Page 115 of Dearest Protector

“If this is about my father, then I definitely want to know,” she said wistfully. “Really, all I know is that his name was Julian Hayden, he grew up in the Bronx, and that he worked most of his life as a janitor here in New York. That may be how he and my mother met since he worked at the same theater where my mother performed when she was a ballerina here. My mother said very little about my father except for the fact that he had died before I was born. I’m assuming that he wasn’t well off financially, so she took on the burden of supporting me herself, and moved back to Florida when she got pregnant. I have so many questions, Ben, but I might never have those answers.”

I let out a sigh of relief. I’d learned some additional things about her father after having my private investigator dig a little more. I wasn’t sure I could give her a lot of answers to some of her important questions, but I could give her…something.

“The PI got me some info,” I told her.

She squeezed my hand. “Then I’m excited to find out what I can. Nothing factual is going to upset me, Ben. Okay, maybe I won’t be excited if it turns out that he was a serial killer or something, but I didn’t know him, and he wasn’t part of my life. I’m just…curious. I’d love to have some closure, but it won’t make or break me either way. I’m happy now, and nothing is going to change that or the way I feel about myself. I shared DNA with my bio dad, but that’s about it.”

I was going to do my best to give her the closure she sought.

She deserved it.

My mother had practically adopted her, and I knew Ariel was grateful for that because she’d never known unconditional love from her own mother.

We’d talked a lot about her childhood.

Ariel had come to the conclusion that her mother had loved her as much as she was capable of loving another person, but she was also realistic about her upbringing. She knew it was dysfunctional, and that she had deserved better than that conditional love her mother had given her.

Still, she had loved her mother, and she accepted the way she’d been, even though she was well aware that it wasn’t normal.

Her attitude didn’t surprise me since I knew Ariel, and I knew just how forgiving she could be.

Personally, I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive her mother for not loving Ariel without the conditions, but my woman’s view about her parent was probably healthier than mine.

I took her hand and led her inside the smaller art museum until we got to our destination.

“It turns out that you got your talent and passion for ballet from your mother,” I explained as we stopped in front of a collection. “But you may have gotten your artistic talent from a completely different source. Your father wasn’t just a janitor. He was an artist, too. But his talent wasn’t recognized until the tail end of his life. His passion was watercolors. This is his collection, sweetheart. I thought you might want to see them.”

I watched Ariel’s face as her jaw dropped.

It took a few minutes for my words to sink in, but when they did, she wandered around the room in fascination, taking in every piece of art her father had ever created.

I had to admit that Julian Hayden was good. Really good. It was obvious to me exactly where Ariel had gotten her passion for creating emotionally expressive pieces of art.

Most of his pictures were of the city of New York. In particular, a lot of the gardens in the city and Central Park.

“He really liked doing landscapes,” Ariel said in a hushed voice. “God, these are amazing. Now I really wished we would have met before he passed away.”

“I think he would have loved that, too,” a solemn male voice said as he approached Ariel. “Had he known that you existed, he would have sought you out, Ariel.”

She turned to look at the source of that voice.

I recognized the older man from a photo that the investigator had included in his file and put my hand out, “You’re Ernest Hayden, I presume. Ben Blackwood. Thank you for coming.”

I put my arm around Ariel as I told her, “Sweetheart, this is your father’s brother, Ernest. He graciously agreed to come and answer all of the questions he can for you.”

She looked stunned as she held out her hand and Ernest shook it. “Then you’re my…”

Her voice trailed off as tears formed in her eyes.

So much for her being unemotional and pragmatic about her father.

But I’d already known that wasn’t going to happen.

“I’m your uncle,” Ernest said as he shot her a charming smile. “The fact that I had a niece surprised me, too, young lady. Your father never married, and he had no idea that you even existed. I know my brother. He never would have ignored you if he would have known. You have his eyes.”

He motioned to Ariel and then to her father’s photo that was hanging on the wall in between two of his larger paintings.

I looked more closely at her father’s image and realized that Ariel did, in fact, have her father’s eyes. She actually had several of his features.

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