The Daughter He Wanted

by Kristina Knight

  He was quiet for a long time. “I know,” he finally said into the darkness. “I love you, too.”

  Paige fell asleep holding Alex’s hand and listening to the quiet beep of the machines in the room. He loved her.

  They were the four best words she had ever heard.

  * * *

  ALEX PACED THE hallway outside Kaylie’s hospital room with Paige by his side the next morning. The doctors were examining her. He wanted to be in there. Wanted to know she was okay. Now, not in five or ten minutes when they finished the examination.

  Fathers all over the world had to be feeling the exact same way, he thought.

  Finally, the door opened and the nurse gestured for them to come inside. Kaylie was still groggy from the pain medication but she offered them a thin smile when they came back into the room.

  “She’ll sleep for a while yet, and we’d like to do a CAT scan this morning, just to make sure there is no bleeding on her brain. But if everything goes well, she should be in her own bed tonight.

  “Really?” Paige’s voice was a squeak.

  “Really.” Dr. Laffay looked uncomfortably from Paige to Alex and then the ceiling. She opened the door and a small man with a gray comb-over came in. Alex recognized him as Nelson, from the fertility clinic. Dr. Laffay continued, “We made an exception last night, because of the circumstances, but if Kaylie needs to stay another night, only you will be allowed to stay, Ms. Kenner.”

  Paige looked blankly at Alex and then the doctor. “But he is her father.”

  “Adopting father. Until the paperwork is completed—”

  “Biological,” Alex said. “We should have corrected you last night, but with everything going on we didn’t. I am Kaylie’s biological father.”

  “No, you aren’t.” Mr. Nelson spoke from the other side of the room.

  “Yes, he is.” Paige’s voice sounded reedy to Alex’s ears, like she was trying to remain calm and failing. She focused on the pediatrician and not the man from the clinic. “You know about the insemination, but there was a mix-up at the fertility clinic. Alex is Kaylie’s father. We just found out a few weeks ago. Mr. Nelson can explain.”

  “It was only Alex’s name and identifying number that were mislabeled,” Nelsen said from his side of the room. “I stamped the letters notifying you of the swab results myself before handing them over to the mail clerk two weeks ago. When you didn’t respond, we began calling.”

  “I put the envelope with my important papers, because you were so positive Alex was the father. I didn’t read it.” Paige whispered the words, then pulled her cell phone from her purse to scroll through the recent calls.

  She showed Alex an unidentified number with repeated calls, but no voicemails. He swallowed hard and did the same. The same number called him several times over the past week, but there were no voice messages.

  “This isn’t the number I programmed into my phone, but it’s yours?” Nelson looked at the readout and nodded.

  “The number you programmed would have been the receptionist, not my direct line. I felt it would be best to speak directly to you—”

  Alex cut him off. “What does this mean?”

  “The tests were conclusive. You are not the girl’s father.” He softened his tone and turned to Paige. “When no one answered your phone this morning, I called the emergency contact in your file. Your friend directed me here.”

  “But you said—” Paige reached for Alex’s hand but he stepped away. He couldn’t touch her. Not now. Not when the steady life he wanted to build was being snatched away from him.

  He wasn’t Kaylie’s father. He had nothing to offer them.

  Nelson swiped a handkerchief over his beet-red face. “It was only your name. We are certain of this now that the tests have come back.” He focused on Alex. “Your name was placed on one wrong vial, and during our records switch over the paperwork indicated that vial was used for insemination. The actual sample belonged to the donor she chose. Not you.”

  He couldn’t breathe. Alex fisted his hands and concentrated on taking one deep breath and then another until he didn’t feel like his chest would explode. “You’re sure about that?” Alex said sarcastically.

  “It was human error.”

  Dr. Laffay picked up Kaylie’s chart and turned her sympathetic gaze to him. “Human error sounds about right. You filled out Kaylie’s records? And the extra paperwork about donating blood if there was a need.”

  The muscles in Alex’s jaw tightened. “I did. We didn’t know how serious the situation was.”

