“You have violated my daughter, kidnapping and more, I’m sure. Your life and career are in ruins and you cannot take her from me.”
“You’re full of shit,” my father interjects.
“Her birth certificate is in my back pocket. See for yourself.”
I nod toward my father, giving him the go ahead to retrieve the piece of paper on which my career, life and reputation hang. What’s printed on there will be entered into evidence. I’ll have to stand in court while they read it out.
My father slips out an aged, white folded paper, my mother, Margaret and Summer all gathering around him while I keep my gun on the two men and Kezia moves next to the group, taking the paper from my father.
“I’ve never seen this,” she says. “No one ever told me where exactly I was born, or my birthday… And anyway, I’ve counted sixteen summers, I’m positive. How can I remember sixteen summers if I’m only sixteen years old?”
“Exactly,” her father says with a laugh. “Sixteen summers. Sixteen years old.”
“No way. I didn’t start counting before I was one!”
“Look at you?” Her father sneers. “You’re a mutant, but I was going to get top dollar for you, Marco was prepared to pay, but only after he confirmed you were still intact.” Intact. He says it like she’s an animal. “But you’ve ruined yourself. You’re soiled now, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”
My father shoves the barrel of his gun right up against Thadius’s nose and he falls silent, shrinking back, as Margaret moves closer, pulling the paper to one side, leaning down while her other hand covers her lips.
Her eyes dart to me, then the men, then at the paper, and finally at Kezia.
“She’s not sixteen.” Margaret snarls at the two men, then fixes her eyes on me. “She’s not sixteen, Merrick.”
“What do you mean? How do you know?”
“Because, she’s my daughter.”
It’s pushing mid-night as I sit, looking out at the moon, stroking Kezia’s hair as she sleeps with her head on my lap.
I don’t have the heart to move her and possibly wake her because she’s had one hell of a day. I have too, and Margaret and Summer…
Life is stranger than fiction, for sure.
After I called for back-up and we took Thadius and his side-kick Marco into custody, we got down to figure out what the fuck was really going on.
We pieced things together the best we could.
With info from Margaret and Kezia, it looks like Margaret was right. Kezia is her daughter. Summer’s fraternal twin.
The allergies were one clue, but Kezia’s unique brown/blue eyes apparently were her biological father’s genetic anomaly as well.
Those things could have been coincidental, but then Margaret laid out the facts surrounding the home for unwed mothers where she gave birth, and the name of the doctor, which matched the information on Summer’s birth certificate.
When the doctor falsified Kezia’s birth certificate, he didn’t think to change the fact that Kezia was a fraternal twin. The birth year was changed in another forgery attempt by her family in order to try to frame me, but in the end there was more proof to show they were the criminals and when the district attorney gets finished with them, they won’t be moving around and playing their games for a very long time.
The list of crimes committed since the birth of Summer and Kezia went on and on and the people Kezia was sold to by the doctor do this for a living, so after some investigating, there wasn’t much doubt.
What I do know for certain, is my babygirl is here to stay. I’ll do everything in my power to help her adjust to the changes and new information about how her life began and, in the end, I know it was all meant to be.
Some cosmic plan set in motion long ago to bring us all here to the same place and settle each of our souls in its own way.
The last thing we talked about before she fell asleep was the dark-haired girl back at the festival. It’s her ‘sister’ of sorts. She made me promise I would do what I could to get her away as well, and I can’t say no to my baby, so I’ll get to figuring that out as soon as I can.
Tomorrow, Kezia will be wearing an engagement ring. She asked me how I knew they had taken her, so I had to admit the little gold ankle bracelet and charm I gave her was also a GPS tracker.
She twisted up her face for a second, pretending to be mad pointing a finger at my nose. It didn’t last. I told her I would keep her safe, and that is what I’ll do.
My little sprite. She will finally have her home.
And so will I.
Chapter 14
Kezia
“I still feel like I’m dreaming.” I look up at the gazebo covered with lilacs and peonies, the sweet scent of the flowers still hanging in the air hours after we were married inside the white structure in the center of the town park. It’s only been less than two weeks since the day we met, and now we are husband and wife.