“Gabriella?” he said in a single breath, sounding extremely surprised. But his voice was so precisely as she remembered it that all she could think of was the vision she still had of him as a child, when, to her, he looked like Prince Charming.

“Daddy?” She felt nine years old again, or much, much younger.

“Where are you?” He sounded worried.

“Here in New York. I just got your number for the first time in all these years. I thought you were in Boston.

“I moved back thirteen years ago,” he said matter-of-factly, and she couldn't even begin to imagine what he was feeling. Probably the same things that she was. It was inconceivable to her that he wouldn't.

“Mommy left me in a convent,” she blurted out, still feeling like a child, and wanting to explain to him where she'd been, while he'd been missing.

“I know,” he said, sounding very quiet. “She told me. She wrote me a letter from San Francisco.”

“When?” Gabriella was confused now. He'd known? Why hadn't he called or come to see her? What could possibly have kept him from calling?

“She wrote to me right after she got there. I never heard from her again. But she wanted to let me know where she'd left you. I believe she remarried,” he said calmly.

“You've known for thirteen years?” Gabriella sounded puzzled, and his response didn't give her the answer she wanted.

“Lives move on, Gabriella. Things change. People change. That was a hard time for me,” he said, as though expecting her to understand that. But it had been harder still for his daughter. Harder than he knew, or cared, or wanted to consider.

“When can I see you?” she asked bluntly.

“I…” He hadn't expected her to ask that, and wondered if she wanted money from him. His career hadn't been brilliant, but moderately successful, in investment banking. “Are you sure that's a good idea?” He sounded uncertain.

“I'd like that very much,” she said, feeling very nervous. He hadn't sounded as excited to hear from her as she'd hoped he would. But fourteen years was a long time not to see someone, and she hadn't warned him she'd be calling. She wondered if she should have just walked into his office and surprised him. “Could I come today?” She still had some of the exuberance of her childhood, and hearing him made her feel the same age she had been when she last saw him. It was hard to remember suddenly that she was a grown-up.

Again, he hesitated, and at his end, he was looking pained. He had no idea what to say to her. And then finally, she got what she wanted from him. “Why don't you come and see me in the office this afternoon?” He wanted to get it over with. It was going to be painful for both of them. There was no point postponing it any longer. “Three o'clock?”

“I'll be there.” She was beaming as she set the phone down.

She was a nervous wreck all afternoon, thinking about him, wondering how he would look, what he would say, how he would explain all that had happened. She needed to ask him. She knew it was her mothers fault, but she wanted to hear from him now why it had happened, and why he had let it.

She put on her best navy blue linen suit, which she wore to work sometimes, and treated herself to a taxi to go to Park Avenue and Fifty-third to his office. It was a distinguished-looking office building, and when she got upstairs, an impressive-looking office. He worked for a small firm, with an excellent reputation.

His secretary said he was expecting her, and at exactly 3:01, Gabriella was led down a long hall to a corner office, grinning broadly. She was so happy to see him she could hardly stand it, and as nervous as she was, she knew that her terrors would be dispelled the moment she saw him.

The door was opened very deliberately by the secretary, who then stood aside as Gabriella stepped into a room with a view, and standing there, behind the desk, she saw him. At first she thought he had hardly changed, he was as handsome as ever, and when she looked more carefully, she saw that there were a few lines in his face, and gray in his hair now. She could calculate easily that he had just turned fifty.

“Hello, Gabriella,” he said, watching her intently, surprised by how beautiful she was, and how graceful. She looked nothing like her mother though, but much more like him. She had his blond good looks, and his eyes were exactly the same color hers were. And as he looked at her, he made no move to come toward her. “Sit down,” he said uneasily, pointing to a chair on the other side of his desk. She was desperate to come around the desk and hug him, and kiss him and touch him, but the surroundings seemed suddenly very daunting. She sat down in the chair then, and assumed he would come around to kiss her later, after they had caught up with each other and he knew her a little better.

She saw that there were photographs of several children on the desk, four of them, all in silver frames, two girls about her age, or perhaps a little older, and two boys who were much younger, and were obviously still children. The photographs looked recent. And there was a large photograph of a woman in a red dress, she looked a little stern, and not terribly happy. And Gabriella noticed immediately that there were no photographs of her from her childhood, but that was understandable, from what she could remember, there had been none.

“How have you been?” he asked formally, looking slightly pained, and she imagined that he must have felt guilty. He had left them, after all. It had to have been hard for him, or at least she imagined it was, and then she couldn't resist asking him a question,

“Are those your children, Daddy?” He nodded in answer.

“The two girls are Barbara's, the boys are our sons. Jeffrey and Winston. They're twelve and nine now.” And then he looked at her, anxious to get it over with, and get to the point of her visit. “Why have you come to see me?”

“I wanted to find you. I never knew you were here in New York.” He had been so close by, with a family, leading his life entirely without her. Without further explanation, that was painful.

“Barbara didn't like Boston,” he said, as though that explained it. But in fact, for Gabbie, it explained nothing.

“If you knew I was there, why didn't you come to see me at the convent?” As she asked him the question, she saw a look that she remembered from her childhood, a helpless, cornered look that said he wasn't equal to the situation. He had worn the same look, watching her being beaten, from the doorway.

