Chosen by Choice, Not Blood

[FIVE YEARS of amnesia and the male lead finally remembers her!] The words floated up in front of my face.

I was still trying to work out who the man was, the one who kept watching my mom from across the parking lot. [He played broke the whole time they dated.

Now he can finally give those two the life they deserve.] [Be fair, he was only testing her. Who knew she loved him that much?

He disappeared and she still had his baby.] I hadn't finished reading them when the man came over.

He smiled down at me. "I'm your daddy." I checked him against the picture in my head. Then I shook my head. "Nope.

My daddy doesn't look like you." Everything in his face stopped at once. Chapter 1 [Okay but this kid is so slow. Can she not see how much she looks like him?] [Cut her some slack.

Five years ago he was a scrawny college boy.

Now he's full slickedback billionaire mode.] [Maybe the only photo her mom ever showed her was the young one.] That got me a little turned around too.

I went back over what my daddy looked like. Soft voice. Wirerimmed glasses. A tiny mole right at the corner of his eye, the pretty kind.

And when he cried into Mom's shoulder, he looked so sad you wanted to pat his head. No matter how I lined it up, this man in the sharp suit was not him.

The man got his face back together fast though. "Are you Sprout?" My mouth fell open. "How do you know that?" My face must have encouraged him.

He said it again, sure of it now. "Then that settles it." "My name is Julian Ashford.

I'm your father." I squeezed the bag of perler beads in both hands and said it one more time, slower, so he'd get it. "Nope. You're not my daddy." Mr.

Ashford laughed like I'd done something adorable. He even touched one of my braids. "Whether you believe it or not, it's true." "That's all right. For now you can just call me Mr.

Ashford." My eyes went wide. Okay. That one I could work with. I gave him my sweetest smile and held up the bag. "Mr. Ashford, you're so handsome.

Want to buy some beads Sprout made?" He took the bag and looked down at the shape inside. It was a white lily. The crowded little words came pouring back. [A LILY.

That's the flower from when they first got together!] [She's so loyal it hurts. She's making lily art with her kid. She's been thinking about him this whole time, right?] [Hard yes.

He was the only good thing that ever happened to her.] That confused me all over again. That's not how it went. I made those beads. Me.

When I asked Mom to iron them for me, she got real quiet. Quieter than she gets when she's tired. Then she said, "Baby, could we do a different flower next time?

It'll make your daddy sad if he sees this one." I didn't understand why. But I didn't want my daddy to be sad. What I didn't count on was how good my daddy is at finding things.

He found the lily in the craft room. Then he sat down holding it and cried. Over and over, the same thing. "Sweetheart… you still can't forget him, can you?" That night.

Brave Sprout slept in her own bed again. "Sprout?" Chapter 2 I came back to myself. Mr. Ashford's eyes had gone pink around the rims. He tucked my beads away like they'd break.

Then he said, "I'll take good care of it." He stopped for a few seconds.

Getting the next words out seemed to cost him something. "Your mom… is she doing okay?" The words drifted across again. [Two sad sacks.

They were at their happiest, then he went home, got in an accident, lost his memory, and missed five years of her life and his daughter's.] [Sitting here waiting for the groveling arc.] [Why does he even need one?

He only went home to tell his family he was marrying her.] [Meanwhile she was pregnant alone, raising a kid alone, and now she's out here working a stand…] I blinked a few times.

A stand? This was an assignment. Market day. From my preschool. I had to beg Mom for two whole days before she agreed to sit with me.

So I told him the truth. "Thank you for worrying about her, Mr. Ashford. My mom's happy every single day." I don't know why. His eyes only got redder. He put his head down.

His shoulders were shaking. I thought about it, then said, "If you're really that worried about her, I could take you to see her right now." But he shook his head.

His voice came out scraped up. "No. I can't stand in front of her yet." I looked at him. Grownups are so weird.

The words rushed by. [He's smart, going through the daughter first.] [The man just got five years of memory back.

He can't sprint at her in a parking lot.] [Sprout is the world's best wingman. He's playing the long game through the kid. Win the daddy's girl, the wife comes free.] What wingman.

What long game. Nobody taught us that at school. After a while. He seemed to get himself sorted out. "Will you two be here again tomorrow?" I nodded.

He smiled a little. "Then I'll see you tomorrow. Deal?" I looked at him and didn't answer. Because I caught where his eyes were. They were on my mom.

Just parked there, like he'd forgotten there was a whole street between them. I shifted sideways without thinking about it and put myself in the way.

