“I love you, sweet. I love you so much. How can I ever thank you?” He held her at arm’s length. “How in bloody hell did you know?”
“I suspected. After what Delores said to me when I called her to tell her about your heart attack, then what she said in the hospital room, then when I questioned you about it later, it wasn’t hard to see there were some major pieces missing from that puzzle. I decided to go looking for them.”
“And what if it’d turned out my mother’s version was correct?”
“I don’t think your mother could tell the truth if it bit her on the freaking ass.” Because of their pre-emptive publicity strike, Delores never had a chance to sully their name. They hadn’t heard from her since, although Tyler’s brother and sister were tickled to find out they’d made Delores mad and spoiled her plans.
They called Thomas back and Tyler explained as much as he could over the phone. When he finished, he handed it to Nevvie. “He wants to speak to you, love.” Then he went into the bathroom.
“Hi.”
“Ahem.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know if this was going to work out or not. If it didn’t, I wasn’t even going to tell Tyler about him. I met him first to make sure my theory was right.”
He fell quiet for a moment. “Is he really okay? Is Ty handling it okay?”
“Yeah. He is.” She yawned. “Now I’m going to say goodnight because I’m exhausted. We’ll call you tomorrow.”
She put the phone on the table and crawled under the covers. Tyler joined her a few minutes later. He looked like he’d been crying.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
He curled around her. “I dare think it’s safe to say I’m better than I’ve been in years, love.”
* * * *
They spent as much time visiting with Andrew as they could before they left. Before they said good-bye at the airport, he hugged them both, Tyler first.
When he hugged Nevvie he whispered, “Thank you so much. I am forever in your debt, my child.”
She smiled when she stepped away. “No problem, Dad. That’s what family’s for.”
Andrew smiled.
Back home nearly half a day later, it was the middle of the night when the limo dropped them off at the house. They left their luggage inside the front door and Thomas awoke as they undressed and crawled into bed with him. This time, he was in the middle as Nevvie and Tyler tightly snuggled on either side.
He kissed Tyler, then Nevvie. “Welcome home, guys.”
Late the next morning, Nevvie woke to find herself curled in Tommy’s arms. She heard Tyler in the kitchen with Adam and Mikey.
Thomas kissed the back of her neck. “Fucking sneaky woman, that’s what you are. Evil Genius Junior, I swear to God.”
She laughed and rolled to face him. “He’s so sweet, Tommy. I can’t wait for you to meet him. I’m going to fly him over here. I’m going to try to talk him into moving here.”
“Nev, is this for you or Tyler? Honestly?”
She frowned. “It’s for the boys. I want them to know their grandfather.”
“Uh huh. Sure. Right.”
She smacked his shoulder. “You’re just mad I didn’t let you in on it.”
“Damn straight.”
“You would have told him.”
He hesitantly nodded. “You’re probably right. What if this had backfired?”
“But it didn’t. That’s the point. Everything went perfectly.”
Three weeks later, all five of them were waiting at TampaInternationalAirport when Andrew’s flight arrived. Tyler entertained Adam; Thomas held Mikey. Nevvie had a thought and leaned close to Tommy.
“Do you think Eddie and Pete have any single friends?”
“Oh, fu-freak no, baby girl. Don’t go matchmaking.”
“Well why not? If he meets someone—”
Thomas glared. “No.”
When Andrew finally emerged from the terminal shuttle, Nevvie waved and pointed him out to Adam. “Go meet Grandpa Andy,” she said.
Needing no encouragement, Adam ran up to him. Andrew scooped him into his arms. “Well, hello there, young fellow. You must be Adam.”
“You must be Gwampa Andy!”
He smiled. “I suppose I must.”
Thomas leaned in. “Holy fucking shit! Looks just like him!”
“Don’t swear in front of the kids. And yes, I know. Spooky, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
Tyler walked over and hugged him, and then tried to take Adam, who refused to leave his new-found “gwampa.” They walked over to Thomas and Nevvie. Nevvie hugged him. Andrew nervously smiled.
“Hello. You must be Thomas.”
