Sweet Romance13 min read
My Three Dads Came to My Door
ButterPicks16 views
My mother left me three business cards and a secret. She told me, "One of these men is your father." Then she closed her eyes for good.
I pulled the cards out of her hand with fingers that didn't shake much. I read the names and the titles.
"Zeke Diaz — Chairman, ZD Global," one card said. A big name, a logo like thunder.
"Giovanni Wagner — Award-winning Actor," the second said. The letters were sleek and glossy.
"Benedicto Charles, M.D. — Chief of Research, National Medical Institute," the third was neat and calm.
I pressed my thumb against them and thought, What are the chances?
The village smelled of wood smoke and river mud. Neighbors came to the funeral, some with red faces, some with blank stares. After the ritual, I was alone in the small yard when Hazel Ewing pushed through the gate.
"Year-year," she called, using the nickname the whole village gave me. "Your mother is gone. You can't be alone. Let me help you find a husband, girl. There is Green Wheeler at the hill—he has the only two-storied house in the village. His mother keeps pigs. Marry him, you will be set."
I shut the gate slowly and looked at her. "Why don't you marry him instead? He listens well."
Hazel's face turned ugly. "What's that supposed to mean? You ugly orphan, who will take you? I do you a favor talking to you about marriage and you bite me now?"
"I have a father," I said, thinking of the three cards in my pocket. I stopped myself, then said it again, louder, "I have a father. He will come."
Hazel laughed. "You? A father? Who are you fooling? Show us then. Call him! Call him to pick you up!"
I went inside and dialed three numbers.
The first man reached me with a voice like a boardroom. "Hello? Who is this?"
"My name is Annika Braun," I said. "My mother gave me this card. She said you might be my father." I kept my voice steady.
He didn't say anything for a long time. Then he said, "I'll be there."
The next hour the whole village smelled different—like leather, cologne, and expensive air. Hazel, who had been sneering in the yard, suddenly became loud and theatrical.
"Come watch the show!" she cried. "The orphan says her father is coming."
People came because when Hazel shouted they came. I stood by the gate with my packet of three cards.
Then a line of cars rolled up the dusty lane. Guards stepped out. A man in a black suit and sunglasses walked to the front. He kept his head high like a king walking slow.
"He is..." a voice started, then fell into whispers.
"It's Zeke Diaz. That's Zeke Diaz himself."
Zeke strode forward. His tie was a slash of color. He looked at me and the world sucked a little air.
"Annika," he said, and the word broke him. Tears came to his eyes without him noticing. He stepped forward and hugged me like a man who had practiced this for years and never done it.
"Father," I said when his arms loosened, because I could not find the words I felt.
Hazel's mouth dropped. People who had called me wild and no good stared as if they had been slapped.
"Is that the rich man everyone says owns half the earth?" someone muttered.
Before the question could settle, another man in a white coat hurried in, pushing through assistants who bowed the way people bow to a name.
"Annika!" he cried, breathless. "I'm late. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
He held me like Zeke did but with a doctor's gentleness. His glasses glinted. He smelled like antiseptic and books.
"Dr. Benedicto Charles," whispered someone. "The doctor who saves hands and hearts."
Then a sports car pulled up, red and arrogant. A younger man slid out with hair that glowed in the sun like a fire. He walked with a kind of actor's easy charm.
"Annika!" he said and put on the big, bright smile the public knew. "You're my daughter."
"You're all saying the same thing," I said, bewildered. "All of you?"
They argued like old friends who are jealous of one another. Each man said, "I'm the father." Each man told a different truth, or so I thought.
"Let's do a DNA test," I said. It sounded so small compared to the noise.
They all agreed at once, teeth bared. "Do it."
"And we'll all wait," said Zeke.
The DNA test was done in the city hospital. Their teams argued, then insisted on fairness. Each sent a person to observe. People in suits and doctors with sterile packs came and left.
Back home, Hazel could not stop herself from spinning stories. "She is a fake," she said. "Who can be so lucky to be taken by a billionaire? I knew she had no family."
Zeke clapped and opened his hand. "We'll give everyone in the village something." He handed out envelopes the size of fortunes.
"One ten-thousand note each!" someone said, eyes bright.
The crowd forgot its spitting. Hazel's greed reappeared like old glue. She stuck out her hand and took the red money and smiled big.
I watched Zeke's face when Hazel insulted me again. He felt furious enough to move the sun.
Hazel was too loud. She had insulted my mother and me when we had little left, and now she would be punished. It had to be public. My whole life would be public now, it seemed, so I decided to make the moment mean something.
