"Weddings and baby portraits are my favorite things to shoot," Eva told them honestly. "They both have a little bit of the fairy tale in them."
"Happy endings," Jill's mother said, then stumbled a bit when her daughter hip-bumped her.
"New beginnings," Jill countered, with a gooey-eyed look toward her shiny new husband.
"Both true, I think," Eva added. She hadn't been merely telling the bride what she wanted to hear. She truly loved shooting weddings. And though she wasn't big on psychoanalyzing herself, she knew that one reason was that she mentally rewrote her own twisted fairy tale every time she heard those vows spoken.
Young and pregnant with a dead man's child, Eva had been roped by the father she'd adored and respected into marrying a man she didn't love. A nice enough man, sure, but not one she'd ever have a real future with, a real connection.
She thought of those years as she returned to her car where Marianne was loading the last of her lens cases and lighting kits. About the only good thing that came from her uninspired marriage to David was that Eva had finally grown a backbone. She'd filed for divorce on her twenty-fifth birthday, telling him that they both deserved more. He hadn't argued--hell, he'd almost seemed relieved--and once the divorce was final, he'd disappeared from her life.
Elena, thank goodness, had only been four. She'd missed the man she'd believed was her father, but the memories soon faded and Elena and Eva became a team. Single mom and darling daughter.
It hadn't been easy--especially since Eva's father had very loudly disapproved of her decision to divorce, and had backed up that disapproval by withdrawing all financial support. But they'd made it work, and Eva had come out stronger for it. Elena, too, she thought. Because how could a young woman grow up right if her closest role model was a woman who settled?
True, there was no man in her life, but that was okay. She'd focused on graphic design and learning photography, first as a hobby and then as a career. And she'd made sure that Elena heard lots of stories about her real father, Tyree, a Marine who'd gone to serve his country and had lost his life in the process. A hero.
Except it wasn't true.
Tyree hadn't died in the Persian Gulf like her father had told her. As far as Eva knew, he hadn't died at all.
But she'd believed her father's lie for over twenty years. Hell, he'd gone to his grave knowing he'd fed her a lie, and she'd only learned the truth a month ago when she'd finally decided to tackle the pile of boxes from his estate that were taking up much needed space in her studio's storage area.
She'd almost tossed the large envelope. It hadn't been addressed to her. All it had said was Private. She still didn't know what prompted her to open it. She still wasn't sure if knowing the truth was a blessing or a curse. But there was no going back now.
She'd used her forefinger to loosen the old glue on the envelope, then dumped out the contents. Five sealed letters in Tyree's scrawling handwriting, every single one sent from overseas, every one unopened. And she'd never before seen any of them.
And then, most insidious of all, she saw the single envelope without any writing on the outside. She'd opened it, then carefully unfolded the letter tucked inside. Elena had been sorting through another box, and though Eva didn't remember dropping to her knees, she knew that she had because Elena had cried out and hurried to her side.
"Mom?" Even now, Eva could hear the fear in her twenty-three-year-old daughter's voice. "Mom, what is it?"
In retrospect, maybe Eva shouldn't have told her. But in the moment, she'd simply held the note out. The single piece of paper on which her father had written out the truth, front and back, in his cramped, shaky handwriting. A truth that revealed how he'd schemed and maneuvered after she'd tearfully confessed that she was pregnant. How he'd intercepted her mail.
How he'd flat out lied.
He'd told Elena that Tyree had died in combat. And because her father was a trusted military contractor with friends and connections at the highest levels, she knew he had access to the truth. And she'd believed him.
She'd been a fool.
He'd shifted the course of her life. All because he didn't want her marrying a poor man without any surviving relatives and only a high school education. A man who'd grown up in New Orleans, the son of a dirt poor Cajun mother and a father who'd worked as a janitor in Savannah before moving to Louisiana.
So he'd killed Tyree off--at least as far as Eva was concerned. And urged her into the arms of David Anderson, a man she didn't love and who didn't love her.
The reality had not only tainted her memory of her father, it had shaken her to the core.
As a young girl, Eva had felt like a princess. Though her mother had died in childbirth, her doting father had filled her with so much love and affection that she'd never felt sorry for herself. On the contrary, she'd felt cherished. Or she had until she'd learned that she was pregnant at nineteen. She'd told her father--her first mistake--and she'd been swept into a brand new story where she was no longer cherished. Instead, she was the soiled black sheep, forced to endure the worst.
In love with one man, forced to marry another. About the only good that came out of their union was Elena. At least until Eva finally learned her own mind, grew a backbone, and filed for divorce.
Goddamn her father to hell.
And why he'd even written the truth was beyond her. Had he expected her to find it even though it wasn't addressed to her? Was it his way of confessing his sins?
She didn't know. She didn't care.
All she knew now was the truth--and the unpleasant fact that she had to tell a not-really-dead man that he had a daughter.
"Is this going to be one of those days where we only communicate telepathically?"