by Kris Jayne
“You did medical tests on my daughter without my permission?”
I glared at him. “I had her mother’s permission, and every reason to believe that Grace might be mine. I did what I had to do to find out before I had this conversation.”
“There could be false positives. I’m your father.”
I hated the hope in his voice, and that I had to take that from him too.
“I told the lab in advance that the other possible father was my father, and they ran an extended test. The results are conclusive they said, and what could I possibly have to gain by making this up?” I charged. “Whatever. We can run another one if you want.”
Dad slammed his glass to the table, and it dumped over, spilling the expensive Scotch. “Why? So more strangers can know what a fool I am?”
“It’s a medical lab, Dad. They don’t have your name and wouldn’t care anyway. All they do is run paternity tests for fools like us. No one else is going to know unless we tell them.”
“You didn’t tell Delilah?”
“Of course, I told Delilah. But no one else knows. I haven’t even told Marisa the results yet. She thinks I’m not going to find out for a few more days, and I wanted to talk to you first.”
He plucked a napkin out of the stack in front of us and dabbed at the spilled whisky evaporating on the table. “I notice you didn’t disagree that I’m a fool.”
“I’ve been just as big a fool. She played us both to get what she wanted.”
“I fell for her act,” he moaned. “I was lonely then. You had moved to New York, and it started out as helping one of your old friends. That’s how I thought of it.”
“What about the times before?” I asked.
“What times before?”
“At my graduation?”
Dad looked bewildered. Had she lied? She might have if she thought Dad and I were about to reconcile after meeting up in Florida.
“You didn’t have sex with her on my graduation weekend?” I asked.
He dared to look offended. “No. You were still together then. I mean, I knew you were still together then. Why would you think that?”
“She told me that a couple of years ago, but I’m realizing what an idiot I was to take her word for it.”
“God. I thought I was saving her. Helping her made me feel needed. She adored me for it, and it’s so seductive. ‘You always take care of me.’ That’s what she says. I guess I’m old and feeble now and ready to be put out to pasture. She’s looking for replacements. Marisa was the one encouraging me to take a step back and find someone else to take over the business. She wanted me to invite you for Christmas and ask you to come back. Then, my hospital adventure gave her a reason to get you here. All the while, she was making a play for Carter, too.”
“She has a way of appealing to our egos and playing on our insecurities. And let’s face it, those two things go hand-in-hand,” I said.
“Insecurity wasn’t my issue. I was an arrogant ass,” Dad admitted with a snort. “I knew she was an opportunist, but it didn’t bother me because it never occurred to me anyone could ever be a better bet than I was.”
“You still are the better bet. She told me that. She’s going to want to hang on to what she has.”
“I thought she had grown to appreciate me.”
“In her own way, I’m sure she does,” I said, wanting to erase the destitute look from his face.
“I was so stupid to choose her over you. I knew that before today, and I resented you for being smarter than I was and walking away.”
“I had a better view of who she was after that Christmas. I knew how much she could lie. Maybe I should have said something.”
He shook his head. “It wouldn’t have mattered. I would have thought you were being angry and bitter. I shouldn’t have crossed that line, Griffin. I am truly sorry. I guess telling you I’m sorry now because it’s all falling apart probably doesn’t mean much.”
He was wrong. It meant everything—so much so I couldn’t speak. I took a napkin and pressed it to my eyes, hoping to keep the tears in.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Dad said.
I cleared my throat and picked wet paper from my lashes. “Thanks. But what are we going to do now?”
“I’m filing for divorce next week. I have to make some financial arrangements, but those should settle in the next couple of days,” he said.
“I’m talking about Grace.”
A shadow passed over his face. “Do you have the lab report? I’d like to see it. I believe you, but I need to see it for myself.”
I handed him the copy I’d printed from the website. “If you want to do your own test, I understand.”
He didn’t answer. He flipped through the pages then tossed them aside, aghast. “I’m really not Grace’s father.”
“You’re the only father she knows,” I pointed out.
“But that’s going to change. You may even be entitled to have her with you.” Dad sounded as if the idea ripped his heart from his chest.
“I’ve given this some thought, and for now, I don’t think we should say anything to Grace—especially now. She’s going to have a big enough adjustment, but we can tell her later.”
“When?”
“I have no idea. We can talk about that with a family therapist or something.” That had been Delilah’s suggestion. She and Terrence told Katerina about the divorce in a marriage counseling session.
Dad gave me a firm nod of agreement. “Professional advice is a good idea.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine getting all of this dumped on me at the same time.”
“We’ll do what we have to,” he said through gritted teeth. “In the meantime, when do you go home?”
“I’m staying until the end of the month, and then I have to go back to Dallas. But I’ll be back for the meeting, and I’ll visit over the summer. I’ll start by being around, and Grace and I will keep getting to know each other. I don’t want to complicate the divorce and the custody situation.”