"She called us 'illegitimate' and said she would marry me to Green Wheeler," I said. The three men stared. "I don't want violence. But she must stop."
"Let her be taught not to speak like that," Zeke said, fingers curling into fists. "I won't have it."
"Do you want me to show them what we can do?" Benedicto asked quietly.
Giovanni smiled like a man remembering a sweet defeat. "We should make the lesson last a while. People need to remember."
They laid out a plan that made Hazel shake. Everyone gathered in the square while the sun slid down. I stood in front of my house and watched the crowd gather like dark rice.
Hazel was brought forward, shoulders tight, face white but spitting. "What do you want me to do?" she snarled.
Zeke looked down at her. "Apologize to Annika for what you said."
Hazel laughed, the sound sharp. "Apologize? To a stray like her? Never."
"Then," Benedicto said in a voice that made the air thin, "you will do as she says. For one day, you will say aloud every insult you have ever shouted about her, but this time you will say them about yourself. You will kneel in front of the village and call yourself the words you used on her. You will not stop until the entire village has heard and decided the price."
Giovanni took out his phone and turned on the camera. "I will livestream it," he said. "Let everyone see."
Hazel tried to sneer. "You can't make me—"
"Yes, we can," Zeke said. "You have been cruel for years with no cost. Now? You will speak until your voice breaks."
They moved Hazel to the center of the square. A circle of phones rose like small suns. The village watched, silent.
"Say it," Zeke said.
Hazel's face curved into something ugly. "I—" She choked, then spat, "I am... an—"
"Say it louder," Benedicto pressed.
Hazel screamed a profane word at herself. The village heard. She kept going.
"An orphan," she said. "A worthless—"
A baby cried in the crowd. Old women clicked their tongues. The air tasted like a thunderstorm that had not yet broken.
People started to shout back, at first quiet: "Shame!" "Stop it!" Then, louder, "You were wrong!"
A few villagers, those who had suffered under Hazel's mouth for years, got up and added their own memories. "You sold your neighbor's potatoes by the river." "You lied about the teacher." Their voices were small but clear.
Hazel's daughter, Bella Lopez, watched her mother. Her face turned from smug to pale. She had laughed earlier and now she felt the ground slide. The camera on Giovanni's phone did not blink.
"Annika," someone shouted mockingly, "adopt Hazel. She will bark for you."
I heard it and felt a small flame in my chest. But I did not want to watch cruelty for cruelty's sake. I wanted them to stop using people as targets. I asked the three of them to let the punishment have a point.
"Let her say what she must," I said. "But make it end with her fixing what she broke."
Zeke's jaw loosened. "Annika—"
"She will speak her mistakes and then say aloud what she will do to fix each one. If she breaks a promise, we will make a note. If she refuses, she will give up her money and belongings and work for the village for a year. She will not be left a king of insults again."
The crowd murmured. Hazel's mouth opened and closed. She realized the trap—complete humiliation or complete obligation. For her, pride mattered.
She chose to speak and then to sign the list. She said curses out loud until her throat hurt. She cried until her face was washed clean of paint.
People recorded. People watched. Some laughed. Some clapped. Some hid in the crowd. Some wept.
At the end of hours of verbal confession, Hazel sat down on the packed earth and could not raise her head. Bella had gone white and was shaking.
"Now," Benedicto said, handing Hazel a pen, "write down a list of what you will change. Names, actions, days."
Hazel scribbled, hands trembling. She promised to return every penny that was taken from neighbors and to apologize to those she had slandered. She promised to wake up before dawn to help elderly women carry water. She promised to be quiet and do the work.
The village watched as Hazel signed, the ink making a dark, honest mark. Then Zeke and Giovanni went among those she had wronged to settle the old debts with money and apologies. The job was real—repairs, new doors, a small sum given to the family she had humiliated.
It was not pretty. Hazel's standing in the village dropped in a day. She who had been loud and powerful became a figure of shame. The world is small in a village; news runs like a river. People took photos, some cruel, some to remind themselves that cruelty had consequences. Bella looked around and realized she had lost her place. She shrank inward.
When the sun set, Hazel was haggard but quieter. She would return to work for the village. Bella's friends no longer walked with her. Some villagers spat when she passed. People can be kind after punishment, but the memory of insult is long.
The three men told the story to anyone who asked. They said they had not wanted to make spectacle. They had wanted to make a point: you cannot shout at the weak with no cost.
That night, in the house that would be mine for a while, the three sat with me around the low table. Zeke's suit had lost its crispness. Benedicto's coat smelled of disinfectant and powdered grief. Giovanni's hair lay flatter. They were exhausted.
