As I sat at my desk trying to come up with other legal avenues to pursue, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was bothering me. There was something about what Peyton had told me last night that was nagging at me but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. There was something that I was missing. Some piece of the code that was out of place that would be a clue to solve the mystery. I knew it was there, I just wasn’t seeing it.
It had been driving me fucking crazy.
I leaned back in my chair and ran my hands through my hair in frustration. When I did my eyes landed on one of the pictures I kept on my desk of Hannah and me. It was taken an hour after she was born. I was sitting on a chair holding a bundled up tiny little girl. At that moment, I hadn’t even known if she was biologically mine or not, but in my heart, she was mine.
Thinking back to that day and everything that Lizzy had gone through during childbirth, how hard and scary it was, made me want to throw up and/or punch a hole in the wall for Peyton. Lizzy was twenty-eight, had the best medical care money could buy, was full-term, and I was there supporting her.
Peyton had been sixteen, alone, knew the baby was coming too soon, and no one even spoke English. My fingers curled in a fist. I’d never liked Peyton’s father but now I wanted to kill him. Literally. End his life. The fact that he would put his baby girl in that terrifying, dangerous situation told me he didn’t deserve to draw oxygen on this earth.
I was glad that he was living overseas, because if I ran into him on the street, I couldn’t be held responsible for what I would do.
With a loud sigh of frustration, I rocked forward and leaned my forearms on the desk as I picked up the photo of baby Hannah. I stared down at the date scrawled on the wristband I was wearing. Her birthday was coming up in a few months and I couldn’t believe she was going to be six.
I started to set the photo back down but then something stopped me. My eyes shot back to numbers signifying the date Hannah was born.
The date. November eleventh. 11/11.
I knew that date. Not because it was special to us, but because I’d just seen it.
My breaths were coming in short pants as I moved my hand over the mouse and clicked on the file that held Lina Chaplin’s internship application. The PDF came up on the screen.
I scanned for her birthdate. It was the exact same date that Peyton had said she gave birth. Our special number. November eleventh twenty years ago.
Due to corporate espionage and because of the highly sensitive access we had to our clients’ businesses even our interns had to have background checks that rivaled the highest level of security clearance in the government. I pulled up her report and found out that Lina was adopted by Frank and Carrie Chaplin at six weeks old. Her place of birth was Germany.
“Holy shit,” I breathed out.
My chest tightened like it was being squeezed by a vise. I leaned back and tried to catch my breath. Questions were racing around my mind like cars on the Indy 500 track.
Was I having a heart attack?
Did I need to call an ambulance?
Was Lina actually my daughter?
If she was, did Lina know that she was my daughter?
At this moment, that was the most important question.
I closed my eyes and put my hand on my chest. Every conversation, every interaction we’d had played back in my head. Thankfully, my subconscious could’ve had a successful career as a court stenographer, so I easily recalled each encounter.
Her wording when I brought up her last name was so relevant now.
My dad is related to him. She never saidshewas, because she was adopted.
Her interest in my childhood sweetheart at the lunch made a heck of a lot more sense now. I’d just chalked it up to her being barely out of her teens and maybe being a romantic like Lizzy, but maybe I was wrong.
It all flooded back to me now. Her asking me if we’d been together in high school. How long we’d been together. If it had been puppy love.
Was it because she thought Peyton might be her mother?
Shehadto know I was her father. I know that I’d been pinning a lot on fate lately, Peyton coming back here. Her being my daughter’s teacher.
But this…? It was way too much of a coincidence that a girl who was born in Germany on the exact day that Peyton gave birth ended up as an intern in my company.
I had to know what she knew. What I was about to do was not only illegal, but also unethical, but I didn’t give a shit. I started typing and hacked into Lina’s email.
It took me less than ten minutes to find my answer. She received a genetic genealogy result naming me as her father three months ago. Which explained why she’d put in for this internship when it was a lateral move, at best, from her position at Google.
