New Year Second Chance

Emily draws a breath. “Well, I can say with a hundred percent certainty that Jenna hasn’t seen anyone since she came home. She hasn’t been on a single date.”

“So how did she find Shanna’s father, then?”

“I think you’re confused, Dax. That’s not how it is. I just told you there hasn’t been any other man in Jenna’s life.”

Bullshit. If I was the only man Jenna ever had sex with, then Shanna…

My thoughts screech to a halt. Fuck.

Then Shanna is mine. Maybe that’s why it was so hard for Jenna to take me back – because I didn’t just leave her. I left her with a baby. I left them both. Maybe that’s why she was overly cautious. Maybe that’s why the first time I came to her house, she said Shanna was her niece – because she didn’t want me to know the truth and use Shanna as a reason to get her back, which she must have known all along was a good reason. Maybe that’s why she was reluctant to have me carry Shanna, why she didn’t want me talking about Shanna.

And now, she wants me to leave them both alone because she thinks the fact that I have a child might complicate my career or stand in the way of my success.

But she’s wrong.

I finish the rest of my coffee in one gulp. Then I pull a bill out of my wallet and put it on the table under my empty mug.

“I have to go,” I tell Emily.

She nods. “Good luck.”

I don’t need luck, though, I think as I rush back to the car. I know what I have to do.

~

I ring the doorbell beside the front door of Jenna’s house for the fifth time. Finally, it opens. Jenna stands in the doorway and puts her hand on her hip. She lets out a big sigh.

“I should have known it was you. Didn’t I tell you to leave me alone?”

“I’m here to apologize, Jenna,” I tell her. “I should have trusted you. I should have trusted that you had a reason for keeping the truth from me.”

Jenna purses her lips and looks away.

“And I want you to know I’m not disappointed in you,” I go on. “I know you can still be a NASA scientist, and I’ll help you do that, but if you don’t want to, that’s fine. I won’t be disappointed. If there’s anyone I should be disappointed in, it’s me because I wasn’t there for you.”

Jenna shakes her head. “None of this is your fault.”

“But I should have been there for you. For you and for Shanna. I should have been by your side when you gave birth to her.”

She gives me a puzzled look. “What?”

I take her hand. “I should have been there to help you take care of her and provide for her needs. I mean, that’s what fathers do, right?”

Jenna pulls her hand away. “Dax…”

“I know I wasn’t there, but I will be from now on. I don’t care what other people think or what they will say. I am not going to be like my father. I’m going to take care of you and Shanna and – ”

“Dax!” Jenna raises her voice as she grabs my arms. “You’re wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

She lets go of my arms and draws a deep breath. “Shanna isn’t your child. She isn’t even mine.”

My shoulders sink. What?

Chapter Twelve

Jenna

“Shanna is my sister’s child,” I explain to Dax in the living room. “Sarah was thirty-three weeks pregnant when the accident happened. They brought her to the hospital but she didn’t make it. As soon as the doctors lost her, they started moving to save her baby. Shanna was born a few minutes after Sarah died, although I don’t think ‘born’ is the word. She was just taken out of my sister’s corpse.”

I still remember being ushered out of the trauma room by a nurse. I was still in shock from learning I had just lost my sister after being told my mother was dead and I could barely move. I remember that I wanted to cry but I couldn’t. I just felt so shattered and empty.

Moments later, a baby was taken out of the room in an incubator. A doctor spoke to me, but I can’t remember a word she said apart from the fact that Sarah had a baby girl. The doctors wheeled her away. I stood there alone for a few minutes and then a doctor told me I could go back into the room. Sarah was on the bed. They had taken the machines off her. They had stitched her back up and bandaged her, put a blanket over her. I sat by her bed for God knows how long just staring at her face. Then I started sobbing.

Dax places a hand on my knee. “If the doctors hadn’t done that, Shanna wouldn’t be here now.”