Part 3

Owen took longer. His heart rate dipped for a few seconds, and the doctor had to help him out. When he cried, I lost my voice. After several hours of observation, both babies were stable.

At three in the morning, a text arrived from Garrett.

Have everything ready by nine. I have a meeting and I’m not arguing again.

He didn’t ask about the delivery. He didn’t ask about his daughter. He had no idea Owen existed. I saved the message alongside the photos of the check and the agreement. I didn’t want to doubt what had happened just because someone, later on, tried to soften it.

My father arrived at dawn, with no bodyguards and no photographers, his shirt wrinkled from the flight. He was sixty-three years old and had spent decades building shipping routes between Long Beach, Savannah, and Houston. But when he saw the two bassinets, he froze, the same way he had when I was eight and showed him the bike I’d fixed by myself.

“Two?” he asked, running a hand over his eyes.

“Harper and Owen. Your grandchildren.”

We hugged. Garrett had convinced me that Dad wanted to control my life, and between his pride and mine, we had drifted apart.

“I didn’t come to tell you what to do,” he said when I showed him the check. “Just tell me what you need.”

“To separate from him. To protect both of them. And to understand why Garrett had this tucked into my papers.”

I showed him the Beacon Communications authorization. Dad recognized that the company was reviewing marketing contracts because of a rise in expenses, but he didn’t know that particular vendor. He didn’t pick up the phone to order anyone fired. He asked where my suspicion came from, and he listened while I explained that, before leaving the office, I had compared bids for a port advertising campaign.

Beacon had submitted the highest proposal and still won the contract, with no clear technical justification I could see.

“I kept a copy of the comparison chart in my personal email,” I told him. “They sent it to me for review. I can turn it over through the proper channel. But first I want to confirm who is behind that agency.”

I asked a family law attorney, Dana Whitfield, to come to the hospital. My father knew her, but I was the one who hired her and told her the whole story. Dana reviewed the agreement, underlined the waiver of child support, and shook her head.

“Support belongs to your children. A private agreement can’t erase it, least of all one signed during labor. And nobody decides paternity on a whim, either.”