Heather’s words echoed in his head, over and over in a deafening refrain.I thought it was time you met your daughter.Your daughter.Your daughter…At home, he tried to shut off the sound, but it was in vain. The words could even be heard over the music blasting through his small apartment. Not even work, which he’d become amazingly adept at using to block out emotional turmoil, helped this time the way it had when Heather had walked out on him in New York. The words on the papers he’d brought home blurred. The computer screen seemed far too bright, the blinking cursor an irritant, as if he was trying to view it with a blinding migraine.She needs her daddy…she needs to know there’s somebody in her life besides me she can count on.Count on.Count on…How could Heather not know that he was the last person in the world that little girl could count on? True, he had never told her about the tragedy in his past, couldn’t talk about it, in fact, but surely she should have seen how uneasy he was around the kids in the casts of the shows they’d done together.