“There’s not going to be a custody situation. The children will remain in the home with me. That’s not negotiable,” he declared with his usual unimpeachable confidence.
“Marisa’s going to get attorneys and fight like hell.”
Dad snorted. “We’ll see about that.”
“She’s still their mother,” I said softly.
“And I have no intention of cutting her out of their lives, but I’m also not going to hand her custody and have her milking me for every dollar. With the prenup we signed, child support may be all she gets.” Dad folded his arms and stared at the ceiling, mind clearly turning over the best strategies to make sure he got exactly what he wanted.
He made a formidable adversary over the smallest things, and custody of his children was the biggest thing. Still, the one promise I made myself was that I had to protect Grace from nasty court battles, and that meant protecting her from Dad if he showed he cared more about vindictiveness than her well-being.
“Be careful. It might be better to be conciliatory with Marisa. She could tell the court you aren’t her father just to throw a wrench in works.”
“I’ll handle Marisa. In the meantime, you can visit, and I…if you want custody, we’ll talk.”
I nodded. “After the divorce.”
“Thank you.”
I squeezed his hand and let it go before we both turned ever more maudlin. “I want to do what’s best for Grace, and I don’t know what that is yet, but I’ll always be grateful that she’s had you as father.”
Dad swore. “How are you not angrier with me?”
“I’ve been angry enough. Now, it’s about Grace.”
His phone buzzed with an incoming text message, and he checked it. “Marisa wants to know when I’m coming home.”
“What are you going to tell her?”
“Nothing has changed. I asked Carter to continue as normal. I wasn’t going to say a word to her until next week, and I’m still not.”
My brows rose. “How can you stay in the same house and pretend like everything is normal?”
Dad gave his head a dismissive shake. “We barely speak about anything but the children and my doctor’s appointments these days. And she’s been sleeping in your old room since Christmas to be more comfortable. I’m wearing a CPAP machine at night now. She says the noise keeps her up.”
I didn’t know how to address that news, so I avoided it. “When are you filing? I’ll wait until after that to talk to Marisa.”
“Wednesday.”
“Wednesday, it is.” I began steeling myself for that conversation.
Dad checked the time and messages on his phone. “I should get going.”
We abandoned the bottle of whisky, and I walked him to the door. “If you need anything, Dad, let me know.”
“She’s been my greatest joy for the last six years.” His voice ached.
“She’s still your granddaughter. She’s always going to love you.”
“I don’t want to take away your chance to be her father, but I—”
I stopped him and threw my arms around him for the first time in what felt like a decade. “Don’t think about that right now.”
“I’m amazed by you, Son,” he said, hugging me back. Then, he laughed. “I’d be ready to line up heads on spikes. You’re handling this with more maturity than I would.”
I chuckled. “I know.”
Chapter 28
Delilah
Griffin finally texted me at seven thirty, and I drove back to the townhouse.
When I got to the kitchen, he was sitting at the table with two empty low-ball glasses and a significantly drained bottle of Scotch. He turned his head as I entered, then went back to rolling his glass between his hands.
“I told him.”
“How is he doing?”
“I think he’s numb. Angry. And also plotting. Marisa doesn’t know what she’s in for,” he said. Then, he jolted around in his seat. “Oh, and there’s more news.”
I got my own tumbler and poured myself a half shot for which I was grateful as Griffin relayed a horrid story about Marisa throwing herself at Carter and then threatening to accuse him of accosting her.
“She could get Carter thrown in jail. Does that not matter to her? He’s been upstanding his entire life, and one word from a wh—” I paused, “her, and it’s all trashed.”
“You can say it, Delilah. One word from a white woman, and everything Carter has built goes up in smoke. Trust me, I’ve been working to champion his cause with the board. If an accusation like this came up, he’d be done—even if my father went to bat for him.”
“She still could.”
“Dad won’t let that happen.”
“What does that mean for you and for Grace?”
“It means that Dad is already planning to divorce her, but don’t say anything. He met with his lawyers today, and he’s serving her next week. I told him I wouldn’t say anything about the test results until after that.”
“What about custody of Grace?”
“I’m not getting involved in their divorce, so we’ll deal with all of that after they’ve settled things. I don’t want to interfere with Dad’s ability to get custody of his kids.”
“One of them isn’t his.”
“I know, but this is all complicated enough as it is.”
“I thought you wanted to be a father to Grace.”
“I do, but working out what that means takes time.”
“It means telling her truth, doesn’t it?” I couldn’t believe Griffin wasn’t committing to do everything in his power to be a father to his daughter. “I mean, are you going to leave her to be raised by your dad, knowing he’s really her grandfather.”
Griffin’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know, Delilah. These aren’t questions I can answer right now. If we decide to tell her, Dad and I agreed that we would talk to a therapist first to figure out the best way to break the news.”
“If you tell her,” I repeated. He was willing to lie to her. “Grace deserves to know who her father is.”