  “It’s protocol, especially with traumatic injuries. You entered your blood type as A positive.”

  “That’s right.” What was she getting at? What did his blood type have to do with anything?

  “Kaylie’s blood type is B negative. Paige carries A positive, as well. It is highly unlikely, just from a blood standpoint, that you’re Kaylie’s biological father.”

  Alex felt the world shift. Not her father? How could he not be her father? There was the physical resemblance. The call from the lawyer.

  He’d been playing dad for over a month, for God’s sake. Paige crossed her arms over her belly. What was happening to his life? He was fine eight weeks ago. Cold and alone but fine. Now he could feel the cold creeping over him once more and felt powerless to stop it.

  He wasn’t Kaylie’s father. This entire messed-up month, his guilt over moving on, the stress put on the Parkers. The ordeal Paige had to slog through with her own parents. All because a bumbling intake worker slapped his name on the wrong vial.

  “I don’t understand. You said you were sure. You offered a settlement.” Paige and the doctors kept talking but Alex refused to listen. He didn’t need halfhearted explanations or consoling. He looked at the little girl in the hospital bed. Physically she looked like him and his heart ached.

  “The hospital could run a separate DNA test to corroborate the clinic findings, but I don’t think it’s necessary,” Dr. Laffay said. “Of course, you’re welcome to stay in the room during visiting hours.”

  “How long will that take? Another test,” Paige asked. Alex stared out the window. The voices all sounded so far away, like the television sounded when he was waking up in the morning after forgetting to shut it off.

  “The results could be ready within the week.”

  Alex could feel his heart, every slow, labored beat, as the world came back into focus. “When your lawyer called, I was told my sample was used in the insemination.”

  “We were trying to rectify the situation as quickly as possible. Our investigator noticed the difference in your records and those of Ms. Kenner. We pulled the donor samples and had all of them tested. They all match the actual donor, not you. We are very sorry.” He cleared his throat. “You will, of course, both be compensated for the trouble.”

  “Compensated?” Alex swallowed back the anger. “A month ago your lawyer turned my life upside down and now you believe you’ve rectified the situation because it was just a typo on a form?”

  This wasn’t happening, not again. He would not accept that Kaylie, beautiful, smart Kaylie, wasn’t his daughter. They had the same hair, the same eyes. He loved her, for God’s sake. How could she not be his?

  He gripped the windowsill as if that might anchor him to the room. To Kaylie.

  To Paige.

  “Please go,” Paige told the doctors. “We would like to have some time with our daughter.”

  The doctor and Mr. Nelson shuffled out. Paige came to him, put her hands on his shoulders. He didn’t want her sympathy. Didn’t want words that would tell him it didn’t matter. This mattered. If he wasn’t Kaylie’s father, who was he? Paige chose to be a single mom, and seemed to accept him into her life easily, but that was when he had the right to be there. The drama with her parents, his in-laws... Without a biological reason to keep fighting those external forces... If he wasn’t Kaylie’s father, why would Paige want all that upheaval?

  “Where does th
is leave us?” he finally asked.

  “It leaves us as Kaylie’s parents.” There was a tremor in her voice, a question, like she wasn’t sure, and Alex moved away from her touch. He couldn’t do this, couldn’t watch this break down before him.

  “You’re her parent. I’m nothing.”

  “You are a part of her life. She loves you. She doesn’t care about DNA or mislabeled vials in a lab somewhere.”

  “She will. Someday.”

  Paige scoffed at him. “Biology is only a small part of what makes a family. If you saw anything over the past six weeks, it should have been that. Biological or not, she loves you. She wants you.” She reached out but Alex backed away. “She deserves to have a father.”

  Alex couldn’t look at her, couldn’t look at Kaylie, so he focused on the beeping of the machine instead. Beeping machines were still familiar after all these years. “She deserves to have a real father. It will be better for both of you if I walk away now, before things get more complicated.”