Thomas leaned in and gave him a one-armed hug, both men trying to avoid smushing the boys in their arms. “Nice to finally meet you, Andrew.”
Tyler beamed. “Well, let’s go home!”
* * * *
Andrew had never been to the States before. After his initial nervousness faded, he quickly settled in. Nevvie stood in the kitchen one afternoon and watched him playing with the boys in the living room. Thomas walked in and noticed her contemplation. He slipped his arm around her shoulders and kissed her neck.
“What’re you watching?” he softly asked.
She snuggled closer and nodded toward the living room. “Isn’t this great?”
“Yeah, you did good, baby girl. Real good. I’m proud of you.”
Tyler emerged from his study and joined Andrew and the boys in the living room.
“This is the way life’s supposed to be,” she said. “Our family’s complete.”
He pulled her tightly against him and kissed the top of her head, rested his chin there. “No arguments from me, babe. No arguments from me.”
Over the next two months, they flew Andrew to Florida five times, each stay longer than the previous one. Tyler and his father spent a lot of time bonding and catching up. Nevvie enjoyed having a father in her life again. Mikey was a little too young to understand, but Adam adored having Gwampa Andy around.
And she set her sights firmly on convincing him to move to the States permanently, to come live with them. Or at the very least to allow them to buy him a vacation home nearby. Adam emailed Andrew nearly every day when he wasn’t with them, and was becoming very adept at using the computer as a result.
Three days after Andrew flew home to London following his latest visit, Nevvie lay curled on the couch with Tyler. She watched TV while he read. With her head in his lap, she knew she could easily go to sleep. Thomas, having a bad day with pain, had taken a couple of Tylenol PM and went to bed early.
“Perhaps we should do a little digging into your past,” Tyler offhandedly suggested.
It took her a moment to process his words. “What?”
He glanced down at her. “Your family.”
She froze. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
He waited for a moment. “You were never curious about your birth parents?”
She shrugged. “Not really.” When she was younger, yes, after she first found out. Then she decided she didn’t want to know. She was too busy trying to survive on her own to worry about it. And at the time, she carried way too much resentment and anger in her heart to even care.
“There are valid reasons for finding out.”
“They didn’t want me. That’s all I need to know.” Old pain threatened to bubble to the surface.
He put his book aside. “Love, that might not be true and you know it.”
She remained silent.
“Think about Adam and Mikey. You should know your family history for them if not for yourself.”
“That’s a low fucking blow.” The boys were asleep, so she didn’t worry about them hearing.
Tyler remained undaunted. “Love, what if you have any genetic conditions we need to know about? We already know Adam should be screened for cardiac issues, but we know nothing about your history.”
She chewed on that, could come up with no valid argument to counter it. “No.”
He waited a moment to try again. “Bob could handle it all.”
“I would have to get in touch with Mary,” Nevvie said. She had trouble thinking of her as “Mom” even though that’s what she’d grown up calling her until Nevvie was fifteen and had learned she was adopted. As far as Nevvie was concerned, Peggy Kinsey was her mom, in title and heart.
And while she’d always love and miss her “Daddy,” Andrew was now her dad.
“Love, Bob could—”
“I don’t want to talk about this right now, Ty,” she muttered before rolling over on the couch.
He sighed. “Very well.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
A week later, Thomas had a bad morning with pain. Tyler volunteered to drive him to the office. Nevvie had already planned on going out with the boys. The little boys. Because sometimes when her four boys—five if you counted Andrew—got together, it was hard to tell the adults from the children the way the men acted.
They were both good dads. And Andrew was a great grandfather.
She stopped by a florist on the way and then drove to a place she hadn’t visited in far too many years. Blinking back her tears, Nevvie loaded Mikey in the stroller and let Adam walk along beside her.
It took a few minutes of searching. She worried she’d have to go to the cemetery office when she finally recognized one of the older headstones, an odd name she recalled from her youth. Her feet remembered the path from that point.
The trees were taller and provided more shade than they had when she was eight and stood by her mother’s side at the grave. It’d just been the two of them and a few scattered friends and distant relatives on a scorching hot Tampa summer afternoon. Nevvie remembered the extra misery of the borrowed black dress two sizes too big for her as the blazing sun beat down on them.
