“Wait a second,” I say, stopping all of my thoughts because my world just imploded. It’s spinning around me, and I’m in the center watching my life spiral out of control. “Did you say…our daughter came to find you?”
Cammy lifts her face and I see that her eyes are filled with tears. Her bottom lip juts out slightly, and it’s quivering like the rest of her body is. In an instant, all I see is an upset seventeen-year-old girl. A sound like someone just tied a knot around her throat escapes as she begins to cry, and it breaks everything inside of me. Whenever Cammy cried, I felt like crying too. I couldn’t stand it when the girl I loved was in pain, and I couldn’t do anything to fix it. Her tears still seem to have a similar effect on me. “She came to find me—us.”
I close my eyes, feeling them fill up with tears that I will not be able to control, not if my life were to depend on it. “Did the adoptive parents find you or something? The adoption was closed, and I thought that was the end.”
“No,” Cammy says softly. “It was just Ever.”
“But…only—she’s only—today’s her birthday. She’s only thirteen, and…D.C., she wasn’t living in D.C., right?” I ask, having a hard time putting words together. Everything feels hazy, like I’ve been whacked over the head with something heavy.
“She came to find me on her own. I don’t know how she found me, AJ, but she found me.”
“Where is she now? What does she look like? Is she okay? Is she—” I’m frantic, panicking, completely discombobulated.
Cameron holds her hands up, gesturing for me to relax. “Okay, okay. I know this is a lot. I almost passed out when she came to my front door. It was the strangest thing, AJ. She was standing there, and I could have—should have—assumed she was a random kid, selling Girl Scout cookies or something, but the moment I saw those eyes—your eyes, those crazy Caribbean blue eyes of yours, I knew it was our daughter. I didn’t even confirm it…I just threw my arms around her and didn’t let go for a long time. She let me hold her, AJ. She didn’t make me let go,” she croaks through harder cries.
I don’t know what else to do other than wrap my arms around her and hold her as tightly as I’ve wanted to hold on to her for so long. “Can I meet her? Where is she right now?”
“With Casper,” she sniffles. “At the hotel down the street.”
“Casper?” I question, sucking in a breath. “Casper?”
“My fiancé,” she says.
“Casper?” I ask again. “Like, the ghost?”
She laughs through her tears. “He’s never heard that one before,” she jokes, waving a finger at me.
“You’re engaged to a Casper?”
“Yes,” she snaps with a small smile. “I am.”
The smile has fallen from my face, though. “Is he good to you? He could be named Dog Shit for all I care, as long as he’s good to you.”
She presses her lips together, and the smile lines tracing her mouth deepen. “When I see him, he’s great. Works a lot, travels even more. You know how it can be. He’s an attorney.”
“Your dad’s dream, huh?” I add in. I never knew much about her parents, but I know nothing was ever good enough for their Cammy.
“Yeah, Mom and Dad love him,” she shrugs.
“Do you?” Too far, AJ. Too far. First time speaking to this girl in over a dozen years. This is none of my business.
“Of course,” she says. The conversation comes to an awkward pause, and I take the hint about dropping the relationship questions as she puts her hands over her eyes. “Anyway, how about you? You have a wife. Any kids?”
“Yeah, I have a wife, Tori, and we have a one-year-old little boy, Gavin.”
Cammy gives me a genuine smile and places her hand on my knee. “It makes me so happy to hear that you got over your promise of never having another child. I always thought you would make a great father.”
“Wasn’t planned, but everything does have a reason for happening. That’s for damn sure.”
“And I’m going to take a guess that you’re working for your dad now?” Her fingers pinch at the shred from the knee-hole of my jeans.
“Hunter and I are running the show, but yeah.”
“Your life looks pretty perfect to me, AJ.”
“Looks aren’t everything,” I tell her. Her eyes sag a bit with despair, maybe recognizing the truth in my words, maybe feeling sorry for my words, maybe feeling them for herself.
“So, Ever, did she run away?” The questions pop into my head, one by one. It isn’t okay that our thirteen-year-old daughter showed up at Cammy’s house on her own and out of the blue. Something must have caused that to happen.
“Yes, she ran away from a foster home,” she says.
I stand up from the couch before my mind has a moment to tell me to breathe and stay seated. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“She had only been there for two weeks.”