As Tyler drove back to the house, she became a mass of nerves all over again. The moment was finally here to tell her daughter that she was her real mother. But she didn’t want to anymore.
“Tyler, could we please hold off on telling Lili the truth since she hasn’t been in the best of moods all day?”
Tyler shook his head. “Then it’s best we tell her to uplift her mood.”
Kaiya chewed her bottom lip. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Everything will be fine. You’ll see.”
Tyler chose Lili’s bedroom as the location for the revelation.
Kaiya marveled again at her daughter’s bedroom, which was done in shades of white and pink. Father and mother sat beside their daughter on the bed.
“Lili, we have something very important to tell you,” Tyler began softly, pushing back a strand of the little girl’s dark hair from her head.
“You two are dating?” Lili asked with a frown on her face.
Tyler rapidly shook his head. “No, sweetie, what I want to tell you may come as a shock to you, but I want you to know it’s the truth, and we all love you very much.”
“What is it, Daddy?”
“I told you already that Kaiya was an old friend of mine. What I didn’t tell you is that the two of us dated when we were teenagers. She was my girlfriend. What I didn’t tell you is that she is your mother.”
“Oh.” The little girl looked disappointed.
Kaiya, seeing the obvious disappointment on the girl’s face, wished she could run out of the room and never return to the house, but she wasn’t ready to give up on her daughter after only just finding her. Lili didn’t want her as her mother, and she couldn’t force the girl to accept her, but she needed to know why her attitude towards her changed. She had thought that the little girl would be joyous since they got along so well at her dance school.
“Lili,” Tyler gently called, looking at his daughter with surprise in his eyes. “Is that all you’re going to say?”
Lili shrugged, staring at her Cinderella-themed bedcovers. “What do you want me to say, Daddy? I don’t want Kaiya as my mommy. My mommy is in heaven.”
Kaiya drew in a ragged breath and was about rising from the bed, but Tyler stopped her with a hand on her arm.
His eyes begged her to stay. “Please don’t go. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
Kaiya forced color back to her pasty face even as Lili stared at her rudely.
“Lili,” Tyler began again.
Folding her hands across her chest, Lili shouted. “She is not my mommy. My mommy is in heaven!”
Kaiya’s heart broke with every harsh word that her daughter spoke. If it wasn’t for Tyler’s presence in the room, she was as sure as night followed day that she would have rushed out of the room.
“Lili.” Tyler’s voice was gentle but at the same time, firm. “What’s going on?”
Still with her head bowed, Lili replied, “Nothing.”
“Pumpkin, you know you can tell me if anything is troubling you, right?”
Lili nodded.
“Then please tell me what’s going on. You’ve been acting out of character all day. What’s wrong? You’re not only hurting her but me as well.”
Kaiya’s heart broke some more when her daughter raised a tear-stained face to look at her father. She itched to draw her daughter into her arms and comfort her.
Tyler dropped Kaiya’s hand to put an arm around his daughter. “Sweetie, please talk to me.”
Sniffing, Lili said, “Grandma told Aunt Beth that Kaiya is my mommy. I was happy when she mentioned that Kaiya was my real mommy, but then she said that Miss Kaiya would take me away from you.”
