Page 10 of Knocked Up in Alaska

“Oh, Ford. I’m sorry. What did you do?”

“My grandfather—the only person who never treated me like a lost cause—let me stay with him while I earned my GED ASAP. He prevailed on my mom to consent to me enlisting in the Army at seventeen. I packed out for Fort Benning before Mia turned a month old. I sent money like clockwork, but I didn’t get home much after that. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if I had been able to swing more visits. Jen was dating someone else by the time I made E-1. By the time I was training for Special Forces weapons sergeant, she’d married the guy and they were moving to Pittsburgh so he could attend grad school. They thought…” He took a breath, let it out, and tried again. “We all agreed it would be less confusing for Mia to have one full-time father in her life, as opposed to a full-time stepdad and a mostly absent biological dad.”

“Oh, no.” A slim hand landed lightly on his arm.

“’Fraid so. Mia Langley became Mia Wilson, and I was written out of her story. I still send child support every month, because I insisted on doing at least that for my daughter, and I keep a very loose line of communication open with Jen—in case my girl ever needs a kidney or something—but otherwise, she’ll probably never know I existed.”

“It must be so hard. I can’t imagine. So hard, even if everyone figured it was the best option. Was it, do you think?” Her eyes held his. “Best for the baby, I mean.”

He worked up a smile for her, well aware it fell short of the mark. “By all accounts, they’re a secure, happy family, raising a secure, happy kid in a secure, happy suburb of Pittsburgh, so probably yes.”

“And you’re okay with never knowing her? Her never knowing you?”

He sipped his beer to ease his dry throat. “Most of the time. Of course, most of the time I don’t think about it. But every now and again, it’s like…” He scanned her from the glowing halo the kitchen lights cast at the crown of her head to her bare, unpainted toes. “Ever broken a bone, Lilah?”

The question obviously took her by surprise, but she nodded. “When I was ten, I broke my collarbone.”

“It healed up?”

“It did. No complications.”

“If you put stress on that bone, though?”

“Oh. Uh-huh. If I go for a really long run, or lift something super heavy, I’ll feel a twinge of that deep, dull pain.”

He nodded and rubbed his palm over his heart. “Same thing when it comes to Mia. No bleeding wounds. No scars. I’m whole. But when circumstances put a little extra stress on the parts of my heart that belong to her—I see a baby who looks a lot like she did, or it’s around her birthday, or some other milestone—I feel the old ache. She turned fourteen earlier this month, so she’s been on my mind.” He took another sip of beer. “I can live with it.”

“Do you…um…sorry. Never mind.” She looked down at her plate, broke off a small corner of her sandwich, and ate it.

“Do I what?”

She hesitated another moment, swallowed, and focused her attention somewhere in the vicinity of his Adam’s apple. “I wondered if you had a picture of your daughter. I’d love to see her, but I don’t want to ask you for something too personal.”

Her code for too painful. “I have one.” He slid his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans, flipped it open, pulled an old photo from one of the plastic sleeves, and handed it to her. “This is Mia.”

He watched her as she looked at the picture. He didn’t need to see it. He’d memorized every line, every contrast of light and shadow years ago. It was a shot of him holding her, taken at the hospital shortly before discharge. Mia’s tiny face seemed to be tipped trustingly to his, while he stared at the camera like a total dumbass, his awed smile overshadowed by eyes the size of saucers. Fucking Bambi staring down the barrel. He’d barely known what hit him and didn’t yet perceive the blows still to come.

“She’s beautiful,” Lilah murmured and traced a fingertip over the image. “She has your eyes. And chin. And mouth.”

He laughed. “Hopefully she grew out of all that.”

“Oh, hush.” She didn’t glance away from the picture. “You’re very nice to look at, and you know it.” Her fingers found the fold in the photo—one he’d made years ago to fit it into his wallet. She unfolded it to reveal Jennifer sitting beside him, smiling wide and proud in all her blond-haired, blue-eyed, American Pie glory. “Your Jennifer?”

“Uh-huh. Though by then we both knew she wasn’t mine, and I wasn’t hers.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. We would have made each other miserable and probably turned the baby into a basket case. Jen changed her mind every half second about what she wanted from me, which was completely understandable under the circumstances, but made trying to give it to her a pointless loop of failure. I counted down the days until I left for boot camp because I was tired of feeling like a useless fuckup, even if that’s exactly what I was. I couldn’t please Jen. Her mother barely tolerated me. My mom wanted me gone, along with any risk of having to assume financial responsibility for my mistake. My grandfather was the only one who saw potential when he looked at me instead of a series of compounded blunders. If it wasn’t for him, I really don’t know who I’d be today, or where.”

Lilah folded the photo carefully and handed it back to him. “I’m glad you had him to turn to.”

“Me, too.”

“He must be proud of you, the way you served your country and met all your responsibilities.”

He tried not to get overly swept up by the admiration in her eyes. “I like to think he would be. He dreamed of visiting Alaska, but…um…” To give himself a moment, he slipped the photo into his wallet. “He passed away three years ago. I guess he was proud enough, because he left me an inheritance—a modest one, as he was a man of modest means—but between that and the money I’d managed to sock away over my years in the Army, I had enough to come to Captivity, buy the bar, and—”

“And pay his compassion forward to the next fuckup to cross your path.”

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