Roy Dashiel's eyes softened, so slightly that no one else would have noticed, but inside him,it was seismic. All he could see was  a daughter shrouded in pains, trembling with the fear of loneliness.

      She reminded him of Pa Louis, the old man who had raised him, whose life now hung by a thread, like a ticking time bomb, his survival each day was already a blessing.

      He thought of the gnawing fear he buried beneath layers of control, the same fear Tessa Marvins wasn't hiding ...