Page 67 of Grumpy

None of these were conclusions Maddie had come to overnight. Months of therapy following her mom’s death and finding the hidden letters had helped her process ten years of emotional trauma and abandonment issues. Margery’s lies had dredged up a lot of the darker of her thoughts, but the second she saw her dad standing on Colton’s doorstep, she’d felt something snap inside her.

Maybe it was a decade later, but he’d come for her. Her dad had come—and just when she needed him most.

Maddie let out a dry laugh. “I told you, I don’t even know where to start. There’s just so much.”

“We can catch up on other things later,” her dad said. Now that she knew his left eye was fake, she specifically looked at his right. “Why don’t you tell me about Colton?”

Maddie scratched her forehead, wincing slightly. She was going to have to pee again soon. “I met Colton in February. I was looking for a job to help pay for the private investigator I wanted to hire to find you. He interviewed me for the assistant’s position at his radio station. He was older, sophisticated,” she added mockingly. “He took me under his wing, as they say. He’d lost his mom in high school from a rodeo accident, so he seemed to sympathize with my situation. But I was very clear that I wanted to be friends only.

“Then, around the end of the semester in May, he told me about how he’s looking for a roommate. Honestly, looking back, I question how I could have been so naïve. He wanted me to move in with him, to take that spare bedroom, but I stupidly thought that he was just putting general feelers out. I brought Erik to him. He’s one of the students I tutor, and I knew he was looking for a different living situation, too. Colton was going to turn Erik away, but Erik offered to pay six months up front. I didn’t learn until later about Colton really wanting it to be me or how much of a living hell he makes Erik’s life there. But they have a year contract,” she shrugged. She didn’t add that Erik was trying to figure out how to break that contract without still being on the hook for the remaining months, too.

“Anyway, as you know, at the end of May I saw on the news about the explosion. Colton saw me crying at work and asked what had happened. I practically crawled into his lap, I was so beside myself.” Rather than being embarrassed by her actions as she had been then, Maddie was now disgusted with herself. Colton’s true colors had shown clearly, and it was like she was waking up from a deep sleep. “Colton was the one who convinced me to go see you,” she told her dad. “Even offered to pay for my plane ticket, but I thought that was too much. Especially because he offered me the time off to go, even when I’d only been working for him for a few months.”

This was the part of her story where Maddie had to tread carefully. She was not ashamed of her actions, but others might consider her of loose morals when they learned the truth of how she’d gotten pregnant. Or better yet, when.

“As you can imagine, I was pretty upset on the plane ride. A flight attendant felt sorry for me, and upgraded me to business class because it wasn’t a full flight. I got seated next to a really nice gentleman. He was visiting a friend in Denver and had a layover in Texas. Rather than asking me about my troubles, he got my mind off them. Made me laugh, and even did that silly magic trick where he pulled a quarter from my ear. It was flattering, and I… Well, we…” Maybe she wasn’t ashamed, but it was hard to admit to her father that she’d slept with a man she’d just met and whose name she still didn’t know when he offered her “an admission ticket” to the Mile High Club.

“You slept with him,” Kelly filled in for her.

Their eyes met, and rather than judgement, Maddie saw concern, but also understanding. Maddie nodded. “I’m not… I don’t sleep around,” she felt the need to assure her father. “I barely even date. Everything I do revolves around my studies—or it did. And maybe that’s what made me so susceptible. I wasn’t forced,” she hastily told him when she saw her dad’s expression darken at her poor choice of words. “I swear. But I can’t deny that I was naïve, and extremely flattered. We used protection,” she added, though it might not have made a difference.

“We parted ways at the airport, and then I got to Mount Grove. And we all know how that ended. I was so eager to leave that I got the first plane out of there, not even caring that it forced me to have four layovers. It was the middle of the night by the time I landed. I was even worse of a mess than when I’d left. Colton came to pick me up. Insisted, even. He made it sound like it was for my safety, not wanting me to take an Uber by myself that late at night. Well, instead of bringing me to my dorm, he brought me to his house. Made it sound like, again, he was doing it for my own good and comfort.

“Now, please don’t take what I am about to say the wrong way. He never pressured me or pushed me into doing anything. But I also wasn’t thinking clearly that night. And when he kissed me, I just wanted to escape. I let him give me alcohol, too. But I was willing,” she stressed to her dad. “Maybe not the best judgment call on either of our parts, but I was willing. I was…distraught. I went to Mount Grove thinking I’d finally found my dad, and instead, I got told I was little more than forgotten trash. Even after all the therapy I’d done, I was in a very dark place.

