12. Evan
CHAPTER 12
Evan
I sat there in my apartment, the kind of place that echoed with its own emptiness. The walls were bare except for a clock that ticked away the silence. In that quiet, I was trying to wrap my head around the fact that I had a daughter—a girl named Sophia whose life had been humming along without me.
"Unbelievable," I muttered to myself, raking a hand through my hair. Anger bubbled up inside me, but it wasn't the hot, fleeting kind. It was heavy, the sort that settles in your bones. Betrayal gnawed at my insides like a relentless pest, and loss... well, the loss was a gaping hole where years of memories should have been.
Fourteen years. I’d been going along with my life for fourteen years, making decisions with no idea that she was out there.
The streetlamp outside cast a soft glow through the blinds, throwing stripes of light and shadow across the room. It felt like I was sitting in a cage, bars of light trapping me in my turmoil. I couldn't stay seated; it was like the chair itself was made of thorns—every second I spent in it was another prick of pain, another sting of what I'd missed.
Standing up, I shuffled over to the side of my bed. It wasn’t every day you found out you were a father. And definitely not every day you found out you were a father to a teenager. I let out a half-hearted chuckle at the thought—humor, after all, was my awkward shield against the world's sucker punches.
Kneeling down beside the bed wasn't something I did often enough, but tonight, I needed something more profound than a long run or a sitcom rerun. I closed my eyes, the darkness behind my lids less suffocating than the one filling my room. I just found out about my daughter, and I was feeling all sorts of things I couldn’t even name right then. Maybe God could help me figure out how to be there for her. How to be what she needed when I didn't even know she existed until that day. A sigh escaped me, a surrender of sorts to the chaos inside.
Opening my eyes, I let the dim light wash over me, hoping that with it came the peace I sought—the clarity to navigate this new chapter of my life. With a deep breath, I leaned back on my heels, the determination settling in. Sophia was out there, and I was going to be part of her life. Somehow.
"Lord," I began, the word slipping out into the stillness of my apartment. It felt odd talking to the God who never changed when everything tangible in my life had just shifted on its axis.
"Look, I know I've made plenty of mistakes, but this... this is something else." The words tumbled out as I grappled with the gnawing feeling of unworthiness. My voice broke a bit—I wasn't used to laying my heart out like this, even in private. "I'm angry, yeah, but it's more than that.” I was hurting. That was the emotion I didn’t want to name, even in my solitude. Sadness felt weak somehow. Anger was safer.
The silence seemed to listen, patient and nonjudgmental.
"Help me get past this bitterness, will You? Because deep down, I think I want to be a part of her life. To be the dad she never had." A shiver ran through me, not from cold but from the fear that maybe I didn't deserve this second chance. "I want to do right by her, somehow."
My plea hung in the air, mingling with the dust motes dancing in the streetlamp's glow. I stayed there a moment longer, seeking solace in the quiet before slowly rising, feeling marginally steadier on my feet as I collapsed into bed.
At the firehouse the following day, the scent of stale coffee lingered like a stubborn fog. I sat at the worn-out table, the cup in my hand more a prop than anything else. The warmth seeped into my fingers, a small comfort against the turmoil that had taken up residence in my chest.
"Hey, Mercer." Nathan's voice cut through my reverie as he pulled up a chair across from me. His eyes were keen, filled with concern that was characteristic of him. He was one of the few guys in the station who had kids.
I grimaced. Turned out we had something in common now.
"Morning," I responded, my tone flat. Even to my own ears, I sounded like a man who'd barely slept, thoughts chasing each other in circles all night.
"Rough night?" he asked, the chair groaning under his weight as he settled in.
"Something like that," I admitted, forcing a half-smile that didn't quite reach my eyes. I took a sip of coffee, letting the bitterness jolt my senses.
Nathan leaned forward, elbows on the table, creating a bridge between us with his steady gaze. "You know you can talk to me, right?"
"Yeah, I know." The gratitude for his presence was genuine, even if I wasn't sure I was ready to spill the whole story.
Nathan's chair scraped against the linoleum as he scooted closer, his brow furrowed in a way that told me he was all in for whatever I had to share.
"I found out… I’m a dad. I have a daughter." The words tumbled out before I could overthink them.
"Wow," he said quickly, clearly taken aback. "That's… wow.”
"Feels like I've been sucker-punched." I ran a hand through my hair, the short strands offering no real resistance.
“Soo… Are you going back to Chicago?”
I shook my head, a short laugh escaping. “That’s the thing. She’s in Minden.”
He frowned. “You’ve only been here like, what, five months?”
“She’s thirteen years old. And her mom never told me about her."
"Man, I can't even imagine." Nathan leaned in, his voice steady and sympathetic. "You must be feeling all kinds of angry."
