59. Garrett
Chapter Fifty-Nine
GARRETT
I f any law enforcement officials passed them now, they would assume he had kidnapped Emma. One look at her face and they would think she was getting ready to jump out of the moving car.
They might be right.
The car was climbing up the hill on the way to his aunt Phil’s house with Stella riding in the back seat in her booster seat with the tablet he’d had shipped overnight.
A pair of pink sparkly children’s headphones sat on her head. They had cat ears that flashed with multicolored LED light, a function he’d turned off almost immediately.
“You can wait outside while I speak to Phil,” he assured his wife in a low voice after checking the rearview to see if Stella was listening. “I can signal you once the coast is clear.”
Emma turned to him, a slowly moving backdrop of evergreen trees behind her. “Do you think that will happen today? Or even this year?”
Garrett wasn’t about to lie or massage the truth for Emma. “It will be awkward. She’ll be unhappy at first. But once I explain things to her, Phil will get on board.”
Despite her formal country club manners, Phil loved him. She’d accept his family. He just needed to lay out the facts before she started in on him.
“I don’t remember her, of course, but I know how my mom feels about her,” Emma added in a low voice. “She isn’t going to welcome us.”
“I won’t deny those two have an ugly history,” he conceded. “But that bad blood is between them. We are not a part of it.”
“I doubt your aunt will see it that way. Just look at me.” Emma waved a hand over her face. “I’m my mom fifteen years ago.”
“You may resemble her, but you are Emma ,” he stressed. “My wife. The mother of my child. Never forget that.”
She made a rough sound in the back of her throat. “Just signal me if we should start running.”
They pulled up to his aunt’s house a few minutes later. Phil lived in a massive three-story American Colonial in the wealthy enclave of Verdant Falls. Situated right next to the river, it was known locally as the ‘White House.’
The original structure had been built by another family at the turn of the century. It had been purchased by his mother’s people in the thirties.
Since then, it had been expanded multiple times until it had become this three-story monolith, one that appeared coherent and whole thanks to the work of some of the best architects in the state.
His father had sold the house Garrett had grown up in right after he’d gone to college. But it hadn’t mattered to him. He may have slept in that other house, but this place and the cabin down the river had been more of a home to him.
Garrett stepped out of the car, hurrying to the other side to open the door for his girls. Stella reluctantly let go of her new tablet in favor of the stuffed owl that was her favorite toy.
As they’d discussed, Emma took Stella’s hand, taking the path on the side of the house that led to the back garden and the koi pond designed to withstand Colorado winters.
He knocked at the front door and was admitted by Consuela, who introduced herself as the housekeeper.
Phil had always employed a cook, but the live-in housekeeper must be a recent addition. However, given the alternative, using the same cleaning service that used to employ Mariana, it was not unexpected.
When his aunt didn’t come to meet him, he walked through the house, searching for her.
Phil was in the back living room, watching Emma and Stella walk around the garden.
Emma was keeping her distance from the house, so she couldn’t see his favorite relative watching them with her arms crossed in silent judgment.
Phil didn’t even turn around before beginning to lecture him. “Do you have any idea how many people have called me to say that you’ve been seen in town? In the company of that woman , no less!”
“That isn’t Mariana Mendez out there.”
His aunt spun on her heel.
Despite losing her summer tan, Phil was looking well. She had what people called good bones, like his mother. The sisters had resembled each other a good deal, although Phil had narrower, more aristocratic features.
And a soupcon more judgment.
“I know that,” Phil scolded. “Don’t you think I know the difference?”
She raised her fingers, pinching the bridge of her nose in a telltale gesture of stress.
Garrett pulled her into his arms. “Hi,” he mumbled into her expertly colored hair.
Softening, she leaned against him, hugging him tight before pushing him away. “I’m waiting for an explanation.”
“I apologize for not saying more in my text, but I have quite a story to tell you now.”
She recrossed her arms. “I don’t think there is anything you can say to explain why, of all the people in the world, you chose to get involved with that woman’s daughter.”
Trust Phil to make that woman sound like the worst curse. “What else did people call to tell you? ”
Phil threw her arm out, pointing to the pair next to the gazebo. “Wasn’t that enough?”
Nope. Not even close. “Maybe you should sit down.”
Phil covered her face with her hands. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to marry Emmaline Mendez. Don’t you dare.”
Garrett straightened his shoulders. “I already married her. It’s been a few months.”
Phil staggered to a brocaded wingback chair, collapsing gracefully. “Are you trying to hurt me?”
The genuine pain in her voice dug into his gut like claws.
He sat on the matching ottoman in front of her.
“No, I’m not,” he said with gentle firmness, putting his hand on hers. “This has nothing to do with you or her mother. It’s about me and Emma and the fact that I love her. I have since high school.”
“What?” Phil’s face twisted skeptically. “You barely even knew her back then.”
“I didn’t talk about her, but I knew her,” he corrected. “We didn’t get together until much later. We had a brief relationship when we were in college.”
His aunt opened her mouth to interrupt. He held up a hand, forestalling her. “ Please . I promise I will tell you everything you need to know, but first I have to ask, did you know about Emma’s accident?”
Phil blinked. “The hit-and-run in the woods?”
