***
When Tyler opened his door to a disheveled Kaiya with red and puffy eyes, he already knew what she was going to say before she opened her mouth.
“I never gave up our daughter!” she whispered in a broken voice.
Tyler, with a grim face, knew immediately that her father told her the truth. He opened the door wider and stepped aside for her to come in.
After his conversation with Richard at the hospital, he had put together the truth and was waiting on Richard to tell Kaiya the truth. If he hadn’t, Tyler had planned to confront him about the truth in Kaiya’s presence. The contemptible man had deceived both him and Kaiya. How a man could be so contemptible was beyond him. What amazed him was the fact that Richard still felt justified by what he did to him and Kaiya. He hadn’t sensed any remorse in the older man that night. Instead, he had been full of threats.
“I swear, I didn’t know all that happened. I found out only a few minutes ago,” she sniffed as tears poured down her already wet face. “How could my father have done such a callous thing to me? He knows how I suffered all these years. He’s aware of how I couldn’t let go of the memory of my supposed late son. He—”
Her voice broke as she sobbed heavily. At a loss for words and feeling like crying himself, Tyler bent a little and swung her into his arms. He couldn’t watch her cry so brokenly.
Up the stairs he went with her. He crossed the landing and took her to his room. All the while, sobs still wracked her body. He murmured words of sympathy and encouragement to her, but she cried heedlessly.
Tyler laid her on the king-sized bed and held her until her sobs began to subside. She needed to cry it out, so he didn’t stop her. He only provided the comfort he knew that she desperately needed.
His thoughts drifted to when she talked about their deceased son at the hospital. He had struggled to believe her, but he eventually did. For the past two weeks after realizing that Kaiya might be in the dark about what her father did, he knew he would need to tell Lili the truth. Now that Kaiya had finally found out the truth, he didn’t know how to go about it. The thick lump in his throat threatened to choke him.
“Is Lili home?” Kaiya questioned in a small voice after she put a hold on her flailing emotions.
He shook his head. “No.”
He was thankful that Lili was hanging out with his mom today since she didn’t need to hear the things that would need to be discussed.
When a companionable silence passed through them for some minutes, Tyler decided that it was time for her to hear his own side of the story.
“Are you up for hearing what happened from my own side?” he questioned softly.
She nodded, still holding him tautly.
Sighing, his mind drifted back to years ago when he had been nothing but a naïve teenager. But he knew better now.
“Remember that last night we overslept at the hotel? The educator on shift had my phone confiscated, and I got grounded. Later that morning, I got into a fight with another boy at the group home because of some nasty things he said about you. It wasn’t a pretty sight. It was so bad that we were sent to a youth detention center for a few months. By the time I came out of the detention center, I had turned 18. I looked for you everywhere, but I heard that you’d left Montreal to attend school in another province. I was devastated. I tried to find out the actual place where you were so that I could come to see you, but no one knew.”
He remembered how sad he was when he searched for her and nothing came up.
“Lena, who had also turned eighteen, came to my rescue. She talked some sense into me about at least trying to become somebody so that when I found you again, I wouldn’t still be the riffraff that you once knew. I picked myself up. Since we’d turned eighteen, it meant that we couldn’t stay in the group home anymore. We found a tiny apartment and got work at a fast-food joint.”
He continued the story by telling her about the night where he had two visitors that would change the trajectory of his life. The first visit was from his mother who claimed to be sober. He was apprehensive to see again. She hadn’t come to be part of his life again; she just wanted to tell him that she had been sober for two years. He was just happy to hear that she didn’t drink anymore. Another knock on the apartment door revealed Richard with a car seat that held a tiny baby. In the coldest manner ever, he gave Tyler the check, the application for Lili’s birth certificate with Kaiya’s signature, and he told Tyler that Kaiya had given birth to his daughter. He told Tyler that Kaiya had relinquished all parental rights to the baby and didn’t want it since she got accepted to join a professional ballet company. One look at the baby girl and he knew that she was his daughter.
“He walked away after warning me to stay away from you. Although I was nervous yet happy to have a daughter, I was shattered that you didn’t want our baby. For hours, I just looked at the baby and wept that her mother didn’t want her and had chosen her career over her.”
“I didn’t, Ty, I swear, I didn’t know. I will never forgive them. They stole my daughter’s childhood from me.”
“I was so distraught that I wanted to go and find you to beg you not to give up on us and our baby. I wanted to tell you that being with me and our daughter would never stop you from achieving your dream.”
Lena and his mom had stopped him because they’d heard Kaiya’s father threaten bodily harm and arrest if he ever came near her again.
He wanted to return the money, but his mom and Lena advised him not to look a gift horse in the mouth. He needed the money to take care of his daughter. He planned to give it back to Richard somehow, though; he had way more wealth now.
He decided that he would go to college and make something of himself for his daughter’s sake. He wanted her to regret her decision when she saw how successful he would be and how beautiful and wonderful their daughter turned out to be.
“Some days later, Lena came up with the suggestion of leaving Montreal for someplace else to get a new start. We decided to leave for British Columbia for a fresh start since it’s warmer there.”
“I wish you came to find me. I wish…” Her voice trailed off as she took a deep breath.
Kaiya burst into tears suddenly. He understood how she felt. All these years, they had both hated each other, thinking they were abandoned by the other. He wished he could punch Richard’s face for causing them so much pain. Instead, he cuddled her closer and told her everything would be fine.
