5. Garrett
GARRETT
My living room was designed for the comforts of a grown-ass man and not a toddler.
Many of the ornaments—like the ceramic vases and glass candleholders—decorating the built-in bookshelves on either side of the fireplace are easily broken.
The houseplants are potentially poisonous to a curious child.
And the rest of the house isn’t much better.
“I’ll put you up in one of the hotels in town for the next few days,” I tell Athena. “If she is my daughter?—”
“She is,” Athena says softly. “She’s your daughter.”
“If she is my daughter, I’ll need to childproof the house and buy supplies.” I unfold from my end of the sectional and stand. “Does she sleep in a crib? Or a bed?”
“A crib.” Athena’s face pales as I draw closer to where she and Peony are sitting on the couch. The freckles on her nose and cheeks become more noticeable, and her hand returns to her pendant. “But she’ll be ready to switch to a toddler bed soon.”
Peony glances up from her picture book to where I’m standing. Fear widens her eyes, and she whimpers, burying her face into Athena’s side.
I crouch, making myself smaller and hopefully less intimidating. “I’m not gonna hurt you.” I lower the pitch of my voice, hoping my tone is a soothing lullaby.
My words don’t seem to make a difference. Her little body trembles, and her face remains buried against Athena.
At a loss for what to do, I turn my head to Athena for suggestions. If I am Peony’s father but she’s scared of me, it will only make things more challenging. Perhaps if I knew what I was doing, it would help. But I don’t. Raising a kid isn’t something they prepare you for in the Marines.
Athena releases the pendant and drops her hand to her lap. “She’s shy around most people, but more so with men.”
Shy? If her reaction to Kellan and me is any indication, she’s a helluva lot more than shy.
“She just needs a little time to get to know you.” Athena’s gaze slides to Kellan. “To get to know both of you. You’re one of her uncles, right?”
He gives her a stiff nod.
“He’s Kellan,” I tell her.
“And Lucas and Troy are your other two brothers. Kenda told me about them. You all joined the Marines after college. And you will do everything to protect those you love.” She kisses the top of Peony’s head.
“It’s gonna be okay, baby girl. You’re safe.
Those bad men won’t hurt you.” The words are softly spoken on Peony’s temple, but loud enough that Kellan and I can hear them.
“Bad men?” I share a confused frown with Kellan.
“The two men who sent Kenda to heaven.” Athena’s voice catches, and she hangs her head, her shoulders slumping.
“She witnessed what happened?” My gaze falls on Peony so Athena knows which she I’m referring to.
“We both did.” She drags in a stuttering breath. “The three of us had left a clothing store when Peony realized she’d dropped Poppy somewhere inside it. Kenda had to make a call, so Peony and I returned to the store…and then…”
Athena squeezes her eyes shut, and her hand goes to the pendant again.
She reopens her eyes. Tears wet her cheeks. “We came out of the store just as everything went down. The first shooter. Kenda…” She sniffs and scrubs her hand over her wet cheeks.
Maybe she’s a talented actress, but something in my gut tells me she’s telling the truth. Peony’s and her reactions make sense. If Peony saw two men shoot her mother, of course it would affect her.
Which means once I get confirmation she is my daughter, I’ll make sure she receives all the support she needs. I might not know much about children, but I do understand how something like this can mess up a kid, the impact often far reaching.
I steal a quick glance at Kellan; he’s a prime example of that.
“Which mall was this?” Kellan’s tone isn’t exactly unfriendly, he just isn’t as accepting of her story as I am.
That doesn’t surprise me, given his past relationship with his late biological mother.
And then with the woman he cared deeply for who ended up double-crossing him.
He approaches every female with a heavy dose of skepticism and distrust.
Athena tells us the mall in North Carolina. It doesn’t sound familiar, but with the high volume of mass shootings these days, they tend not to get much, if any, coverage on the national news unless the casualty count is high.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t look up the shooting to check if she’s telling the truth. Another reason I’m leaning more toward believing her. Why lie about the shooting and the victims if we could easily discredit her?
“You were living in Louisiana and visiting North Carolina?” I had no idea Kenda had been living in Louisiana. Come to think of it, she’d never really answered the question about where she was living when I bumped into her in New York City.