"Are you okay?" Zeke asked.
"I'm okay," I said, and I meant it. I had a roof. I had money, if I needed it. I had people who would fight for me. But most of all, I had the answers the cards might bring.
The DNA results arrived early the next morning.
We all gathered in the small hallway like a jury. The paper slid from envelopes like small white flags.
"Open them," Giovanni said, like a director waiting for applause.
I did. Numbers stared back. 99.99% matched to Zeke Diaz.
I looked again. The second report—99.99% matched to Benedicto Charles.
My head felt like a bell. The third report—99.99% matched to Giovanni Wagner.
All three.
No one laughed. For a long time there was silence, the kind that stretches like a taught string.
"They all changed the samples," Benedicto said, voice thin. "We were children together. Maybe we all..."
"All what?" Giovanni asked. "Why all three?"
My mother had been careful. She had told me when she was alive to call them. She had not explained everything. Piece by piece they told me the story my mother had left like a map.
Years ago in the city, the four of them were close. They worked together at a small rescue home, four young people trying to change one another. They found each other, and then the world found them harder. A night came when what they had built broke. My mother had gone away to save them. She had carried me in her when she thought nothing could save her.
That explained the three cards. It explained too why each of them felt like my father.
"Then choose," Giovanni said gently. "Who do you want? We'll let you decide."
I looked at them. They were like three large ships in my small life, each with its pull.
"No," I said. "Not yet." I wanted time. I wanted to be my own person.
We decided to live together for a while. Zeke's house had rooms that gleamed. Giovanni's laugh filled long halls. Benedicto's books lined walls like careful soldiers. They argued like family, and they learned new ways to be gentle.
At my new school, things changed fast. Rumors travel faster than light in a city. News that the richest chairman had adopted a girl from nowhere spread like ink. A new girl pretended to be rich and called herself Zeke's daughter. Audrey Hassan was her name. She walked with the kind of confidence that makes others small.
In the classroom I sat quietly, my second-hand coat clean, not flashy. Audrey smiled at the crowd. "See her? She thinks she is rich now," she said loud enough for me to hear.
Sofia Cohen, a girl with soft eyes and steady hands, came to my side. "Don't mind them," she said. "You have to tell people who you are."
Otto Vieira—the boy who sat behind me with sleepy eyes and always looked like he wanted to be left alone—whispered, "She is not afraid."
"Thanks," I said. "You don't have to get involved."
Otto shrugged, not saying more. He watched the room like someone who collects quiet moments.
Audrey pushed me one day in front of the cafeteria. "Who are you really?" she demanded. "If you are Zeke's daughter, prove it."
I took out a small necklace my mother had given me and opened my palm. "I am Annika Braun," I said. "My mother raised me to read and to fight when necessary. I will not let people call me what they please."
Audrey lifted a hand and slapped me, sharp and loud. "You can't sit with us," she said. "You're pretending."
I flinched from the slap and then did what my mother would have done. I stood. I swung my hand and hit her back. The room fell silent. I don't like hitting, but sometimes it is the only language that stops the mouth.
Teachers intervened. Some were shocked. Some said, "We must call your parents." I called Zeke.
He came to the school like thunder with Benedicto and Giovanni behind him, and the classroom looked like a stage with expensive people.
"Who did this?" Zeke demanded, eyes hard.
"She started it," Audrey said, pointing fingers.
"She was cruel," Benedicto said. "Kids can be cruel."
I spoke up. "She called my mother a dirty name. She said ugly things to me. I asked her to apologize. She refused."
The teacher looked between us. "This is unacceptable."
Zeke's eyes cooled and his voice was slow. "Listen to me. If you bully my daughter again, I will close your parents' company. You'll have to think about that."
Audrey's face changed color. She was not used to being threatened, not really. She had been a queen in school for a long time.
But the teachers, who had seen these boys and girls all their lives, did not like the idea of a chairman's reward or punishment. They wanted fairness. Benedicto and Giovanni agreed. We called a meeting. Audrey had to apologize in front of the class. She crawled on the floor, a child's stage play of punishment, and the act changed her. She was humiliated publicly, which cut into her pride. She vanished for a while.
One afternoon Giovanni took me to his movie set. He wanted me beside him while he worked, close enough that he could watch me and smile when I laughed. The director joked: "A star's daughter on set? You should get an agent."
"She is my family," Giovanni said, half proud and half wary of them.
I watched men and women work, the lights, the cables. A stuntman tripped and Giovanni muted the scene by stepping forward to soothe the tension. A woman who used to be close to him—Deanna Mancini, his long-time agent—stood aside with eyes that had grown tired. She had loved him for years, always near, always offering coffee and advice. I noticed her because she held his script, not like a worker but like someone who kept memories.
