“Eight.”
“Eight?”
“Maybe nine.”
“You don’t know?”
“I know. It’s eight.”
“Eight times you came here.”
He said nothing.
“Enough times that the receptionist knows you.”
“Yes.”
“And you paid for her room.”
“She lives four hours away. I didn’t want her paying for a hotel just to see me.”
“Why here?”
“It was a neutral place.”
I laughed bitterly. “Neutral? This is where we spent our honeymoon.”
“I knew the hotel. I knew it was safe.”
“You could have chosen any hotel.”
“I know.”
“Did it ever occur to you that bringing your secret granddaughter to our honeymoon hotel might be strange?”
“Every time.”
“Then why keep doing it?”
“Because the first meeting happened here. After that, she preferred coming somewhere familiar.”
“So you’d meet her and leave?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
He almost looked offended.
“We talked.”
“About what?”
“Mike. She wanted to know whether things he did came from me.”
