His Long-Lost Family

by Brenda Harlen

  “It’s beautiful,” he told her sincerely. “You’re beautiful.” Because she was, and it absolutely stunned and humbled him to know that she was his daughter, that he’d had any part in the creation of this gorgeous creature. “Did you know you look just like your mother did at the same age?”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “In fact, I think she was just a couple of years younger than you are now when she first came to live with her grandmother in Pinehurst.”

  “Have you known her since then?” she asked curiously.

  “Yeah. Although I didn’t know her very well. She and Lukas were always best buddies, though.”

  “When did you start to like her?”

  Jack realized, too late, that he’d started a conversation he wasn’t sure he wanted to finish. Because he knew that when she asked about him “liking” her mother she wasn’t referring to the platonic friendship sort of “like” but the boy-and-girl-get-naked-together-and-make-a-baby sort. For purposes of self-preservation, however, he pretended to misunderstand. “I always got along okay with your mom.”

  Ava rolled her eyes. “When did you start to date her?”

  That one wouldn’t be deflected quite so easily, but it was even more awkward for Jack to answer because the truth was, he and Kelly had never really dated. They’d flirted, they’d kissed, and then they’d jumped into bed together without ever having been out on a single date.

  “Not until she was in college.”

  “I thought she went to college in Chicago.”

  “She did,” he confirmed.

  She nodded, as if that explained everything. “Long-distance romances never work.”

  “And you know this—how?”

  “Regan—Rachel’s sister. Her boyfriend went to UCLA, which isn’t even really that far from Seattle. But he said he had to break up with her because missing her was interfering with his schoolwork. Regan said it was sleeping with all the L.A. sluts that was interfering with his schoolwork.” Ava shrugged. “Either way, she’s got a new boyfriend now.”

  The matter-of-fact tone in which she’d referenced sex unnerved him as much as the content. She was twelve, for God’s sake. He tried to think back, to remember what he’d known about sex at the same age, and came up with nothing. Which probably was the answer.

  Apparently Seattle was a world away from Pinehurst in more than distance. And what kind of comment was he supposed to make now to follow up that revelation? He didn’t have a clue.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked, in a desperate and not-at-all subtle attempt to change the topic of conversation.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you want to go out to eat or help me make dinner here?”

  “You cook?”

  She sounded so dubious, he had to smile. “Well enough that I don’t starve.”

  “What can you make?”

  “Fettuccine, linguine, spaghettini, tortellini.”

  Ava rolled her eyes. “So basically you know how to boil water and cook pasta?”

  “I can also make tacos.”

  “In that case,” she decided, “let’s eat here.”

  While Jack browned and seasoned the ground beef, Ava chopped lettuce and tomatoes and grated the cheese.

  “Hard or soft shell?” he asked, setting a plate with both on the table.

  “Soft,” she replied, automatically reaching for one. “Hard are too messy.”

  “There’s a trick to eating hard tacos,” he told her, spooning filling into his shell.

  She expertly rolled up her tortilla. “What’s that?”

  “The grip.” He held the top of the shell with his fingers, then brought the taco to his mouth and bit into the end.

  The shell broke apart and dumped all the meat and toppings onto his plate.

  Ava giggled.

  “And then,” Jack continued, as if the disintegration of his taco had been planned all along, “you use your fork to scoop up the rest.”

  “I’ll have to try that next time,” she said gamely.

  Then she neatly bit into her own taco.

  * * *

  It wasn’t unusual for Ava to be up early on the first day of school. But this year, Kelly suspected that her daughter’s inability to sleep in was as much apprehension as anticipation. It was seventh grade so the whole school thing was hardly new to her, but it was a new school, and Kelly remembered all too clearly how difficult that could be.

  Ava was seated at the breakfast bar now, dressed in a new pair of jeans and a peasant-style top, with her purple-painted toenails peeking out of her sandals. She pushed her Cheerios around in her bowl, stirring more than eating.

  Yeah, Kelly remembered first-day jitters.

  She took a sip her coffee. “Do you want me to take you to school?”

  Ava looked up from her cereal with an expression of absolute horror. “I’d rather wear a neon sign flashing ‘new kid’ over my head.”

  “That’s a better idea,” she agreed. “But I don’t know where we’d find one this early in the morning.”

  Her daughter pushed away from the table.

  “Brush your teeth,” she said, because she’d been saying it for so many years it had become a habit.

  Ava rolled her eyes. “Cuz that would never have occurred to me.”

  Kelly chose to ignore the sarcasm because she knew that Ava was dealing with a lot. Not just her first day at a new school, but settling into a new home in a new town, and getting to know her father. While there hadn’t been too many bumps in the road and nothing too major, she had to be feeling overwhelmed. Anxious. Uncertain.

  Or maybe Kelly was projecting her own feelings onto her daughter.

