Courting Holly by Lynn A. Coleman

I’ve had enough time to digest everything I’ve heard and read this morning. Father, I love you but I sense there was...” Holly didn’t want to say it out loud, let alone believe, that her stepfather had had a hand in her not knowing her real father all these years.
    “We did what we thought best, Holly,” John mumbled.
    “So you keep saying. For what it is worth, Father Emmett, early this morning I recalled my mother calling me Holly Elizabeth Landers. I was only four at the time.” She turned back to John. “Am I a Landers or legally a Graham?”
    “Legally, a Landers. Emmett wouldn’t sign the papers for me to adopt you.”
    She turned to Emmett, the unspoken question hanging in the tense air.
    “You are my daughter. If you could only have a small part of me, I wanted it to be my name.”
    She faced John again. “And you have led me to believe I was a Graham all this time, knowing my name was Landers?”
    John looked down at his lap. “Yes. Perhaps that was wrong of me but...”
    Holly held up her hand. “You say you were doing what you thought was best for me. Did it not even occur to you that everyone who attended your wedding knew Mother had been married once before, and that I was there as living proof?”
    He gave no reaction.
    “I don’t understand the secrecy. Why? The entire city knows. Everyone knew except the one person it actually mattered to—me. I did not know. Does that not seem even vaguely unfair to you?”
    “I’m sorry, Holly. We...” This time he held back from saying the line that blazed in her memory.
    We did what we thought best.
    She let out a deep sigh. “Bryce and I will be home around dinnertime. Don’t wait on us. Bryce said an old college friend was in the area. Perhaps we’ll go out to dinner with him. It is certainly time for some distraction of a sort. My head is spinning.”
    Emmett extended his hand, palm up. Holly placed hers inside his. “All of us wanted what was best. I understand your confusion, Holly. Please know that everyone involved thought of you first. Perhaps we made some mistakes, but our intentions were in the right place.” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze.
    “I know. If you do not mind, we will stop by Mr. Jarvis’s office and pick up the other letters.”
    A smile raised on Emmett’s face that brought a sparkle to his blue eyes. “I’d like that.”
    And for the first time that she could remember, she leaned into the man who was her flesh and blood and gave him a hug. Being in his arms, accepting his love, felt familiar and yet, somehow, entirely new. He held her tighter and kissed her cheek. “I love you, pumpkin. I always have and I always will,” he whispered.
    She pulled away, seeing the pain in John Graham’s eyes. She was still unsure of her true identity, but knew one thing: both men in this room did love her in their own unique way.
    Outside she found Bryce ready with the hooded buggy. “Where are we headed, my lady?” he asked with a bow.
    “To your father’s office, if that is where my letters are.”
    He assisted her up to the only seat. “I think John Graham was behind my not knowing about all of this until I was twenty-one. He said they’d decided on that age because that was the age when he and my mother started courting.”
    Bryce gathered the reins and motioned for the horse to go forward. “I agree, John is holding something back. Of course, your father has always been reserved, so I do not want to overspeculate as to his reasons.”
    “Yes, he is a private man. Still, can’t he see that the only person they had been deceiving was me? Everyone had to have known Mother was a widow and that I was the child from that marriage. Oh, and by the way, I am a Landers, even if my graduation certificate from school says Graham on it.” She related what had transpired after Bryce had left the room.
    “Again, the deception. I reckon since they decided not to tell you that you had a different father it would stand to reason