  Anger shot from Paige’s gaze as she turned on him. “So you would choose to fight for our daughter because you think she has the right DNA, but now she doesn’t meet your standards because her genetic material isn’t what you expected?”

  “I don’t give a damn about chromosomes.”

  “Then fight for her. Fight for us.”

  He spun on his heel and walked out of the hospital room before he could change his mind.

  Paige and Kaylie were a unit. He was the unwelcome addition neither had ever asked for.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A FEW DAYS later Paige dumped sacks filled with the makings for sushi and wontons onto her kitchen counter. She pulled a chopping board and knife from a drawer and began slicing and dicing.

  Kaylie lay on the sofa, a Biscuit book in her hands. The hospital released her the same day they’d learned Alex wasn’t her father. For the first time Hank and Dot had no recriminations for Paige. They called daily to check on Kaylie, and to make sure Paige had everything she needed.

  Her daughter was healing; that was all she could ask for.

  “Can I get up?” Kaylie asked from the sofa.

  Paige crossed the room, felt her forehead for fever and checked her pupil dilation like the doctors showed her. Kaylie seemed normal, although she still complained of headaches now and then. “Do you want to color?”

  Kaylie sat up, nodding. “The Belle book, please.”

  Paige got colors and the book, setting them up on the coffee table. The book Alex had been reading caught her eye. She picked it up. Thought for a second about putting it back on the shelf and instead tossed it into the recycling bin.

  “Is Alex still working?”

  Paige didn’t know how to explain he wasn’t coming back so she had taken the easy road so far, telling Kaylie Alex had to work and couldn’t come over.

  “I think so, sweetpea.”

  Kaylie was quiet for a long moment, rolling a yellow crayon over Belle’s dress on the coloring page. “I miss Alex. Is he mad that I ran and bonked myself?”

  “No, kiddo, he isn’t mad.” Paige hugged her close and kissed the crown of her head. How could she explain that simple DNA changed how Alex felt about Kaylie?

  Who was she kidding?

  DNA changed how Alex thought about Paige, too. She settled in with Kaylie, coloring the opposite page and wishing she could go upstairs and pull the covers over her head. Forget about the fertility clinic, the accident. Forget about Alex.

  No, she didn’t want that. The accident she could do without. What had she said to Nelson during their first visit? She didn’t want his money because, no matter what had happened on the day she was inseminated, it had brought her Kaylie.

  The same applied to Alex.

  Whatever had happened on the day they discovered the mislabeled vials, it led to her meeting Alex. How could she regret that?

  It was ridiculous that she was still crying over him, really. It had been four days.

  “Did I tell you Auntie Al is coming over for dinner tonight? Why don’t you finish this picture for her while I finish dinner, okay?”

  Kaylie nodded and went back to coloring.

  Paige was done feeling sorry for herself. Her daughter was okay. Celebration was in order. Celebration and thank you. Tonight she had invited Alison over for dinner, to thank her for stepping in so often over the past few weeks.

  She chopped carrots and cabbage and set tiny cubes of beef and chicken aside to cook later. Alison loved Paige’s sushi and wontons, and it was about time she showed her friend how much Paige appreciated her.

  Paige swiped at the corner of her eye with her shoulder.

  No more tears over what might have been. She had put her life back together several times before, and she could do the same one more time.

  Alison arrived a short time later. Paige turned on the local radio station and then filled wonton wrappers and cooked the rice while Alison oohed and aahed over the coloring page.

  “What did I do to rate your wontons and sushi?” she asked, coming over to the counter.

  “I want to say thank you, for helping out so much during the Alex thing,” Paige said. Alison reached for a wonton wrapper and together they rolled the ingredients. Paige concentrated on making each roll as symmetrical as possible while Alison slapped a little rice and some fish into each before plopping it back on the plate.

  “So I guess you don’t want to talk about it,” she finally said.

  Paige decided playing dumb was her best defense. “Talk about what?”

  “The reason Alex has been in a short temper all week. Why you look like you’ve seen a ghost or you’re dealing with an eating disorder.”