“I started skipping classes, stopped going to therapy. Hell, I wasn’t even working. Yet Colton never said a word. I just sort of…moved into his house without even realizing it.”

Maddie paused, taking a sip of her orange juice. She really had to pee again, but she also wasn’t willing to take a break from finishing her story.

“I was nearly two months along before I put it together. Stupidly thought it was the flu, or some stomach bug. But when I went to the doctor to get medication, I discovered I was pregnant. I told Colton right away, and things changed dramatically. I knew I had to get my life back on track if I had any hope of taking care of this baby.

“I went back to therapy, got myself onto an exercise and pregnancy eating schedule, and life started to turn around. I only have two semesters left of school. Colton wanted me to drop out, but I told him I could handle school and pregnancy at the same time. Months continued on, and I just floated along in this haze of happiness. Then we wanted to be surprised on the gender and in August discovered that I’m not just having one baby, but two.”

Her dad’s eyes widened, but only one of his pupils dilated. It was a very odd effect. “Twins?”

Maddie laughed. “Yeah. That’s why I’m so round. Most think I’m further along than I am, until they discover there’s two in there.”

Kelly reached across the table to take Maddie’s hand as her dad reached for her other. “Congratulations! That’s so exciting.”

Maddie could only agree. “I couldn’t believe it either. But it sort of triggered something in the back of my mind, and I remembered the guy from the plane telling me how twins run in his family. Apparently, both his parents are twins, and he has two sets of twin siblings. He’s the only one who isn’t a twin in his entire family. At the time, I think he just mentioned it as a random fact to get my mind off my sorrows and worries, but from the moment I learned I was having twins, it reminded me that there was a second paternal possibility.”

Bert came by and silently removed their empty dishes, which gave Maddie a minute to compose herself. She even glanced at Jackson’s back, not sure what he heard or thought of her story.

“I started doing research on twins,” Maddie continued once they were alone again. “Even if the guy from the plane is the father, it would be a huge coincidence. He couldn’t have passed on any twin genes to me. Maybe I have twins somewhere in my genes, too. Not like I’m that close with Erwin to ask him,” she added, thinking of her birth father. “I learned all sorts of statistics that basically summed up to, unless there’s a genetic component, the likelihood of me having twins at twenty-two with no fertility treatments are exceedingly low. Like point-four percent. But,” she hesitated, “even knowing that, I was still too cowardly to confront the truth. Colton could still be the father. And he was so excited! I know it seems we started out rocky, but I need you guys to understand that he treated me really well. Especially after finding out about the baby, and then babies. I wasn’t in love with him, but I liked him. I really did envision us being a family together.”

Maddie picked at the old silicone lining at the edge of the table. “But I couldn’t take the guilt anymore. It was this weight on my chest that turned my stomach sour, especially whenever Colton tried to be intimate with me. For a while, I was able to play it off as pregnancy symptoms, but then he started to ask questions. And when I finally confessed that there was a chance he wasn’t the father…” Maddie turned her face away, staring out the window. “Well, the past few days haven’t exactly been good between us. He refused my offer of doing a paternity test. I honestly think the only reason he didn’t kick me out was to save face with his friends and family. I don’t think they know. And then you showed up,” she added with a crooked smile. There was so much more that Maddie needed to say and ask, but unfortunately, her bladder couldn’t take it anymore. If she so much as sneezed, coughed, or laughed right now, she’d likely pee her pants. Which would be even more mortifying than explaining how she’d slept with two different men in the span of days and was now carrying twins with an unknown father. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to use the bathroom again.”

* * *

Grumpy accepted Kelly’s suggestion to get up and walk around the diner while Jackson escorted Maddie to the bathroom again. That booth was doing his back no favors, but he sure as fuck wasn’t going to utter a word of complaint. Not when he was finally sitting across from his daughter after a decade.

“How’re you doing, Grandpa?” Kelly asked as they started their second circle. Bert had come out when they first got up, but after a quick explanation he let them be. Being a college and city diner, Kelly could only imagine the dine-and-dash count he had to put up with. Occasionally, Kelly had had her share of teens try it at home—but none since Scar became a solid presence at the diner.

Grumpy snorted. The walk felt good, but also achy. Like his back had gone to sleep as someone’s arms or legs did. “Grandpa,” he murmured. “I just got used to thinking of myself as being ‘Dad’ again.”

Kelly’s grip on him was sturdy but not tight. She leaned into his shoulder. “Still the hottest DILF I know, and trust me, grandpas are hot right now.”

“I have no idea what you just called me, but I did understand that you think I’m hot.”