“Dar, Drew and I have something to tell you.”
“I think I know!”
“Yeah?” I asked, setting my coffee down.
“You’re my dad.”
“Darla! What? What makes you say that? Who told you that?” Jules looked fifty shades of green. I almost felt bad for her, but I couldn’t because I was getting my daughter.
“He is, right? I knew it!” At this, Darla got out of her seat and started jumping in place.
I couldn’t have cared less where this all came from—to breathe in her excitement was better than oxygen—but Jules was glaring at me as if I were the one who had spilled the beans.
“Darla? Sit down and tell me where you learned this.” Jules was curt, more so than I would have been, but I’d only been a parent for two months.
“Ms. Green. Mommy, she begged me not to say anything. She was nice about it.”
“What do you mean? Begged?”
“She’s so nice, and I said that Drew babysat me when I was sick. And she said, ‘It’s not babysitting when it’s your dad.’ I told her he wasn’t my dad, and she said she was sorry. She explained that she thought we looked a lot alike, so she thought he was.”
Jules closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Opening them again, she said, “You can’t keep secrets from me, Darla.”
“I know, but Ms. Green said it would hurt your feelings if I said anything.”
“Still, no secrets.” She bunched Darla’s hands in hers, then brought them to her mouth and kissed away. “I love you too much for there to be secrets, but I’ll forgive you this time because I kept a big one from you. Drew is your daddy.”
At this, Darla pulled away and leaped into my lap, nearly knocking over her hot cocoa. “I got my birthday wish,” she whispered to Jules, and kissed my cheek. “Plus, Danny at tennis said his mom said you look like my dad too.”
“When?” This time it was me grumbling. Stupid Danny’s mom had been trying to get in my pants for a year.
“When we were picking up the balls. I told him to shut it.”
“Atta girl,” I told my superstar.
Jules rolled her eyes and took a big gulp of her coffee.
She’d adjust to giving up some control.
Eventually.
Jules
Darla was a question-asking machine, wanting to knoweverythingabout before she was born. It was a headache-inducing task to make the story as innocent and benign as possible, but I owed her the closest version to the truth as I could create.
Drew worked near Hafton.
I’d been taking a class or two.
We both loved tennis.
We met, fell in love, created a baby.
Then came the hard part ... explaining Drew’s absence.
“Blame me. Do what you need to, babe. This shouldn’t be on you,” he whispered in my ear as we headed up the walkway to his house. He had a surprise for Darla that couldn’t wait.
I shook my head. I couldn’t make Drew out to be the bad guy. He’d hurt me, but that didn’t mean Darla deserved to grow up without a dad.
