Page 32 of One More Heartbeat
“I can come back later.” After I attempt to put words on the page.
“No, no. He shouldn’t be much longer. You can sit and have cookies while you wait.”
“Did someone say cookies?” My father’s wide shoulders fill the doorway, and a grin breaks out on his lined face. “Hey, son. Are you the reason your mom was busy baking cookies this afternoon? And here I thought she was baking them for me.” He’s not wearing the button-up shirt and trousers he would’ve worn to the office. He’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt that reveals arm muscles that only come from hitting the weights.
Mom laughs the familiar sound of my childhood. “Of course I was making them for you, dear. Garrett dropping by to talk to us is an added bonus.”
I follow the pair into the kitchen and sit at the table. The kitchen cabinets were recently repainted to a gray-blue, but the rest of the room hasn’t changed much since Kenda was last here. Back when I wouldn’t think twice about scaling the tree outside the guest room, just to spend the night with my girlfriend without Mom being wise to what I was up to.
“You want coffee or milk with your cookies, Garrett?”
After the past twenty-four hours, I need something stronger than coffee or milk, but I doubt Mom would go for that. “Coffee, please.”
While Mom brews it, the three of us make small talk about the upcoming Wilderness Warriors season. She places the mugs and a plate of cookies on the table and sits on her chair.
The late afternoon sunbathes the table in a warm glowing light but does nothing to soothe me like it did when I was a kid. If anything, it just highlights the empty seat Kenda had sat on.
But while that might have been Kenda’s chair, the cookie plate with the hand-painted, cute chubby bird on it was a gift from Zara. Over twenty years ago.
Mom loves that plate.
And I secretly love it too.
“So, what’s up, son?” My father asks once we’re settled.
I pick up my mug and take a sip of the hot drink. “I…” I put the mug down and rake my fingers through my hair. Rub the back of my neck. “I came home yesterday after my run with Kellan and found a woman and a toddler on my front stoop. I’ve never seen either of them before, but the woman had a letter from Kenda. The toddler is my daughter. Kenda’s and my daughter.”
“Your daughter?” Mom says at the same time my father splutters, “What kind of scam does this woman think she’s pulling?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not a scam. She told me Kenda was killed in a mall shooting last week. I looked it up. Kenda was listed as one of the deceased.”
Mom gasps, her shock reverberating throughout the room. Her hand flies to her mouth, shaky fingers pressing against her lips.
“And this woman just showed up out of nowhere to tell you that you have a daughter?” Dad sounds as convinced that Athena is telling the truth as he is the tooth fairy is real.
“That’s right.”
“But if the toddler is your daughter, Kenda would have told you she was pregnant.” The shock on Mom’s face has morphed into a battle of emotions, with hope and longing sitting on top of the pile. “She knows you wouldn’t turn your back on your child.Wewouldn’t turn our backs on your child.”
I can only shrug. I have no idea why Kenda thought she couldn’t tell me. Fuck, why had I acted like a sulking asshole and ignored her text?
Yes, she’d left while I was sleeping and hadn’t bothered leaving a note. But we’d both agreed it was only one night. No strings attached.
Had she really believed I’d want nothing to do with my daughter because of that agreement? I hadn’t planned to become a father due to a one-night stand with a former love, but it is what it is.
Of course, I’m not about to tell my parents this. They don’t need to know I was the idiot who never returned her text asking me to call her. And besides…she could have tried again—but she didn’t.
That’s all in the past. I need to focus on the future. With my daughter.
“Are you sure she’s your daughter?” My father leans back in his chair, his expression that of a man who has seen and done things he’s not proud of—which has made him leery of other people’s actions and motives.
“I’ve ordered a paternity test to find out for sure, but Kenda had no reason to lie to me. Or no reason I can think of.” Other than the possibility the father was an asshole and she didn’t want Peony anywhere near him.
But she’d have known I would do a paternity test. I wouldn’t take things at face value.
“Where is she? Your daughter?” Mom’s face is soft with that dreamy look she always gets when talking about her friends’ grandkids.
“I put Peony and her nanny up in a hotel for the next few days.”
