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Not that the loss of her sister and best friend had been or was easy for Hannah, but she was in a far better place than her parents thanks to counseling and the way she and Mary Anne spent those final months.
“We just l-lost our daughter. And now those people have taken our granddaughter.” His desperate plea tore at Hannah’s soul even as the request horrified her.
“Have you seen him?” her mother asked, voice trembling as though their grandchild now lived in the home of a serial killer.
Yes, she’d seen pictures of Kayla’s father. She and Mary Anne had dozens of late-night chats about the man. Hannah had helped her sister research anything and everything about him and his entire family. Amazing how much information one could find with simply a name.
As soon as she’d seen the obvious love and connection between JP Benson and his siblings, her sister planned to give him custody of their child when she passed. At first, like her parents, Hannah had been horrified. Not because he was a man covered in tattoos with a different woman in every social media picture, but because she couldn’t imagine not seeing her niece every day.
But it was the right thing to do. He was the child’s father.
Please make sure JP gets to raise Kayla. She deserves her father.
It’d been Mary Anne’s dying request, and Hannah would never break that vow.
Not only had Mary Anne put JP’s name on the birth certificate, but she’d written a letter to their parents begging them not to fight for custody. The letter had been delivered by a lawyer a week after her passing as part of her will.
I’ve done so many things wrong. Please let me do one thing right.
Of course, the first thing her parents did was contact their own attorney to see what rights they had. But it seemed, thankfully, that all was above board, and unless someone discovered a legitimate reason to keep JP from getting custody of Kayla, he would be raising his daughter.
Hannah sighed. “I’ve seen him, Mom.”
Seen him. Drooled over him. Committed the picture of the handsome man to memory.
His social media accounts suggested he was everything Hannah wasn’t. Tall, inked, always smiling, carefree, surrounded by a big, boisterous family.
“He looks like a thug.” She held out her phone as though Hannah hadn’t just mentioned she’d seen him. A picture of JP filled the screen. “His whole family look like thugs. He looks just like the man who was driving the car when my cousin died! How can you possibly be okay with him raising your niece? Mary Anne was confused at the end. That’s the only reason I can think of that she wouldn’t have wanted your father and me to raise her baby.” With shaking hands that had become so frail they were nothing but skin and bone, she pressed the soaked tissue to her eyes.
Her parents were older than her peers’, having adopted her or Mary Anne in their late forties.
Hannah resisted rolling her eyes. “Mom, you can’t judge him because he looks different. That’s not okay. He’s not the man who drove drunk and killed your cousin.” They’d had this conversation a hundred times already, and, in their grief, her words had fallen on deaf ears. “He’s Kayla’s father.”
“Yes! He’s Kayla’s father!” Her mother slammed her hand down on her knee. “And he hasn’t done a damn thing for that little girl since the day she was born. He didn’t support your sister during her pregnancy either. What kind of a man does that?” she yelled. “I’ll tell you what kind. Someone unfit to raise my grandchild.”
Pinching the bridge of her nose, Hannah fought for patience. How many times were they going to have this conversation? “Mom,” she said in a gentle tone as she reached for her mother’s trembling hands. Experience had taught her to tread carefully here. One wrong word would send her spiraling down a dark pit of despair, resulting in days of bed-bound depression. “You know that Mary Anne didn’t tell him she was pregnant. Until today, the man had no idea Kayla existed.” She couldn’t help but wonder how the man handled the shock. Had he embraced his new role of fatherhood, or would it take some time to warm up to?
Her mother’s red-rimmed eyes narrowed. Since Mary Anne died, it was as though her sister had never committed any wrongdoings. Her mom suspended reality, letting her grief turn her daughter into a saint, and Hannah’s father went along to keep his wife pacified. But Mary Anne had done something very wrong and hadn’t shied away from discussing her regrets with Hannah.
“Yes,” her mother spat out, “and what kind of man sleeps with a woman and never sees her again, huh?”
A normal man hooking up with a normal woman in an agreed-upon one-time thing. Something Hannah had never done herself. Nope, she’d always followed the rules, colored in the lines, stayed on track. Now she was left without her best friend, wondering if she’d missed out on opportunities she’d never have again.
