"You have to let me grow up sometime," she said. "I haven't been that baby girl in a long time."

"I know. We both know that. But give us a break, Aim. We've gotten accustomed to our job as your protectors, and it's a hard habit to shake off." He smiled at her, tilting her chin up so that she would look at him. "Don't hurt him for the wrong reasons," he said. "He deserves better than that."

After a moment's hesitation, she nodded. "Now can I go?" she asked.

He released her in response, and watched as she drifted away into the shadows, toward the pier where she always seemed to end up when she had some serious thinking to do.

"She's right, you know," Jack said in a flat voice when Doug returned to the kitchen.

"About what?" he asked, but he already had a pretty good idea.

"Part of the reason I haven't given her that letter yet is that I'm scared to death of what will happen if she finds him. And if he wants her in his life. I mean, how selfish is that?" He laughed dryly. "The test of being a good parent is putting your kid's needs above your own. I think someone should revoke my dad license."

"You're being too hard on yourself, Jack," Doug said firmly. "You would move heaven and earth for that girl, and everyone knows it. Don't you dare beat yourself up because you're human."

"You know, I haven't even read that letter since she handed it to me in that godawful hospital room. The last argument I had with Jen was over that damn letter. I told her she was just paving the way for that asshole, the waste of space who was never worthy of breathing the same air as Jen, to hurt Amy too. She granted him that power by writing the letter, by offering Amy the option of giving him the privilege of knowing her. She was so determined, though." He smiled, a bittersweet twitch of the lips. "You really couldn't argue with Jen when she'd made up her mind about something." After a pause, he went on in a more normal tone. "I've thought about giving it to her, more than once. When she was going through that bad time last year, I thought about it. But I kept telling myself she wasn't ready. She's still a kid. She's still our kid. The thought of him laying eyes on her, daring to speak to her, to act like he deserves that, it just makes me sick!" His eyes blazed.

Doug picked up the crumpled paper off the counter, moved closer to Jack, and held it toward him. "I think it's time you read it," he said. "Read it from Amy's eyes. It might help you come to terms with this. And no matter what happens next, we're both going to have to come to terms with it, because now the ball's in Amy's court. Jen—your best friend, Amy's mother—put it there a long time ago."

Jack reluctantly took the letter and stared contemplatively at the still-familiar handwriting of his long-lost best friend. "I'm not sure I want to," he said. "But I will."

Doug nodded and reached out to squeeze Jack's hand, which was clammy and trembling. "I'll be upstairs if you need me." He turned and walked out of the kitchen, leaving Jack standing there with tears in his eyes.

As soon as Doug's footsteps had receded, Jack boosted himself up on the counter with his legs dangling and began to read. It hurt at first. He could picture Jen as vividly as if she had appeared before him in the harsh overhead lights of the kitchen: sitting propped up by pillows in a terribly sanitary white room, clinging to that unsinkable dry wit of hers and the raw honesty of her love for her daughter. It hadn't been easy for her to write this letter, as she had made her brave way toward death, and it wasn't easy for him to read it.

By the time he finished, Jen's ghost had prevailed, and he had lost his battle against the tears.