piece of paper, okay? It might tell us who your parents are.”
She didn’t move a muscle as he carefully pulled her sweater away from her shivering body and retrieved the baggie containing the note. He took a deep, relieved breath as he stepped away from her. Using his teeth, he unsealed the baggie and pulled out one of two sheets of paper from inside it.
He gave the first sheet a quick scan and said into the phone, “It says, ‘Will, I’ve dealt with her for four years. Now it’s your turn.’”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” Will said, flipping the baggie over so he could see what else it contained. “There’s a legal document in here. It says it’s a certificate of…it says…”
He didn’t remember sitting on the ground, but the next thing he knew, he was on his ass with his dad’s voice getting louder and louder in his ear.
“William, talk to me!”
Will blinked and attempted to free his tongue. “I…”
“What the hell is going on?”
“I…it’s a birth certificate.”
“Well, that’s good. It’ll make it easier for the authorities to find her parents.”
“Dad, it says I’m her father.”
There was a pause. “That can’t be, son. The note said she’s four years old. That means you’d have been…”
“Seventeen,” he said, calculating the conception based on the child’s July birthdate.
“But I’ve always told you to be careful. Will…”
Will closed his eyes and fought a wave of nausea. This couldn’t be happening. He was only twenty-two years old, for God’s sake.
He was just a kid.
“Dad,” he managed, “she has our eyes.”
The silence lasted a lot longer this time. When his dad spoke again, he had clearly arrived at his own decision.
“All right, William. Here’s what’s going to happen now. You’re going to change that little girl into some clean clothes and make sure she’s warm and fed. I’m going to get on the first flight to Denver so we can work on checking the validity of that birth certificate. But from this moment, she’s your responsibility.”
Panic clawed at his chest. “Dad, there’s no way I can do this.”
“The hell you can’t. It’s just like what you do when you’re pitching. You don’t start the game, but you save the win for the pitcher who did. Well, you’re going to do the same thing for that little girl. What’s her name?”
“Katherine,” Will read off the birth certificate, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Katherine? Well, that’s awfully adult sounding, isn’t it? She’ll be our little Katie. Now you go take care of her. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
The phone went dead. Will and Katie stared at each other from across the foyer for a long time. Neither spoke a word.
They both seemed to know their lives would never be the same.
Chapter Two
“You have known this conversation was coming, my daughter. You really should not be so surprised.”
Jasmine stared at her father, who was in the process of pruning one of his prized Rhododendrons a few feet away. His face wasn’t even visible beneath the wide-brimmed gardening hat he wore.
Because he couldn’t see her, she supposed he had inferred her surprise due to how still she had become. Her hands were buried in the bag of soil she’d been using to plant some new snapdragons in pots her father would later place in his greenhouse until the following month when spring officially arrived.
The scent of damp earth blended with the odor of decomposing leaves and pine needles from the nearby pile she and her father had raked earlier. Usually those scents would have offered her comfort. That wasn’t the case now as she battled to come up with a response for her father that didn’t sound horribly ungrateful.
“I am surprised, Bàba,” she said at last. Her voice sounded calmer than her thudding heart indicated. She managed to extricate her hands from the bag of soil and carefully remove her gardening gloves as she went on, “You know I’m working really hard on my rehab. Once I get clearance from Dr. Parker to dance full time again, my former internship advisor has assured me she’ll make some connections for me with local ballet companies.”
Her father issued a low sigh and turned from the Rhododendron to meet her gaze. “It is always a wait for something with you. First it was waiting to enter university after high school so you could pursue your dancing career for six months. Then it was the injury your junior year once you finally did enter your degree