  When Ava returned from the bathroom and lifted her backpack onto her shoulder, Kelly indulged herself by stroking a hand down her daughter’s hair. The purple streaks had almost completely faded and her hair was soft and silky. “You look very nice.”

  Ava smiled shyly. “Thanks.”

  Kelly kissed her forehead. “I’ll be here when you get home,” she promised. “But just in case, you know where the key is, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I know where the key is.”

  Kelly kissed her cheek. “Have a good day.”

  “You, too.”

  She stood at the front window, watching her walk down the sidewalk and trying not to worry.

  A few minutes later, she was on her way out to the car when she saw Georgia making her way down the sidewalk, flanked by Shane and Quinn with matching packs on their backs. Matt was right behind them, with the baby strapped in a carrier on his chest. The twins’ first day of school was obviously a whole family event, and Kelly couldn’t deny that she felt just a little bit envious as she watched them set off.

  Ava’s first day had been an entirely different experience, as was the case with most of her daughter’s firsts. Kelly had been there, of course, as had Bev, but the little girl’s father had been three thousand miles away and unable to share any of those milestone moments with her. And while Kelly sometimes regretted that fact, she’d managed to convince herself that she’d made the right choice. That even if Jack had known about his child, he had hardly been the type to hold her tiny hand in his on that long walk to the first day of school.

  Now she wasn’t so sure. And she felt a pang of regret that she’d denied him—and Ava—that opportunity.

  * * *

  One of the greatest perks of Kelly’s new job was the flexible hours. Craig Richmond might have been the company vice president, but he was also a father of four, and he assured her that she wouldn’t have to punch a clock. He didn’t care if she arrived late or left early so long as the work got done. Kelly decided to take him at his word and tried not to feel guilty about leaving work at two o’clock so that she would
be home before Ava got back from her first day at school.

  Apparently Jackson didn’t have to punch a clock, either, because he was on her front step when she pulled into the driveway, and her heart automatically did a little skip and jump. She found it as baffling as it was frustrating that he continued to have such an effect on her. After everything they’d been through and in spite of the current tension and distrust between them, just a hint of his smile was enough to make her knees weak.

  “For you,” he said, handing her a paper-wrapped bundle of roses and daisies and freesia. “To commemorate Ava’s first day of school.”

  “You mean her first day in the seventh grade?”

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  Though she was still a little puzzled, she brought the bouquet up to her nose and inhaled the fragrant scent of the blossoms. “Thank you.”

  “I’ve been thinking about all of the things I missed out on because I didn’t know about Ava. And as much as I’m angry and frustrated that I’ll never get that time back, I realized that I at least have an opportunity to get to know my daughter now. And although I don’t know her very well, I know that she’s a good kid. And that’s because of you.”

  She had to blink away tears as she unlocked the door. “That was quite the speech.”

  “I practiced while I waited for you to come home. I’ve been here since about ten o’clock this morning.”

  She smiled at the blatant fib. “Don’t you have a job?”

  “One of the perks of being my own boss is that I can take a day off if I want to. Unless I’m scheduled to be in court or have a client emergency,” he amended.

  She filled a vase with water, arranged the flowers in it. “Well, I’m glad you could be here today. I know Ava will be happy to see you when she gets home. But she’ll probably be tired,” she warned. “She never sleeps very well the night before the first day.”

  “Do you remember her very first day?” he asked.

  “As if it was yesterday.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  “I can do a little better than that,” she said, and went to the cabinet in the living room to pull out a photo album.

  Jackson sat on the sofa and she opened the front cover of the book before setting it on the table in front of him.

  “She was as cute as a button, wasn’t she?” he said, pride evident in his tone.

  “And terrified. You can tell by the way she’s smiling—just a little too wide and bright. That was Ava putting on her brave face.” She settled beside him. “She picked out her Dora lunchbox, and we packed it together. A cheese sandwich cut into four triangles with the crust removed, homemade chocolate chip cookies, apple wedges and fruit punch.

  “Today, she took a couple of slices of leftover pizza, a package of cheesy crackers and a can of lemonade in a brown paper bag.”

  “What a difference eight years makes.”

  She nodded and pointed to another photo with a two-story brick building in the background. “That was her school.” She turned the page. “And there’s Ava with her teacher, Miss Watson.”

  “Did you stay and take pictures through the whole day?” he teased.

  “No,” Kelly admitted. “I dropped her off at school and headed to work, but I left my camera with Bev and she hung around for a while.”

  “She was your daycare provider?”

  “As well as my neighbor, one of my first friends in Seattle, and eventually my mother-in-law.”

  “Is that how you met him...your husband?”

  She nodded. “Bev never actually admitted it, but I think she kept setting things up to ensure our paths would cross. Calling Malcolm to come over on the nights she’d invite Ava and I to stay for dinner. Offering to watch Ava so I could attend various school functions with Malcolm.”

  “And eventually you fell in love,” he guessed, keeping his gaze focused on the photo album.