  “Not really.” Paige rolled another bit of sushi.

  Alison slapped her hand against the counter. “Too damn bad,” she said, collecting the plates of ingredients and setting them aside. “I’m not spending the rest of this evening ignoring the fact that you look like you’ve been hit by a truck. This isn’t just about Kaylie’s accident, is it?”

  “I thought it was an eating disorder.” Paige tried to make the joke but it fell flat. “I’m not good company. Why don’t you call Tuck and go have a late dinner on me?”

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  Paige sighed. “That hole in the middle of the net that was supposed to catch us? It turned out not to be me.”

  “Him?” Alison said softly.

  Paige shook her head. “The fertility clinic. Alex isn’t Kaylie’s father. I have the paternity test to prove it.” She slid a sheet of paper across the counter and tried to explain what she still didn’t understand. “He says Kaylie deserves a real father and by ‘real’ he means ‘biological.’”

  Alison snapped her jaw closed, rallying for Alex after reading the damning sheet of paper. “Maybe he just needs time.”

  Paige sniffed and decided to hell with it. She was already depressed. A little wine wouldn’t change anything. She finished the glass and poured another. “We were his replacements. The family he would have created with Deanna if he could, and now that he knows Kaylie has the wrong DNA, we’re out of the picture.”

  Alison’s next question caught her off guard. “Do you love him?”

  “You know me, always in love with Mr. Wrong.” Paige kept her voice light but she couldn’t stop a tear from falling down her cheek. “He said he loved me, just before everything fell to pieces. I know he loves Kaylie. I think maybe he just said he loved me because I said the words first. Because he thought if he loved Kaylie he had to love me, too.”

  “I don’t believe that. He’s a good man, Paige. A solid guy whose life went horribly wrong and then took another weird turn a few weeks ago.” She shook the paper in her hands. “Despite what this says and what he did when he walked out of the hospital, I still believe Alex Ryan is a good man.”

  “Don’t tell me he needs to process, this is about more than processing a few emotions. Do you know he never takes us south of B
onne Terre? Our dates are in St. Louis, and he meets us for dinners or lunches here in town. I don’t know what his house looks like. These are big, screaming warnings that he hasn’t let go.” Paige took a deep breath and plunged ahead, voicing the fear that had torn her up since he walked out of the hospital room. “There is a part of him that’s still there, living it. I’m the new girl, the girl he flirts with and laughs with. The girl who reminds him of the guy he was precancer.”

  “I don’t believe that. Not from what I saw when he was around you. Not from everything Tuck told me about him.”

  “I don’t think he even realizes it. He put Kaylie and I in a tiny compartment of his life that would never touch the rest of his boxes, the boxes filled with his memories of Deanna and the life he wishes he still had.”

  * * *

  ALEX SHOVED HIS truck into Drive and pulled away from the park office. He was tired. So damned tired.

  Frustrated.

  Every morning Tuck asked him what his problem was. Every morning Alex told him to back off. He didn’t want to talk to Tuck about his world falling apart again so he did his work as quickly as he could and headed for one of the trails, not caring if it rained or was icy cold.

  Tonight he pulled into downtown and took a left at the second light. Despite the late hour the gates were still open so he pulled through and found the quiet spot under the red maple tree where they put Dee’s coffin to rest. Stared at it for a long time and then let the anger turn to sadness. Because she was gone. Really and truly gone, and there was nothing he could do to change that. No mantra he could chant that would change the way she’d died or the things they’d never gotten to do together.

  Like raise a daughter like Kaylie.

  He gripped the steering wheel and then banged his head lightly against his hands.

  She wasn’t his daughter. Why did he keep forgetting that?

  “I’m sorry.” His words were a whisper in the quiet cab. “I couldn’t stop it.” Emotion clogged his throat but he kept talking as if she might hear him. He apologized for the things they didn’t have time for, apologized for the way he’d jumped into a new life with Paige, apologized because the cancer took her before she could have a little girl like Kaylie. Wondered what Paige and Kaylie were doing that evening.