Her mother had tightly gripped her hand as the cemetery staff lowered her father’s coffin into the ground.
Nevvie spotted the headstone and her feet slowed until she stood before it. Adam stilled his soft babbling and looked at it, then her.
“Are you sad, Mommy?”
She sat in front of the headstone and tucked the flowers against it. Then she pulled Adam into her lap and kissed the top of his head. “Yes, baby. Mommy’s sad.”
He laid his head against her shoulder. “Don’t be sad, Mommy. I love you. So do Daddy and Poppa and Gwampa.” His big blue eyes widened, studying her.
The laugh forced its way through her sadness. He was so much like Tyler, always striving to make people feel better. “I know you do, baby.”
He pointed. “Who is that?”
“That’s your Grandpa Michael.”
“We’ve got Baby Mikey.”
“That’s right. Baby Mikey is named after Grandpa Michael, just like you were named after Grandpa Adam.”
He turned in her lap so he could study the headstone. “I’m sorry they gone.”
She hugged him. “Me too, baby.”
“When we gonna see Gwampa Andy again?”
Nevvie smiled. “He’s coming over to visit next week.”
“I miss Gwampa Andy.”
“Me too, baby.” She kissed Adam’s head and hugged him.
Mikey fussed a little in his stroller. Nevvie reached out and gently rocked it. He settled after a moment. Much like his father, he preferred to be on the move when possible.
Nevvie didn’t want anything to do with her step-father, Preacher Jim. While the pain and betrayal of her mother leaving her on her own had haunted Nevvie for years, from the hindsight of motherhood, she could understand why. A woman widowed, with a young daughter to care for, suddenly on her own trying to do the best she could most likely without any financial support from others. Then she’d met Preacher Jim. She’d had two sons with him and when he demanded Mary turn Nevvie over to a cousin’s care before they moved out west, she’d probably felt like she had no alternative.
Nevvie hoped if nothing else the woman had found happiness with the asshole.
Nevvie never would have been raped at age eighteen if she hadn’t had to work and support herself. Her car wouldn’t have broken down, she wouldn’t have accepted his ride…
She closed her eyes and tried not to dwell on that. She wouldn’t have dropped out of USF and lost her academic scholarship, either. Wouldn’t have moved to New Orleans and met Alex and nearly died twice at his hands.
Then again, she never would have met Thomas and Tyler.
Or had her sons. Or Andrew and Peggy and the rest of the Kinsey clan. Pete and Eddie.
It was time to forgive and move on. It didn’t mean she wanted to be friends with Mary, but Nevvie knew she needed to heal or she’d never get past it. And she realized she wanted answers.
Needed answers.
Over the years she’d demonized Preacher Jim in her mind. She’d resented his dictatorial ways and fundamentalist religion. He was nothing like her warm, loving Daddy. While she’d always known she didn’t quite fit in exactly right, she also realized how much her adopted dad had loved her. Preacher Jim never even tried, yet he had no problem fathering two sons he doted over with Mary.
As an adult Nevvie knew it wasn’t her job to psychoanalyze why her mother did what she did. It was time to put on her big girl panties and face her past once and for all, rip the scab off and clean out the wound so it could finally heal for good. Time for her to take to heart the advice she gave to Tyler and Thomas about their emotional scars. She was no longer an abandoned teenager, but a mom with two loving husbands who would never leave her, and a huge extended network of family and friends to support her.
The only family that truly mattered now was the one she’d willingly chosen to be a part of.
And she apparently had a backbone made of steel, even if she never realized it before.
After another twenty minutes at Michael Barton’s grave, Nevvie stood and brushed off her jeans. With Adam quietly walking by her side, she returned to the car.
* * * *
Later that night, Thomas had to take a prescription pain pill, his first in a while, and go to bed early. Nevvie put the boys down for the night and found Tyler in his study. He sat behind his desk and stared at his laptop screen.
“Hello, love.” He held out his arms and she crawled into his lap. He’d always held her like this, even before they were involved. It made her feel safe and comforted.