Page 36 of Perfect Composition

I hand Austyn her baby book. She flips it open. The first page has the confirmation of my pregnancy. “Can you imagine Gramps’s reaction when I told him I was pregnant? Especially when he didn’t know I was dating anyone?”

Her face loses all color. “Oh, God. Mama, you must have been terrified.”

“I was more terrified for Beau, if you want to know the truth.” It’s funny how in the years of bitterness, I forgot that until the words came out of my mouth. “But after hours of screaming and yelling at me, I finally crumbled and told him the name. He packed me up into his car, and we drove over to the Millers’.” I don’t mention at this point he already knew the name. She’ll find out soon enough.

I reach for her baby book and put it aside. “There was exactly one reason I asked you to wait until you were eighteen until you asked me for your father’s name.”

“Why?”

“To protect you,” I explain simply.

“Is he an axe murderer?” she half jokes.

“You might wish he was.” I stand and reach for her hand. Leading her over to the desk, I explain, “Gramps confronted the Millers only to find out your father—”

“Biological father, because Uncle Jess and Uncle Ethan were more fathers than anything this man ever was,” she corrects me.

I press a kiss to her cheek. “Be sure to tell them that the next time you’re home. Your biological father had left town.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” my daughter hisses.

“You knew this, Austyn.” My voice holds a note of exasperation.

“But knowing the story of the piano, the pieces I’ve put together in my head over the years, he had no guts if he left you, Mama.”

Her words warm me momentarily. I touch the letters from Daddy’s lawyers. “Over the first few months of my pregnancy, Gramps’s attorneys tried repeatedly to contact your father. They used an investigations firm to locate him. The Millers claimed he didn’t want to be found. Later, it became abundantly clear why.”

“Can you explain it to me?”

“I will.” My hands are shaking when they touch the checks. “Do you remember the fire that hit the trailer park when you were very young?”

“Vaguely. Why?”

“Your biological grandparents were in it. They died.” She gasps. My voice is like ice when I explain, “But at least Gramps was able to stop making payments to keep their silence about who your father was.”

“Excuse me? He was paying them?”

“Yes. By then, your father had started to become ‘someone,’ and they were threatening to go to the media. I refused to let your childhood be marred with that kind of scandal. I told Gramps I’d leave. I’d take you and leave if that’s what it took. He refused and gave in to their demands.”

“The fire…” Austyn asks hesitantly.

“Was a gas explosion. A freak accident. Ruled that way by an outside arson expert. Gramps knew this would all come out, so the fire chief called in two experts to rule on it.” And thank goodness my father had that foresight. I lay my hand on the closed file. “Do you want to read about it?”

“No! But Mama, didn’t he come home when his parents died?”

“He didn’t. I expected to have to deal with your father then, but he never showed up. At least not that I was able to ascertain.” My hand moves to the last pile.

The photos of me and Beckett.

“Before I show you these, before you react to the man who is your father, I want you to understand down to the depth of your soul what your life would have been like if you knew who he was before you were the woman of character standing before me. Even though I resented every dime he paid his family, Gramps claims he did it to protect us. He didn’t do it for the Kensington name; he did it so people assumed I had a wild weekend fling. He did it so people would never associate the gossip rags with my daughter. So you would never be heckled by mean little shits.”

I lift my hand from the photos.

Austyn reaches for them, but she doesn’t lift them. “Gramps had you followed?”

My laugh only holds a slight resentment toward my interfering father. “He browbeat me for the name of who the baby’s father was, but he already knew. He wanted me to admit to it, to my failing.”

“Falling in love isn’t failing at anything.”