Chapter 1
"My 12-year-old daughter looked at the man who had raised her for nine years and shouted, “Stop acting like you’re my dad.” What she did next made me realize someone had been poisoning her against him.
We were eating dinner at our home outside Nashville when Emma shoved her plate away.
My husband, Daniel, calmly said, “Sweetheart, please put your phone down while we’re eating.”
Emma rolled her eyes.
“You can’t tell me what to do.”
Daniel froze.
I stared at her. “Excuse me?”
She crossed her arms.
“He’s not my father.”
The hurt on Daniel’s face disappeared almost instantly, but I saw it.
This was the man who had been there since Emma was three.
He taught her how to swim.
He stayed awake all night when she had pneumonia.
He attended every school play while her biological father never showed up.
Daniel quietly said, “I’m not trying to replace anyone.”
Emma laughed.
“Good, because you never could.”
“Emma!” I snapped.
She stood from the table.
“My real dad says Daniel only pretends to love me because he wants you.”
My stomach dropped.
Daniel looked at me.
“Her real dad?”
Emma’s biological father, Jason, hadn’t contacted her in almost seven years.
I slowly asked, “When did you speak to Jason?”
She grabbed her phone.
“That’s none of your business.”
I took it from her hand.
Emma screamed, “Give it back!”
Then she shoved Daniel when he tried to calm her down.
That was enough.
I stepped between them.
“You will never put your hands on him again.”
“He’s nobody to me!”
Daniel quietly walked out of the kitchen.
For the first time since I married him, I saw tears in his eyes.
I looked at Emma and said, “That man has loved you every single day when someone else chose not to.”
“You’re lying!”
“About what?”
She suddenly stopped shouting.
Then she said something that made my chest tighten.
“Dad told me why he disappeared.”
I stared at her.
“What exactly did Jason tell you?”
Emma unlocked her phone and held up a photograph I had never seen before.
It showed Daniel standing beside Jason twelve years ago.
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On the back of the photo, someone had written one sentence.
“Ask your mother what Daniel did the night your real father vanished.”
