I was struck with sudden fatherhood and reveled in it and did my best. Maddie suddenly had another protector who floated in and out of her life. An extra hug and kiss on the top of the head. But she also knew that this man who had suddenly entered her world was causing her mother a lot of pain and tears. Eleanor and I had tried to keep our discussions and sometimes harsh words away from our daughter but sometimes the walls are thin and kids, I was learning, are the best detectives. They are masterful interpreters of the human vibe.

Eleanor Wish had withheld the ultimate secret from me. A daughter. On the day she finally presented Maddie to me, I thought that everything was right in the world. My world, at least. I saw my salvation in my daughter's dark eyes, my own eyes. But what I didn't see that day were the fissures. The cracks below the surface. And they were deep. The happiest day of my life would lead to some of the ugliest days. Days in which I could not get past the secret and what had been kept from me for so many years. Whereas in one moment I thought I had everything I could possibly want from life, I soon learned I was too weak a man to hold it, to carry the betrayal hidden in it in exchange for what I had been given.

Other, better men could do it. I could not. I left the home of Eleanor and Maddie. My Las Vegas home is a one-room efficiency across the parking lot from the place where millionaire and billionaire gamblers park their private jets and head by whispery limos to the casinos. I have one foot in Las Vegas and one remains here in Los Angeles, a place I know I can never leave permanently, not without dying.

After saying good night my daughter handed the phone to her mother, who was on a rare night at home. Our relationship was more strained than it had ever been. We were at odds over our daughter. I didn't want her to grow up with a mother who worked nights in the casinos. I didn't want her eating at Burger King for dinner.