Page 37 of Her Gentle Daddy

Gabby looked down at her ticket and stood, making her way up to the window. By the time she approached the older woman whose nameplate said her name was Glenda, she was feeling frazzled with nerves.

“Hi. I need a copy of my birth certificate.”

The woman peered at Gabby over her glasses and popped gum in her mouth as she tapped away on her computer.

“Name?”

“Gabrielle Ellis.”

“Birthday?”

Gabby rattled off her date of birth and answered several other questions that the woman asked. Her mother had told her that she’d been born in Seattle, but she didn’t know that for a fact, which made the time the woman took staring at her computer screen seem like an eternity.

“That will cost twenty-five dollars, and you’ll get it in the mail in four to six weeks.”

Everything around Gabby felt as though it had come to a screeching halt. Four to six weeks? She just needed her father’s name.

“So you found it? I was born here? I don’t actually need a copy, I just need my father’s name. I’ve never met him, and I’m trying to…”

Her voice cracked, and she felt herself shutting down as the realization sat in the pit of her stomach that she would have to wait longer. The courthouse should have been her first stop when she got into town, except that the thought of possibly having a sister was too much for her to handle without going into a fit of panic. But since she’d been with Sean, she wasn’t feeling so anxious about it, and instead, she actually felt kind of excited about possibly having a family member.

“You’re trying to find him?” the woman asked gently.

Gabby raised her eyes to the woman and shook her head.

“My mother told me he died but that he had another child. I am trying to find out if it’s true that I do actually have a sister.”

The woman stared at Gabby for a moment before she began typing away on her keyboard again and snapping her gum. She wasn’t sure if the woman had just dismissed her or just assumed Gabby would leave. When Gabby started to turn away from the window, the woman spoke again.

“Here, this is all I can help you with, and if anybody asks, it was Sheila who helped you.”

Gabby turned to see the woman holding a piece of paper between her fingers. She looked from the piece of paper, back to the nameplate, and up to the woman’s face.

“Sheila is a real bitch sometimes. Take the paper, honey. Good luck, kiddo.”

Glenda smiled and winked at her before thrusting the paper into Gabby’s hands.

Backing away from the counter, Gabby squeezed her hand around the paper and walked down the stairs, holding onto the railing tightly so she didn’t fall. Her body was trembling with both anxiety and excitement.

Walking out of the courthouse into the warm afternoon sun, she walked quickly to the car and got in, locking the doors immediately. Her hands trembled as she unfolded the paper and stared down at a name scribbled across the sheet. It was a girl’s name. Not her father’s. Did the lady not understand what she had needed? She should have just ordered her birth certificate.

Quickly sending a text to Sean to let him know she was heading home, she pulled the vehicle out of the parking stall and started driving, her mind thinking of all the possibilities on the way. If she really did have a sister, there was a good possibility that she would want nothing to do with Gabby. Or maybe her sister was a terrible person that Gabby would want nothing to do with. There were so many scenarios in her mind that by the time she got home, she decided to sit on it for a bit longer. She didn’t want to disappoint herself or get hurt in the process of trying to find a long-lost family member - especially when she had Sean, who made her feel like a whole person for the first time in her life.

He loved her unconditionally. At least he had so far. They hadn’t been intimate yet besides kissing, and even though she found Sean to be attractive, even enough that she found her panties to be wet on many occasions, she was scared of intimacy like that. The only kind she had ever experienced before had been forced and violent, leaving her with awful memories and nightmares about it.

She pulled into the driveway and stuffed the paper into the small backpack purse that had a puppy dog’s face and ears stitched into it that Sean had bought her, and climbed out of the car. When she got to the porch, the front door opened, and her Daddy was smiling at her.

15

SEAN

Letting Gabby go out on her own was difficult. He was on edge the entire time worrying about her. He hated the thought that she might have a panic attack while out on her own where he wouldn’t be able to help her. She was precious to him, and he would be devastated if anything happened to her.

He wanted to press her for more information about what she was doing. As her Daddy, it was his job to make sure she wasn’t doing anything unsafe, but he knew he had to tread carefully with Gabby. If he pushed the subject, he could potentially scare her or push her away, so he had to trust that when she said it was nothing bad or unsafe that she was telling the truth.

It was killing him not to know, though. He didn’t like having secrets between them. Not that it was actually a secret because she wasn’t hiding that she needed to do something by herself. She just wasn’t telling him what it was.

“Hi, baby girl,” he said from the doorway.

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