He only tipped his eyebrows up at me. "Go on back. Don't make her wait and worry." "Oh, and let's not tell your mom about me just yet. Okay?" Then he started to stand.

I grabbed his sleeve fast. He crouched back down, patient about it. "I know it's hard to say goodbye to me, but I really do have to—" I cut him off. "It's not that. You didn't pay.

Five bucks." The words lit up. [HAHAHA she's a little money grubber.] [Relax, kid. Your dad is loaded.] [Once he wins your mom back you're a trustfund kid.

What are you doing selling beads on a folding table…] He got a stuck look on his face. He patted one pocket, then the other.

In the end he walked to the convenience store down the block and came back with a five. I took Mr. Ashford's money and watched him go, all tall and straight in that suit.

And I told him in my head. My daddy isn't you. I got back to our table and my mom was already halfway out of her mind.

She turned me around, checked me over from my braids to my sneakers, and only then let her breath out. Well. That did it. Now she didn't want to sell anything anymore.

She packed the whole table into the trunk and took me home. Chapter 3 She was driving.

She caught me staring at nothing and asked, "Sprout, what are you looking at?" "The comments." Mom's head turned. "The what?" Then I got confused too. That was strange.

They were right there the whole time I was talking to Mr. Ashford. Where did they go?

I didn't want her worrying about me, so I switched to something else fast. "Mom, did you used to have a really hard time?" She didn't even pause. "Nope." She was lying.

I know because my daddy told me. Her parents wouldn't let her stay in school. She dropped out at eighteen and went to work. She gave up a good school to do it.

She was still clocking in while she was pregnant with me. She almost lost me. My chest went tight and stayed tight while he told it.

His voice came apart in the middle. "Your mom is the strongest person alive. I'm the one who showed up too late." I put my arms around him. His eyes were red at the bottom.

I patted his back the way Mom pats mine. His tears got into my buckwheat pillow anyway. "Don't blame yourself, Daddy. We're all going to love Mom forever." He's always like that.

Any time her past comes up, the crying gets there before the words do. He always says he came too late. He always acts like he owes us something. Mom doesn't see it that way at all.

She's pulled me into her lap and told me more than once. Her voice goes soft and slides right into my ear. "Your dad was nineteen when he met me.

A broke college kid." "God knows what he did in a past life to end up this stuck on me." My dad is Adrian Shaw. He was going to be somebody. He was a sophomore when he met her.

He had no money then. Just the allowance his parents sent. He chased her anyway. When the money ran short he went and made more.

On top of a brutal class load, he was either working or on his way to work. Then his parents found out about the two of them. They called it a disgrace to the family.

They threw him out and cut him off. So he got poorer. He slept three, maybe four hours a night, and everything else went to keeping me and Mom fed. The hospital bills.

Prenatal vitamins. Formula. A private postpartum recovery suite. Anything he could get her, he got her the best one. Job, class, the walkup. That was his whole map.

He ate standing up, on the way to somewhere. Other guys at twenty were out being twenty. He was already somebody's father. Every time Mom got to this part.

The tears would come down without a sound and land in the buckwheat pillow. "I'm the one who held him back," she'd say. I hold on to her and don't say anything.

Inside I tell her she's wrong. You two match. Nobody matches like you two. Grownups can't say the love part out loud to each other. All that feeling has nowhere to go.

So they pour it into a kid. And kids don't remember any of it. The only thing that kept it was the buckwheat pillow the three of us have all slept on, which quietly grew a sprout.

That's where my name came from. A little green shoot pushing up out of the hulls, right through the seam, and Mom decided that settled it.

Mom and I were supposed to do the stand both days that weekend. We still had a mountain of perler beads from all the afternoons we made them to pass the time.

Somehow my dad found out about it. He put in a formal request to join our stand operation. Chapter 4 My mom could not believe it. "Adrian Shaw.

Do you want to count how many hours you've been back from that trip? Did you evolve past sleeping?" I stayed out of the camera and let him take it, and I enjoyed every second.

On the screen the skin under his eyes was a deep bruised color. He said it anyway. "Let me come with you.

I don't like you two out there alone." Mom laughed, and it wasn't a nice laugh. "What is there to not like?" His eyebrows dropped.

His whole voice went small and pitiful. "I don't feel secure…" That line again. Mom still hasn't gone down to the courthouse with him.

So he lives in a permanent state of somebody's about to take her. That made her mad.

She looked right at the camera and said it very seriously. "Nobody falls in love with a woman who has a kid." My dad said, "Sweetheart…" Mom gave up.