My vision clouded over. I felt my hands shake, and my knees tremble. Everything in me knew this was true. I’d felt it my whole life.
“My dad is the dad that she knows. I wasn’t even around until a couple of months ago. She doesn’t know me. To find out that her parents are getting divorced and that I’m her father and that I left and abandoned her as a baby.”
I focused on Griffin’s anguished face. He gripped his chin, covering his mouth.
“You can’t abandon her when you didn’t know she was yours. Now, you do,” I replied. Now is when he’d be abandoning her.
“Even if we do tell her, she’s only six years old. Now may not be the time.”
“The longer you wait, the more it’s going to devastate her. At least now, she can understand why what’s happening is happening.”
“We’ll see what a therapist says.”
“Now that you know, don’t you want to take care of her?”
“There are different ways for me to do that as a father, and I don’t want to keep having this same fight with you.”
“It’s not a fight. It’s a discussion, I thought.”
“It’s starting to feel like a fight. As much as I might want to swoop in and say, ‘I’m your real dad,’ and take her back with me to Dallas, she has a life here and a relationship with my dad that can’t be thrown away because of a DNA test. I think it will be easier on everyone if we take a beat before throwing everyone’s lives in unnecessary chaos.”
“I’m sure it would be easier to leave Grace behind and get back to your life, but—”
“Whoa. That’s not what I said. Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m doing this for Grace.”
“Are you?”
“I can’t believe you’d fucking say that me.”
“Walking away isn’t going to change reality.”
“Of course, it won’t. I’m not a child, Delilah.”
“I don’t mean to say that you are, but—”
“I know you want to be helpful, but what would help is if you could just support me in the decisions that I’m making.”
“How can I when I know it’s a mistake?”
“Because you don’t know it. You think it, and you could be wrong. I know that’s hard for you to believe, but try,” he snapped.
“I was that little girl, sort of. I never knew who my father was. I never knew the truth. My mother knows to this day and still won’t tell me. She has given me no information about him because she’s decided it’s not important for me to know anything about who I am as a person.” I swallowed, choking on the hurt I felt over her choices.
“Whether you know who your father is or you don’t know who your father is, you are who you are. That doesn’t change with a piece of information,” he said.
“You don’t understand the hole it creates in your self-esteem when people lie to you about things like this.”
Griffin dragged his chair closer to mine and took my hand. “I can see this has been hard for you your entire life. Now, being forced to reconnect with your mother has brought everything back to the surface, and I want to be there for you and help you through this. But Grace doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to you. It’s two very separate things. Grace has a father. A good one. I can admit that now. Yes, Dad fucked up with me, but he knows that, and he’s been there every single day of her life. I’m not going to wreck that because I have a selfish impulse to jump in with noble ideas about ‘the truth.’”
He put his fingers up in air quotes as if the truth weren’t the truth. I thought about having to be around Grace, Griffin, and Gregory, smiling and pretending like her existence wasn’t founded on a lie. “It’s too dishonest.”
“It’s not forever. Honestly, she could find out on her own at some point. Our DNA isn’t the mystery it once was.”
“Exactly. Wouldn’t you rather tell her?”
&n
bsp; “Yes. We probably will eventually, but not now. Now, I’m going to let my little girl be a little girl.” Griffin smiled. “It feels strange saying that, but for now, I’m her big brother. This is what’s best. I know it.”
I opened my mouth to continue to persuade him.
He gripped the side of my face, kissing my forehead. “Stop, Delilah. I know what I’m doing, and I’m not going to change my mind. This isn’t your decision to make.”
I threw my forearms across my stomach, clutching myself. The rein I had on my anger over being asked to participate in this deception loosened. “I thought we were in this together. That’s what you said right, Griff?”
“Don’t call me that,” he said. “We are in this together, but I also have to consider my dad’s point of view.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time your father picked his own interests over yours.”
He sighed as his eyes closed in a long, tired blink before he glared at me. “That’s not what’s happening, and I think we need to stop.”
He stood and took the empty glasses to the dishwasher.
“It’s also not the first time you chose not to press the issue because the consequences were more than you could face. You can’t turn your back on Grace.”
“I’d never do that.”
“How do you know if you’re doing this for her or for yourself? It just seems like keeping the secret is the coward’s way out.”
Griffin slammed the dishwasher door shut. “If that’s what you think I’m doing, then I wonder how you have any respect for me at all.”
“I understand if you’re scared.”
“Of course, I’m scared, but that doesn’t mean I can’t determine what’s good for me and for Grace—or that I’m a coward.”
“That’s not what I meant to say,” I sighed, a new lump forming in my throat because I couldn’t put my thoughts together. I didn’t know how to tell him how much his willingness to hide the truth bothered me.
“But it’s what you said,” he snapped back bitterly. “I’m sorry that you can’t understand, and if you can’t abide by what Dad and I have decided, then…that’s your decision.”
Griffin’s icy words stung.