  “Yeah. Or close enough that we thought we could make marriage work.”

  “So what happened?” He felt compelled to ask, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Aside from the fact that the details of her marriage were none of his business, he couldn’t stand the thought of Kelly with anyone else. He knew it was completely irrational, but that knowledge didn’t negate the feeling.

  “He was offered a job in Boston—a very prestigious position at a private school—and I didn’t want to leave Seattle.”

  He lifted his gaze to look at Kelly. “You got divorced because you didn’t want to move?”

  “I know it sounds ridiculous,” she acknowledged. “But our difference of opinion on the job was only a symptom of a bigger problem, starting with the fact that he never asked what I wanted. He never even discussed the job offer with me before he accepted it. I was just supposed to be the dutiful little wife and start packing, never mind that I had a career of my own and a child to think about.”

  “He obviously didn’t know you very well if he expected you to be a dutiful anything,” Jack teased.

  She smiled, though he could see the lingering sadness in her eyes. “And ultimately that was the truth,” she agreed. “We each had our own reasons for marrying, but we didn’t really know one another at all.”

  “That’s not so different than what happened with me and Sara,” he confided.

  “She wanted you to move to Boston?”

  He smiled. “No, but we each had our own reasons for marrying, and none of them were what they should have been.”

  Kelly didn’t say anything, and really, what was there to say? What was the purpose in trying to explain what had gone wrong in his marriage when she wouldn’t believe it anyway?

  Only a complete fool married one woman when he was all tangled up in knots over another, and that’s exactly what Jack had done.

  “This is a picture of Bev with Ava.” She pointed to another photo. “On a class trip to the Museum of Flight.”

  He flipped through more pages, enjoying more glimpses of Ava’s first year at school. Marching in her first Halloween costume parade, creating her first handprint Thanksgiving turkey decoration, singing in her first Christmas pageant.

  “Bev took most of those pictures,” Kelly admitted. “I tried to be there as much as I could, but when I couldn’t, she was.”

  “You miss her,” he noted.

  She nodded. “She was a good friend to me, and the closest thing to a grandmother that Ava’s ever known.” She looked at him now, her eyes filled with regret. “I didn’t realize, when I decided to move to Washington, that your parents wouldn’t ever have a chance to know their granddaughter. That Ava wouldn’t have a chance to know them.”

  “They would have been over the moon to know they had a grandchild.”

  “And my parents have as little interest in Ava as they had in me.”

  He frowned at that. “I always thought...”

  “You thought I lived with my grandmother because my parents were dead?”

  He nodded.

  “Nope. They just didn’t want me.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  “It is true,” she said, in a neutral tone. “Both my parents are alive and well, and I haven’t seen either of them in years. My mom lives in Australia with her third husband—she’s never even met Ava. And my dad’s a long-distance trucker with his home base in Detroit. He’s only seen her a handful of times, although he usually remembers to send a card on her birthday.”

  “What about your birthday?” he asked.

  She just shook her head.

  I’d rather she didn’t know the identity of her father than to know that he doesn’t want to be her father.

  At the time, her words had made no sense to Jack. Now he realized that she’d been speaking from personal experience, and it gave him some insight i
nto her actions. Not that the neglect of her parents justified what she’d done, but it helped to explain it. Kelly’s fear that he wouldn’t want to be involved in his daughter’s life wasn’t so much a judgment against him but a response to her parents’ lack of involvement in her own.

  He finished thumbing through the album, ending with the little girl’s kindergarten graduation, then closed the cover. “Do you have any pictures of Ava as a baby?”

  She smiled. “Only about ten thousand.”

  “Then we should probably get started.”

  They were still poring over photo albums when Ava got home from school.

  * * *

  The envelope from PDA Labs was in his mail slot when he got home later that night. Until that moment, Jack had actually forgotten that he’d asked for the test. Well, demanded was more accurate, he acknowledged as he tore open the flap. His fingers weren’t entirely steady as he pulled out the report and scanned for the result.

  Probability of paternity: 99.99999%

  He hadn’t realized he was holding his breath until all of the air whooshed out of his lungs.

  It was the most positive result that could be reported, and it confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ava was his daughter. Not that he had any doubt. Not after spending time with Kelly and Ava. But it was still a relief to have official confirmation in hand.

  And he was relieved. When he’d first asked for the test, he’d been panicked, in denial. Kids were nowhere in his plan. No, thank you. Not interested in going down that road.

  But he wasn’t the type to shirk his responsibilities, and when he’d started to accept the possibility that he’d fathered a child, he’d resolved to do the right thing. He’d never suspected that he’d get to know the child and want to be her father. And he definitely hadn’t anticipated that he would start reminiscing about his relationship with the child’s mother.

  Now, only a couple of weeks after Kelly’s first visit to his office, everything had changed. He wanted the world to know that Ava was his.

  And he was starting to realize that he wanted Kelly to be his, too.

  Chapter Nine