Chapter 1

Leah’s POV

The night my husband brought his biological daughter home, he told the stepdaughter he had raised for twelve years to stop calling him Dad.

The worst part was, he had clearly planned it in advance.

Nineteen-year-old Ava had barely taken her seat at the dinner table when Ivy pushed the roast chicken toward her.

“Dad, can you pass me the salt?”

Mark’s hand froze over the shaker.

“Ivy, just call me Mark tonight.”

For a second, I thought I had misheard him.

Ivy didn’t reach for the salt.

She was seventeen and rarely let her feelings show, but the way she looked at him made it seem as if she no longer recognized the man who had encouraged her to call him Dad since she was five.

Ava looked up, startled.

“Why?” I asked.

Mark set the salt beside Ivy’s plate. His tone was casual, as if he were rearranging the seating.

“Ava waited nineteen years for the chance to call me Dad. Ivy has had twelve. It’s only one night. She can be understanding.”

Three weeks earlier, a DNA match had told Mark that Ava existed.

Her mother had never named him, so he had lost nineteen years without knowing there was a daughter to look for.

Two days ago, he promised me that finding her would not change anyone’s place in our family.

Now, to welcome one daughter, he was taking something from the other.

My eyes moved to the sideboard.

Mark’s car keys lay in the ceramic bowl, but the dark blue strap was gone.

Ivy had made it for him when she was thirteen.

The weaving was uneven, and she had stitched a tiny letter D onto the end.

Mark had used it for four years, saying it was the one thing he could never bring himself to replace.

He had never legally adopted Ivy, but with her biological father’s consent, she had taken Bennett as her last name when Mark and I married. He was the one who asked her to call him Dad.

Tonight, he had removed it before dinner.

So this wasn’t a careless remark.

Before Ava even walked through our door, he had decided to hide part of Ivy’s place in his life.

“I don’t mind,” Ava said quickly. “She can still—”

“She understands,” Mark cut in.

Then he looked at Ivy.

“Right? Don’t make Ava feel like an outsider during her first dinner here.”

Ivy held his gaze for several seconds. Then she picked up her napkin and placed it neatly beside her plate.

“Okay, Mark.”

She didn’t cry. She didn’t argue.

Somehow, hearing her call him Mark was worse than if she had screamed.

She stood and headed for the front door.

Mark frowned when I rose after her.

“Leah, are you going to turn this into a big deal too?”

I grabbed my coat and car keys.

Every time Mark broke a promise to Ivy, I had stayed behind and translated it into stress, bad timing, or a poor choice of words.

Not tonight.

This time, Ivy had already given me the answer.

Mark.

“You stay with Ava tonight,” I said. “I’m staying with my daughter.”

I followed Ivy outside.

We had just reached the car when hurried footsteps sounded behind us.

Ava came running out.

“Mrs. Bennett, wait.”

She glanced back at Mark, who stood in the doorway. Her face had gone pale.

“I never asked him to do that,” she said quietly. “He told me you and Ivy had already agreed.”