“What was the point of seeing you?” he asked painfully. “We all had such terrible memories of my marriage to your mother. I'm sure that you do too. I thought it was better if we all closed the door on it and tried to forget it.” But how could he forget his daughter? “She was a very sick woman.” And then he added something that truly shocked her. “I always thought she would kill you,” he said in a choked voice, and before she could stop herself, Gabbie asked him one of the questions that had waited her entire lifetime for an answer.

“Why didn't you stop her?” She held her breath as she listened. It was important for her to know that.

“I couldn't have stopped her. How could I?” Force, threats, removal, divorce, the police, there had been a lot of options. “What could I do? If I criticized her for what she did to you, she was worse to both of us, to you particularly. All I could do was leave, and start a new life somewhere else. It was the only answer for me.” And what about me, she wanted to scream at him. What new life did I have? “I thought you were better off with the Sisters. And your mother would never have let me take you.”

“Did you ever ask her, after she left me there?” She wanted to know it all. These were the answers she needed from him. They were the key to her life now.

“No, I didn't,” he said honestly. “Barbara would have objected to it. You were part of another life, Gabriella. You didn't belong with us.” And then he delivered the final blow. “You still don't. Our lives have gone separate ways for years, it's too late to recapture it now. And if Barbara knew I was seeing you today, she'd be furious with me. She'd feel it was a betrayal of our children.”

Gabriella was horrified at what he was saying. He didn't want her, never had, and had simply walked away and left her to her own devices.

“But what about her daughters? Didn't they live with you?”

“Of course, but that was different.”

“What was different about it?”

“They're her children. All you were to me then was a bad memory, a relic of a nightmare I wanted to walk away from. I couldn't bring you with me. Just as I can't now. Gabriella, our lives have been separate for years. We no longer belong to each other.” But he had two sons and two stepchildren, and a wife. She had no one.

“How can you say something like that?” There were tears in her eyes, but she refused to allow them to overwhelm her.

“Because it's true. For both of us. Every time you saw me you'd remember the pain we inflicted on you, the times I was unable to help you. In time, you'd hate me for it.” She was already beginning to. He was none of the things she had dreamed about. He had been helpless then, and he still was. He didn't have the courage to be her father.

“How could you not call me for all these years?” she asked now, close to tears, but she no longer cared what he thought about her. He was indifferent and cruel and he had failed her completely. He had no love for her at all, and nothing to give anyone. He was selfish, and weak, and just as he had been ruled by her mother years before, he was now being ruled by a woman named Barbara.

“What was there to say to you, Gabriella?” He looked across his desk at her with exasperation. And it was clear to her that he didn't want her to be here. “I didn't want to see you.” It was that simple. He had had nothing in his heart to give her, or possibly anyone, not even the pretty children in the pictures. She pitied all of them, and most of all him, for everything he wasn't. He wasn't even a person. He was a cardboard figure.

“Did you ever love me? Either of you?” she asked, choking on a sob now, and he found her demonstration of emotions distasteful. He looked agonized by it, and Gabriella knew he wished she would disappear. But she didn't care. This was for her, not for him. This was everything she needed to take with her to her future. He didn't answer her, and she looked at him with eyes that would not release him. “I asked you a question.”

“I don't know what I felt then. Of course I must have loved you. You were a child.”

“But not enough to take me into the rest of your life. All I got was nine years. Why?”

“Because it was a failure. It was more than that, it was a disaster. And you were a symbol of that disaster.”

“I was a casualty of it.”

“That's unfortunate,” he said sadly, acknowledging it tacitly. “We all were.”

“But you never wound up in the hospital. I did.” She was relentless now, in her pursuit of the truth, but painful as it was, she was glad she had come here.

“I knew you'd hate us for that. I told her so. She had no control over herself whatsoever.”

“Why did she hate me so much?” And why did you love me so little, was the question she didn't ask him. But she knew now that he wasn't capable of it, and probably never had been.

He sighed and sank back into his leather chair, looking exhausted. “She was jealous of you. She always was. Right from the moment you were born. I don't think she had it in her to be a mother. I never realized that when I married her. I suppose I should have.” And he didn't have it in him to be a father, no matter how many pictures he had on his desk now. And then he looked at her, anxious to end the meeting. “Is that it, Gabriella? Have I answered all your questions?”

“Most of them,” she said sadly, although she realized now that some of them would never be answered. He just didn't have what it took to be a father. He was less of a person than she had ever imagined. But maybe, in some secret part of her, she had always known that, and never wanted to face it. Maybe, as Peter said, the answers were within her.

Her father stood up then, and looked at her. He did not come around the desk as she had thought he would. He did hot reach out and hug her, or try to touch her. He stayed as far away from her as possible, and even armed with what she knew now, it still hurt her.

“Thank you for your visit,” he said, indicating that the meeting was over. He pressed a button on his desk, and the secretary reappeared and stood holding the door open for Gabbie.

“Thank you,” Gabriella said. She did not call him “Daddy” this time, or try to kiss him. There was no point. The man she remembered had been bad enough, this one was worse. And whatever he was, whoever he had been to her once, he was no longer her father. He had given up the job fourteen years before, and abdicated completely. That was entirely clear now. The father she had known, such as he was, had died the day he left them.