Chapter 1
After Raising My Daughter for 20 Years, She Told Me Not to Come to Her Engagement Party Because Her “Real Dad” Would Be There
I raised my daughter for more than twenty years, but three days before her engagement party, she looked me in the eyes and said, “Please don’t come. My real dad will be there.”
For a moment, I thought I had misunderstood her.
“Your real dad?”
Ashley looked uncomfortable.
“You know what I mean, Mark.”
I had married her mother when Ashley was two.
Her biological father, Kevin, disappeared before her third birthday.
I was the one who taught her to ride a bike.
I sat beside her hospital bed when she had her appendix removed.
I paid for braces, school trips, her first car, and most of her college tuition.
She had called me Dad since she was six.
But now, at twenty-three, she could barely look at me.
“Kevin says he wants to be part of my life again,” she whispered.
“And that means I can’t attend?”
She sighed.
“I don’t want him feeling uncomfortable.”
That hurt more than I expected.
“So you’re protecting the feelings of a man who missed twenty birthdays?”
“Please don’t make this harder.”
My wife, Susan, started crying.
“Ashley, Mark is your father in every way that matters.”
Ashley snapped, “He’s my stepfather.”
The room went completely silent.
I nodded and walked upstairs before she could see my eyes fill with tears.
On the night of the party, I stayed home while Susan went alone.
I had already paid the deposit on the restaurant, the photographer, and the champagne Ashley wanted.
At 9:40 p.m., Susan called me.
Her voice was shaking.
“Mark, Kevin never showed up.”
I closed my eyes.
“Is Ashley okay?”
“She’s been checking the entrance for three hours.”
Then I heard Ashley crying in the background.
A minute later, she took the phone.
“Dad?”
It was the first time she had called me that all week.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Can you please come?”
I grabbed my keys without saying another word.
But before I reached the door, my phone buzzed with a message from a number I didn’t recognize.
There was a photo attached of Kevin standing at an airport.
Underneath it, he had written, “Mark, Ashley never told you why she suddenly wanted me at that party, did she?”
May you like
Then a second message appeared.
“She didn’t invite me because she missed me. She offered me $25,000 to come—and you need to ask her where she got that money.”
