Abby managed two hours sleep. She thought about trying for another half, but she wanted breakfast with Jenny before she left for school.
Jenny was at the table along with Abby’s mother when she dragged herself into the kitchen. As always, she looked at her daughter with awe, finding it hard to believe she had produced this exotic creature. Now, after seeing Logan again, it was clear exactly where Jenny got her looks—she was the image of her father, from her shoulder length glossy black hair to her silver eyes rimmed with black, her strong nose, and her wide mouth. Abby had never noticed the resemblance before. Or maybe it was truer to say she’d avoided the comparison, and it hadn’t been hard as the years passed and there was nothing to remind her. Now it was like a slap in the face.
And Jenny was going to be tall. At ten she was already taller than most of her class, with a lanky frame she would eventually grow into. No, there was no doubt who her father was—she was a mini Logan minus the tattoos and, hopefully, the badass attitude.
“Morning,” Abby mumbled and dropped into a chair.
Her mother shoved a mug of coffee in front of her, and she breathed in the scent.
“You got in late,” her mum said. “I thought you finished at eleven.”
“I had to see someone. We got to…talking and…” She shrugged. She couldn’t exactly get into details, not with Jenny sitting opposite. Her mum gave her a weird look, maybe taking in the red rash of stubble burn along her collarbone and throat. She hugged her robe tighter around her. More stubble burn decorated her inner thighs—luckily her mum couldn’t see that, or the faint bruises on her breasts. Logan hadn’t been rough, but he hadn’t been gentle either.
How had she matched up to his fantasies?
She rested her head on her hand and let the conversation wash over her; they were discussing some project Jenny was doing at school.
Finally, Jenny turned to her. “I’ll be late home tonight.” She got to her feet and picked up her school bag. “Sara’s dad is taking us skating.” She placed an inordinate emphasis on the word “dad,” and Abby winced.
Jenny came around the table, gave her a peck on the cheek, though she suspected there was more to come.
“Maybe if my dad knew about me, he could take us skating one day,” Jenny said.
A picture flashed in her mind, Logan shepherding an unruly bunch of ten-year-olds around the local roller-skating rink. Somehow the image wouldn’t gel. Not for the first time, she wondered if she’d done the right thing going to the club, seeking him out. After the way he’d left the day he’d turned up on her doorstep, she was pretty sure Logan wouldn’t have looked her up again, however powerful his epiphany.
“Maybe,” she said.
Jenny beamed as though she’d gotten a result, then a car beeped outside and she ran out to meet her lift to school. A few of the local mothers took it in turns, though Abby’s mother took hers, as it was hard to work around her shift times. She didn’t know how she would have managed without her mum’s help. For a time, when she’d first found out she was pregnant, it had looked like she would have to try. Her father had refused any help unless she had an abortion, and that had never been an option.
“Well, she’s tenacious, if nothing else,” her mum said. “So, are you going to tell her?”
“I think so.”
So far she’d kept the information vague with Jenny. It had been easier when she was younger. She’d accepted anything Abby told her, which was that she’d lost touch with her father, and he didn’t know about her. It seemed for the best, open ended, so later she could tell her…something else. Maybe the truth. But over the last year, Jenny had become fixated on the idea of her father, wanting to know everything, and she was getting harder and harder to put off with vague responses. Abby had been torn between telling the truth and telling a downright lie. She hated lies, but she wanted to do what was best for her daughter, and maybe a man like Logan McCabe was a worse option than no father at all.
She’d still been undecided when he’d turned up on her doorstep. And she hadn’t been totally convinced when she went to the club, or when she had climbed into his car last night. But deep down, she knew it was the right thing to do.
“Definitely,” she said. “I’ll go see him today.” Somewhere public, or maybe she’d go to the nightclub during her lunch hour. Stay out of the back office.
“You want to talk about it?” her mother asked. “You never did tell us anything about him.”
“I didn’t know anything about him. He was a one-night stand. My only ever one-night stand,” she added. This was her mother after all.
“And you never tried to tell him back then?”
“I did. When I found out, I went back to where I’d met him. I was going to tell him. He wasn’t there. He was in prison.”