Giovanni's face changed when he thought of her. He had kept her near without ever promising more. He was afraid perhaps of being seen but also afraid to lose the comfort she gave. Deanna had been steady in a world of stage lights.
One night I found a note Benedicto had written and left on my table. It read, "If you ever need anything, tell me. You have family now."
The three of them changed in small ways. Zeke, who had once measured time in numbers, began to remember to bring tea for the table. Benedicto made me sit in on a simple class about human bodies, because he wanted me to understand. Giovanni taught me to read scripts aloud, to hear how words can be like a child's heartbeat.
We built a life that had conflict but also small rituals. Each night I gave them a card I had learned to make in a village craft class: "I love you." I slipped three into the rooms—one for each man—because they had become my guardians without a formal name.
One day Benedicto took me aside. "Annika," he said, voice soft, "I was wrong about a lot. About myself and about the past. Will you forgive me?"
"I already did," I said. "You are my family."
He let out a tiny laugh that was almost like a sob. He placed his hand over his heart.
Weeks later Deanna—the agent who had watched Giovanni for years—came to sit in our kitchen. Her face had no armor. She had decided she could no longer work in the wings. "I am tired of living small," she said. "I want to be honest. I care about him."
Giovanni, who had always been braver on stage than at home, turned red. He looked like a young man caught in a limelight he did not ask for.
"Then don't be small," I told him. "Be honest. People can begin again."
Giovanni reached for Deanna's hand without making a show. The change did not happen all at once, but it began. People who had been at the center of my life started to be the center of their own, too.
Summer came, and Zeke announced he would return me to my village for a while. The roads had been made. A clinic had been built where there had only been a thatched roof months before. Benedicto had ordered the instruments. Giovanni had filmed a short piece about the village that would bring tourists later.
We went back to the place where my mother had grown tired. When we pulled up, the village gathered to greet us. Children ran and old men cried. Hazel stood at the gate with a paper list. She lowered her eyes when she saw me with three grown men.
"Annika," someone shouted, "come home!"
I walked down the lane and saw Green Wheeler by the field. He smiled like someone who had always known the sun was going to come. He knelt in the dirt before his mother. She raised her head and fell into his arms as if she had been waiting for nothing but that moment. He was no longer the laughing simpleton; he had been mended, because Benedicto spent time and care on those who needed help. He was not my future, but he was a friend.
At night we sat on the old bamboo bed in the yard. Zeke fanned me with a carefully carved fan, the same way my mother had once done. "Do you see that star?" he asked.
I looked up. A single bright dot burned like a promise. "I see her," I said. "I think that's my mother."
Zeke's voice was small. "She watched over you. She told us to care for you. We didn't realize at first how much she had done."
"She told you?" I asked.
"She left us her instructions," Benedicto said. "She knew we would be children again about some things."
We sat quiet. The night smelled like warm things—rice, the river, the memory of a woman who had kept us all tied by a thread of care.
Before I slept, I wrote three small cards. On each I wrote, "Father, I love you." I left one under Zeke's pillow, one folded into Benedicto's book, and one tucked into Giovanni's script.
They found them in the morning and pretended not to cry.
Life moved on with small and big things. My school day became a little easier. Audrey kept away and learned humility. Hazel worked and kept her head down. Bella learned to be quieter.
My three fathers learned things too. Benedicto accepted Otto as something like a son; Otto left for study abroad later with Benedicto's blessing. Deanna and Giovanni began to rebuild what they had lost. Zeke learned to laugh without counting the seconds. They grew, because my mother had asked them to, with the sound of her name in their ears.
I kept the three business cards in a box in my drawer. Sometimes at night when the house seemed too big I would take them out and read them quietly. They shimmered like the years of my mother's life that had folded into one small secret.
"Annika," Zeke would say sometimes with a dry smile, "you make a billionaire become sentimental."
"You're allowed," I replied. "But not too much. Remember the spreadsheets."
He'd laugh. Benedicto would correct my posture. Giovanni would teach me how to bow in a scene. We were a strange family, a new kind of family.
One evening, as summer softened into slow winds, we all stood near the little shop my mother had once bought, the one Zeke talked about when he first came to me.
"She wanted to help," Zeke whispered, looking at the old doorway. "She wanted to build something."
I pressed my hand to the rough wood and felt the echoes. "She did. We did. She is still here."
We all looked up. The brightest star winked like a small lamp. I smiled and for the first time in my life I felt the sky was wide enough for all of us.
The End
— Thank you for reading —