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Chapter Three
    I N H ONG K ONG , the temperature outside the high-rise building was a warm twenty-two degrees. Inside the luxury apartment on the twentieth floor the air was cool and the mood frosty. For the fifth time, Glenn knocked on his twelve-year-old daughter’s bedroom door.
    “Ellen, please. I’m begging you.”
    Silence.
    “Just say hello. A quick hello.”
    Silence.
    “She’s dying to meet you again.” He winced even as he said the word dying. The wrong choice. So very much the wrong choice. “Please, darling. Talk to me.”
    Ellen didn’t actually need to tell him how she was feeling and why she wouldn’t come out of her room. For the past six weeks she’d taken every opportunity she could to tell him how she felt about his new girlfriend and how she felt about his new girlfriend’s daughter. “I don’t care that you think you love her. I don’t care that her daughter is the same age as me. I don’t care if you think she’s been lonely, too. I don’t want to meet her again, or meet her stupid lonely daughter, and if you cared about me, you wouldn’t be going out with her either.” That conversation had ended with a slammed door. Another day of silence.
    He’d seen a counselor. Tried to explain the situation as succinctly as possible. “My wife—Ellen’s mother—died almost five years ago. I thought Ellen and I had a good relationship. I’d seen other women in that time, Ellen knew that, but when I met Denise, it was different. I followed all the guidelines, didn’t bring her home to meet Ellen until I knew it was serious between us.”
    “And what happened at that first meeting?”
    It had started well enough. Until Ellen noticed how affectionate Glenn and Denise were. She stood beside the photo of Anna that was center stage in the living room.
    “I don’t need a new mother,” she said to Denise, ignoring Glenn.
    Denise had glanced across at Glenn before smiling a little nervously. “I don’t want to be your mother.”
    “Good. I don’t want you living with us either.”
    “She’s still sad, still grieving,” the counselor said. “You just have to be patient.”
    Glenn had been as patient as he could. Loving. Understanding. But he’d also been lonely. Ready to meet someone new. He’d tried everything he could to ease the way with Ellen, to talk about his dates as friends, to mention casually if he was going out to dinner. She seemed fine if it was casual, if he saw anyone once or twice. But the change was immediate if he even hinted that it was more than that.
    “You’ve forgotten about Mum already? You told me she meant everything to you. If you lied about that, how do I know you won’t lie to me about everything else?”
    Was it just that she was nearing her teenage years? Would that account for the transformation from his sweet little Ellen into this outspoken, sometimes downright rude brat? Time and time again he was tempted to shout back at her. Slam doors as loudly as her, too. He’d been forced to seek advice from female colleagues who were also the parents of teenage girls. “Don’t rise to her bait. You have to stay the adult in the relationship.” Easier said than done. He’d even joined some online forums for single parents, but retreated quickly when they seemed to be thinly disguised dating sites. Finally, he’d resorted to asking his elderly mother for advice. Calling her in her luxury retirement home in Queensland (paid for by him) she’d been blunt, as always. “Chart a steady course and always tell her the truth. Teenagers can sniff out a liar a mile off. What trouble you save yourself now will only come back tenfold to haunt you.”
    Tell Ellen the truth? How could he, when he’d been lying to her since Anna died? He was already having enough trouble with his daughter. If he told the entire truth, who knew what monster he might unleash? Because what Ellen didn’t know, and