Athena shakes her head, the movement adamantly quick. “No. We were living in North Carolina.”
“But you had been living in Louisiana at one point.” I lift Peony’s birth certificate to show her the state listed on it.
Athena shakes her head again. “No. We were visiting the place when Kenda went into labor. We never lived there.”
Fair enough. I glance down at Peony. Her face is still smooshed into Athena’s side. “What is Poppy?” I ask her and touch what could be a stuffed panda clutched under her arm. “Is this Poppy?”
She doesn’t reply, but Athena gives a small nod.
“He’s a handsome panda. Is it a he or she or gender neutral?”
“She. She’s a girl panda. Isn’t that right, Peony?” Athena gently strokes Peony’s neck.
Kellan remains quiet, his expression impassive. He’s no doubt taking in the whole scene, drawing his own conclusions. Determining the next steps in validating or discrediting her story.
“How ’bout I make us lunch, then see about getting you two a hotel room. We’ll go from there once we’ve got some things straightened out.” Like confirmation I really am Peony’s father and after childproofing my house. I unfold to my full height. “I’ll be right back.”
I make eye contact with Kellan, and he follows me outside onto the front stoop. The rain isn’t falling as hard now. It’s mostly just drizzle.
I close the door behind me. “Looks like we’ll have to discuss the excursion ideas another time.”
Kellan frowns, but I sense it has nothing to do with our delayed plans. “Do you believe any of what she’s told you?”
“It’s hard to know for sure until I get the paternity results. It wouldn’t be like Kenda to claim I was the father of her child if I wasn’t, and then go to the extreme of forging a birth certificate.”
He scoffs, the grumbled sound cutting. “People change.”
“True. Our careers have caused her and me to see and do things over the years that altered us.” I’m certainly not the same man I was prior to my last deployment.
“But if she lied about me being Peony’s father, she did it for a reason.
” I shrug. “Who knows? Maybe I’m not her father, and her biological father’s a real asshole.
Kenda wouldn’t want to risk her daughter’s well-being with someone like that.
” Not after having a father like that herself.
So maybe it is possible that she would do whatever she could to protect her daughter—including getting faked documents.
“You think she’d fabricate the story to keep her daughter safe?”
“It’s possible. Her own father was an asshole. The Kenda I knew”—and loved—“would want to protect her daughter from the same nightmare she grew up with. ”
“Even if it meant lying to you?”
I don’t have an answer for that. I have no clue what was going through Kenda’s head once she found out she was pregnant. It’s possible she knew Peony wasn’t mine and decided not to tell me the truth. And that could be the reason she never contacted me after the initial text.
But if that’s true, what changed her mind and caused her to write the letter, claiming Peony is my daughter?
Kellan folds his arms across his chest. “I’ll see what I can find out about the nanny.”
“Check if she has a police record, but that’s it.
Whoever she is, she hasn’t done anything yet to warrant me snooping into her life without her permission.
Kenda trusted her with her daughter. She wouldn’t have done that if she had any doubts about the woman.
” Kenda might have changed over the years, but her fierce protectiveness for those she loved wouldn’t have.
“Of course, if Athena gives us any reason to not trust her, I give you permission to do a more thorough background check.”
Kellan isn’t police or FBI or with any other government agency like that, but he has connections that go deeper than anything I have as a thriller author. Connections our family and friends aren’t allowed to ask him about.
I doubt even Emily—our close friend and his office assistant—knows the full extent of his connections.
Kellan gives me an on-it nod, and we walk toward his Trailblazer in the driveway. “What about Zara? You think she knows about Peony?”
“She might. But if she did, she only would have known Kenda was pregnant. She would’ve told me if she suspected I was the baby’s father.”
I pull out my phone as Kellan drives away. Fuck. Three months and three weeks. That’s all the time I have left until Untold Mercy is due to my editor. The time frame was tight before finding out I might be the father of an eighteen-month-old, but now…
How the hell am I supposed to juggle both the deadline and being a father—a dad to a toddler who’s scared of me?
I google information on paternity tests. There are two types. One requires a blood sample. The other involves swabbing of the inside of the mouth .
The first test is recommended for legal purposes and is done in a medical office. The second test will be useless if I want to challenge Athena’s claim in court, but it will also be less stressful for Peony.