He’d expected that answer, but it was a blow nonetheless.
“Garrett? What’s wrong?” Phil asked, alarmed by the expression on his face.
He took a deep breath, trying to get ahold of himself. “I am upset, but I get it. You didn’t know she was important to me.”
He looked up to find his aunt wide-eyed, watching him like a woman taking out her garbage only to be confronted by a bear next to the bins.
“That woman—Mariana—left town after the accident,” Phil said carefully. “I heard the daughter was in the hospital for a long time. I… I would have mentioned it had I known that you were in terested.”
“It’s my fault you didn’t.” He’d been too fucking proud and secretive.
He was man enough to admit he should have been more open about his relationship with Emma. Not just with his aunt, but also his friends from high school. Instead, he’d gone scorched earth on anything to do with Verdant Falls after Emma had stopped calling him.
The only exception was his partnership with Fletcher, but he hadn’t needed to come home to reconnect with him after college. Fletcher had sought him out.
He had no one to blame but himself for losing Emma for so long.
“I saw Emma again by chance in San Diego, working in my building,” he told Phil. “She hasn’t fully recovered from the hit-and-run. I wanted to take care of her. She needed health insurance. So I talked her into marrying me eight weeks ago.”
Phil glowered at him. “That sounds like something your father would do.”
He didn’t dignify that with a response.
His father would never have married Emma. He’d have set her up as his mistress for a year or two before replacing her with a newer model.
“I won her over eventually. But the hit-and-run caused memory problems. Emma lost everything from before the accident.”
Phil straightened in her chair. “I hadn’t realized it was that serious.”
He was relieved to hear that. If she’d known the extent, he’d keep blaming himself for not questioning her on old town gossip.
“It was bad,” he said, his voice growing thick with incipient tears. “When she woke up from her coma, she had no memory of being pregnant or giving birth. She was in no shape to care for a child. Her mother decided to tell everyone the baby was hers.”
His aunt’s questioning stare scoured his face, before transforming into a grimace of horror.
“That’s not funny!” she snapped.
“I’m not joking.” He wished he was.
Phil jerked forward in her seat. “Everyone knows who that child belongs to. ”
Yeah, the supposed sins of the previous generation were far more believable than the truth.
“I know why you think that. The rumors that she was Teddy Bronson’s child must have been everywhere. But Stella is my daughter.”
Phil jumped to her feet, her face set. “I don’t know what lies that woman has been spinning but she can’t be yours.”
He frowned, struck by a sudden thought. “Did you ever confront Teddy about Stella?”
“No,” Phil scoffed. “There was no need. By the time I learned she existed, we were already separated. The divorce proceedings were well underway!”
Then Stella hadn’t been the straw that broke the camel’s back. That had to be a blessing, right?
“It’s obvious you’ve never taken a good look at Stella. That’s understandable?—”
His aunt waved her hand in his face like she was flagging down an inattentive waiter. “The girl is Teddy’s! That rat even bought them a house—one he paid for with the divorce settlement I was forced to give him.”
“He makes Mariana pay rent.”
None of his explanations about Stella seemed to be getting through to her, but this did.
“ What ?” she cried.
It was time for the photo. Garrett showed it to her, but Phil shook her head adamantly.
“This is Photoshop. Or that new thing they are talking about. The thing from The Terminator .” She snapped her fingers. “AI. This is AI.”
Garrett rose to his feet, tugging her to the glass doors.
Stella was on all fours next on the flagstones surrounding the koi pond. He couldn’t hear what she was saying but it appeared as if she was having an animated conversation with her mother.
“Stella is here, in the flesh. I want you to look at her, not her picture, and tell me what you see.”
Frowning, Phil went to the desk, taking out a pair of glasses he’d never seen. She perched them at the tip of her nose and peered out the window.
He knew the moment she saw the resemblance.
Clutching the glasses more firmly on her face, she turned to him with a gasp. “Good Lord. That’s me .”
It was true in a way. The sisters had looked a great deal like each other, but he thought Stella resembled his mother more strongly.
“There’s a lot of the Martins in Stella,” he acknowledged. “She’s very smart and sweet. And she’s going to be a real ballbuster when she grows up. But neither Emma nor I can take credit for any of that. We’ve known she was ours for all of forty hours.”
That caused visible consternation.
“Why did that wom—” Phil stopped, catching herself. “Why did Mariana let everyone believe Stella was her child?”
Because her life experience has taught her to expect the worst from people.
“She thought Emma’s accident wasn’t an accident,” he explained, launching into a brief sketch of what happened all those years ago, all the doubts, her fears. How hard Emma’s recovery had been.
“She did the best she could,” he finished. “It was a very stressful time.”
“Yes, I can imagine.”
Phil folded her hands together. She was quiet for a moment before she cleared her throat. “Well, it’s getting cold outside. I think it’s time you called your wife and daughter inside.”
“Thank you,” he murmured.
His aunt smoothed her sweater, nodding in acknowledgment. “I’ll go tell the cook that we’ll be having hot chocolate in the sunroom.”
Garrett raised his brows. “Make mine Irish. I think everyone old enough to vote could benefit from one.”
Phil huffed, not quite laughing but close enough for him. “You’re not wrong.”