"Understatement of the year," I muttered, staring down into my mug as if it held answers. "But there's more than anger, you know? I’m terrified I’ll mess it up. Worried it’s too late. I’m ticked at her mom. But I’m also…really upset that I missed so much. How do I even move forward with that kind of obstacle between us?”
"Look," he said, his tone gentle but firm, "God's given you this chance with your daughter for a reason. It’s easy to focus on what you’ve lost. But what you need to do is think about the gift you’ve been given. A second chance to do things right."
"Second chances, huh?" I mused, rolling the idea around in my mind like one of those smooth pebbles you find by the creek, worn down by years of water rushing over them.
"Exactly." Nathan reached across the table, clapping a hand on my shoulder. "If there is one thing I’ve learned in the last year, it’s that God can take the most hopeless situation and turn it into something that’s not just repaired, but entirely unbroken and stronger than before.”
"Thanks, Nate." His warmth cut through some of the chill that had settled inside me. "I just hope I'm not too late to be the dad Sophia needs."
"Sophia, hmm? As in, Samantha and Sophia?”
I nodded, pressing my lips into a thin line.
“It’s never too late," he assured me with a certainty that felt like sunlight breaking through clouds. "Take it from someone who's been there. You've got this, and you've got a whole community behind you—including me."
"Appreciate it," I said, feeling the first stirrings of hope since the news hit me. Sophia. My daughter. The words sounded foreign but right, like a new song you can't help but hum along to, even if you don't yet know the words.
I stood up from the table, Nathan's words echoing in my ears like the distant siren of an engine call. Second chances—the concept felt as elusive as smoke in my hands, but I had to try. But first, I had something else to take care of.
I found myself tapping the screen with a nervous rhythm, heart hammering as I scrolled through contacts until I landed on a name I hadn't sought in years: Jack Sullivan, private investigator. The guy had a knack for digging up what people worked hard to bury. My family had used him for years, and I knew he was the best. He was also the private investigator who had searched for Samantha all those years ago.
"Jack, it's Evan Mercer," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "I need your help again."
"Evan?" His tone held a mix of surprise and reluctance. "It's been ages. What is it?”
“Samantha Brown.”
He sighed. “Come on, Evan. I thought you'd moved on from... that woman."
"Sometimes, the past doesn't stay where you leave it," I replied, trying to infuse some humor into the tension knotting my chest.
"Look, Evan…" He hesitated, and I could almost hear him rubbing his jaw the way he did when faced with a conundrum. “I told you I couldn’t find her. I'm not sure I should get involved in old cases... especially ones like yours."
His words struck a chord, and suspicion curled within me like smoke. Why would he hesitate unless something—or someone—had warned him off?
"I found her, Jack.” A laugh escaped. It was crazy when I really thought about it. Years of looking for her and now I’d stumbled into her small town. Of all the gin joints, right? “I found Samantha. And I’m trying to figure out why you didn’t. She was never hiding.”
“We looked, Evan. I told you that,” he insisted.
“Yeah, well. Apparently, you did a terrible job at it. She went to DePauw University, Jack. Not DePaul. But I’ve been thinking about it. You still should have been able to find her. It’s still Indiana.”
“Samantha Brown is a common name, man.”
I slammed a fist down on my counter. “I don’t give a rip how common it is. You were supposed to find her. ”
Silence crackled over the line, thick and telling. Jack wasn’t usually the type to back down, but I could hear it in the way he hesitated. There was something he wasn’t saying.
“You know I did everything I could,” he finally said, but the words rang hollow.
“No, I don’t know that,” I shot back. “I know I gave you every detail I had. I know I paid you well. And I know you— somehow —couldn’t track down a woman who wasn’t even hiding.”
Another pause. A sigh. “Evan, you have to drop it.”
That was it. That was the confirmation I didn’t want but knew was coming.
I clenched my jaw, my grip tightening around the phone. “You got shut down, didn’t you?”
More silence.
“Who got to you?” I pressed. “Who made sure I never found her?”
A bitter laugh scraped its way out of my throat. My father. It had to be him. The only person with enough influence to manipulate things behind my back. I never should have used the family PI.
“I can’t talk about this,” Jack muttered. “I shouldn’t have even said—”
“Unbelievable.”
“Evan, let it go.”
But I couldn’t. Because this wasn’t just about Samantha. It was about Sophia. About the years I lost. About the fact that someone had made sure I’d never find the one girl I had ever given a piece of my heart to. And not just anyone. My own father.
How could he?
The Mercer legacy. That’s what it was always about for him. Control. Image. Keeping up appearances while the real fire raged behind closed doors.
The anger was still there, a living thing coiled tight in my chest. But beneath it, something else was taking root. A resolve. An intention. Not to let the sins of the father become the sins of the son. Sophia was out there, a young girl who needed her dad. And I was going to be that for her, even if I had to crawl through the wreckage of my family's making to do it.