Not the loss of Sarah, who was a fiction, but the loss of the year he had spent believing in her, the tenderness he had wasted, the trust he had given to a con.

But whatever grief Marcus carried for himself, he set it firmly to one side, because it was his and not Lily’s, and his daughter needed a father whose attention was entirely on her healing and not at all on his own wounds.

He would process his own losses privately, in his own time.

In front of his daughter, and in the building of her new and safe and ordinary life, there was room for one thing only: her.

Chapter 20 — I Knew You Would Come Back