A Walk Down the Aisle

Sophie studied the features of the tiny, blue-haired girl, and realized that the girl was older than she looked. Just about Sophie’s five foot two inches. The girl—Tori—her features were her own. Tori’s very blue eyes sparked with pent-up anger.

Then she searched her upper lip. There. The tiniest, faintest of scars. Something no one would notice unless they were looking for it. There was the scar.

Tori. Her daughter’s name was Tori. The annual letters Tori’s parents sent via the adoption agency never mentioned her name. They simply included a few pictures, and a page or two of their daughter’s accomplishments and highlights of her year.

“Tori,” Sophie whispered. It was the first time she’d ever said her daughter’s name. Until now, she’d simply been Baby Girl, even though Sophie knew she was no longer a baby.

She gulped in air, trying to fill her lungs.

Colton said, “Sophie?” and she looked at him. She saw the moment that he realized this girl had spoken the truth. Tori was her daughter, and Sophie knew exactly three things about her. She was fourteen. She’d dyed her probably blond hair blue. And she was angry.

She was very, very angry.

“She’s mine,” she whispered, sure for more reasons than the girl’s looks, scar or height. Something in her yearned to take this girl into her arms and hold her in a way she hadn’t ever been permitted to. Something in her recognized the angry woman-child as her daughter.

“I don’t know what to say,” she admitted to both Colton and Tori.

Colton took charge. He led the two of them into the barn and away from the prying eyes of the wedding guests. The barn was strung with white lights, and there were makeshift tables covered in elegant white tablecloths set up with white china and linen napkins. Sophie loved the juxtaposition of the rustic setting and the formal place settings. The same contrast could be seen in the humble daisy and more formal white rose centerpieces.

The girl looked around the barn, and her anger seemed to grow. It radiated from her every pore like some hot, red aura.

Sophie wanted to say something to comfort her, but didn’t know where to begin. “Tori, I—”

The girl turned away. Sophie wasn’t sure if she was crying or simply too angry to speak. But Colton obviously had a lot to say. He started with, “You had a daughter and you never thought to mention it?”

Sophie wasn’t sure how to explain things to Colton or Tori. She didn’t know anything about the girl’s parents, but she knew that Colton’s family was a loving, supportive one. They filled the first two rows of seats in the field. How could she make him understand what it had been like for her at that time?

And how could she explain to this girl why she’d given her up? What words could a mother use to make Tori understand something like that?

Sophie swallowed. “Fourteen years ago, I was little more than a child myself when I gave birth to a baby girl. I never held her, and caught only the barest glimpse of her as they whisked her away.”

Tori whirled around and, rather than speaking to Sophie, she looked at Colton. “Yeah, she got rid of me. I was a burden. A mistake.” She faced Sophie, and practically screamed at her, “Did you ever even meet my parents or did you just hand me over to the agency and let them pick? Did you worry that they might beat me? Maybe they’d be crazy. Maybe they would go on and have a bunch of their own biological children and remind me every day that I’m not really theirs.”

Sophie knew that the girl had thrown those things out to hurt her, and even if none of them were true, Tori had succeeded. “I didn’t meet your parents, but I picked them.” She remembered that battle. She’d lost so many other fights then, but that had been one she’d been adamant about winning. If only the girl knew how hard Sophie had fought for at least that much—the ability to pick the couple who would raise her daughter.

“And I know that your mother had a hysterectomy, so she couldn’t have had any other children. Maybe they adopted more, but they didn’t have any biological kids. That’s one of the reasons I chose them. I wanted to be sure you were with people who would treasure you.”

Her answer didn’t mollify the girl. “Yeah, well, maybe they beat me.”

“Did they? Do they?” Sophie asked. She couldn’t begin to count the number of times she’d had a dream like that—a nightmare. Her daughter was hungry. Her daughter was lost. Her daughter was hurt. And knowing that there was nothing she could do to help this child made it worse.

Tori was silent and finally shook her head. “No one beats me. My dad’s a pacifist. He won’t even kill flies.”

“Oh.” Sophie had so many questions. Fourteen years’ worth of questions, but she sensed that the girl wasn’t here to answer them. Tori wanted answers of her own.

And behind Tori, Sophie could see Colton. She could read him well enough to know that he was asking himself, if she could keep something that big from him, what else was she hiding?

She needed to explain why she hadn’t told him. She hadn’t lied, but she’d never told him. “Colton, I—”

“I asked you,” he said softly. “I asked if you had any family. It was our second month of dating and we’d gone to my parents’, and I asked if you had a family. And you said, ‘not anymore.’” He paused. “It was a lie.”

“Not in the way you think.” She didn’t know how to make him understand. “My family is complicated. And when you asked, we’d only been dating a couple months, and I’d just met your very wonderful family. I didn’t owe you answers about my less-than-wonderful one. Not then. And later...?” After that, he’d never asked again. And Sophie had been happy that she didn’t have to explain.

He removed the new cowboy hat from his head and ran his fingers through his hair. She’d been right—he’d used some sort of gel in it. Sophie wasn’t sure why that fact registered, but it did.

“Do you have family other than a daughter?” he barked.

“In a strictly biological way? Yes.”

She waited, anxious to hear what he would say. He simply nodded. “I’m going to go talk to the caterer and we’ll have them set up the meal at the diner. Then I’ll tell everyone the wedding’s off. You take Tori and go talk. It’s obvious you two have a lot to say to each other.”

He’d said the wedding was off. For today, or forever? “What about us?”

Normally she could read Colton like an open book. But now, the book had slammed shut, and all he said was, “We’ll talk later. In the morning. Right now, you need to deal with Tori. I’ll send everyone home. Why don’t you take your...daughter, and slip out before someone corners you.”

She’d hoped he’d say, Talk to Tori, then meet me in front of the minister, we’ll work it all out. But he was calling off the wedding. They’d “talk” about it tomorrow.

Sophie had planned for any number of emergencies with the wedding, but not this. Not a returning long-lost daughter.

And not the man who was supposed to love her leaving.

There was nothing to do but nod at Colton and watch him stride back to their guests, her heart breaking into a million little pieces. She waited, silently pleading for him to stop and come back to her, but he didn’t.

“Let’s go to my house where we can talk,” she said to Tori. Her daughter.

* * *

COLTON LIKED TO THINK of himself as a simple man.

He knew he was a man of few words, but he tried to make the words he did utter count.

He tried to tell Sophie daily that he loved her. He tried to show her in his every action.

He tried to be there for his friends. For Finn, who’d suffered so much when he lost his sister Bridget last winter, and for Sebastian, who’d come home physically damaged and emotionally battered.

Yes, Colton had been content with his straightforward bachelor farmer’s life, and then Sophie Johnston had breezed into Valley Ridge. Meeting her had changed everything. His dreams expanded to include her at his side, and raising a family here together on his grandfather’s farm.

When she’d come down the aisle toward him, she’d been walking toward that simple future, as well.

I object.

Those two little words had changed everything.

He’d thought he knew everything there was to know about Sophie, but it turned out she wasn’t an orphan with a past that was too painful to talk about. She had family. And she had a daughter.

A daughter she’d given away.

Colton had always lived life on an even keel. Now his life was anything but. He motioned to Sebastian. “The wedding’s off. Do you mind if I have the caterers take the food to the diner? I know that means you’ll have to open, but—”