But she'd reminded me of something. That very handsome Mr. Ashford. He seemed like he was interested in my mom.

So I planted myself firmly on my dad's side. "Mom, let's not go." Two against one. She caved. I figured if we didn't do the stand, I wouldn't run into that man again. Wrong.

We were in the craft room at preschool when the director came in. She took my hand and said, "Sprout, your dad's here." My mouth dropped open.

He'd gotten back from his trip way faster than he said. I hurried down the hall and pushed the door open, and then I stopped dead.

Julian Ashford was on his feet before the door finished swinging. "Sprout!" The words showed up again. [He didn't get to see them yesterday and he was losing his mind about it.] [Lucky for him her preschool is the private one the Ashford Foundation funds.] I stood there.

He's not my daddy. But the director already had a hand between my shoulders, moving me toward him. "Sprout, why don't you let him take you out today?" I looked up at her.

She only said, "Of course, Mr. Ashford. But I'll need her back before dismissal. You understand, with Ms. Calloway being…" Ms. Calloway is my mom. He nodded. "Understood.

I just want time with my daughter. Nothing else." That's how I ended up outside, in his car, still fuzzy about how it happened. He asked where I wanted to go.

I shook my head and looked at him. He didn't get annoyed. He smiled and put his hand on my hair. "That's all right.

Anything Sprout hasn't eaten, anything Sprout hasn't played with, I'll make it up to her." And he did. He took me to places I'd never been. The food was unreal.

There were pretty little desserts, one after another. It tasted good. It was fun. I had a nice time. But. I still wanted my mom and dad.

Toward the end he must have noticed I wasn't lighting up. He drove me back to preschool. He asked, "Sprout.

Do you like me a little more today?" I was holding the doll he'd bought me. Saying no with his doll in my hands felt rude. So I nodded. His smile got wider.

He crouched and gave me a careful hug. "Good. I like Sprout very much too." Before he left he hooked his little finger around mine. A pinky promise. Don't tell your mom.

I asked him why.

Chapter 5 He said, "Because your mom is still angry at me right now, and I don't want to make her unhappy." The words came drifting through. [I'm not saying who's grinning like a proud aunt over here but it's me.] [With a daddy's girl in the mix, she'll forgive him for the kid's sake.

Family of three, happily ever after.] [Honestly he doesn't need to do any of this. The plot is on his side. She sees him, she falls for him.

That's how it works.] That last one stuck in my head. I was still turning it over on the ride home. Would my mom really start liking Mr. Ashford?

At dinner Mom had a bowl of soup in both hands. My dad's face was on the screen propped up across from her. I don't know what he said, but her whole face went soft and happy.

Finally she gave up. "Fine. Fine. I love you most. Happy?" That was what he wanted. Then he remembered I existed and added, "And Sprout.

Sprout is the only person I'll accept ahead of me." Mom rolled her eyes. Her mouth was still curved up. She was happy.

I thought about it and swallowed everything I'd been going to say. Mr. Ashford turned out to be more enthusiastic than I expected. Three days in a row. He showed up at my preschool.

I didn't want to leave the building, so he stayed and played with me in the classroom instead. Every time before he left, he asked the same thing.

Do you like me a little more today? I nodded. "Yes. But I'd like it if you stopped coming." He asked me why. I couldn't get it into words.

It just felt bad in a way I didn't have a name for. He crouched down and pinched my cheek. "Sprout doesn't need to feel shy about it. Being good to you is the least I can do.

I owe it to you and your mother." I went quiet. Something sat down on my chest and stayed there. Then he asked, "By the way.

Is your mom picking you up today?" I nodded. "She's always first in line. Every single day." He smiled at that. Very soft. "Good." The words rolled by. [FINALLY.

They're about to see each other again!] [Look at him scheming. He wore the white buttondown she loves.

Working the freshlaundry thing on her.] [He's been laying groundwork with the kid this whole time. Let the man grovel.

Come on, daddy's girl, give him a hand!] [There's nothing one night together can't fix. If there is, then two.] Close to dismissal I went back to my class and lined up.

The director put me at the front of the line so my mom would see me right away. Mr. Ashford stood next to me. The gate rolled open. My mom wasn't there. He noticed it too.

He took my hand and said, quietly, "It's okay. Probably traffic." I nodded. Then something moved at the edge of my eye. Somebody I knew.

I dropped his hand and ran for the tall man at the curb. I ran the whole way. I yelled it as loud as I could. "Daddy!" I was running too fast.

Which is why I didn't see the man's face go dark behind me