A genetics project in class throws 14 year old orphaned Josephine's life into a spiral when she receives the news of a lifetime- not only is she not an orphan, but her father is none other than lead singer Chris Motionless.
Sitting on my bunk in the tour bus I was sketching out some lyrics for a potential new song for the next album we would be working on this next year when an alert on my phone pulled my attention.
From the banner on my iphone's notification wall, I could see that it was my ancestry app. Genealogy, something my father got me into in my teen years. It was fascinating learning about my roots and my ancestors. Delving deeper into who they were with research. One of the many things I came to realize pretty early in life is that you are born unapologetically you.
Several of my ancestors dating back to the 1500's were writers, singers, and musicians on both my mother and fathers' side, so it's no surprise to me that I just happened to flourish in both. It was something that came so natural to me.
Twenty plus years later and I am still shocked by the new information I find, even the old stuff I reread.
Setting down my lyric book and pen I picked up my phone and opened up the app to see what the latest was. It had been quite a while since I had gotten anything other than an app update.
oh, a new match.
My new matches usually end up being 4th cousins or if its someone closer than that, its usually someone I already know who decided to do their ancestry.
Josephine Christine Givings
Givings...
My heart remembered the name before I could picture her face as I remembered it all those years ago. Then the memories flooded back. So many memories of the foster girl from next door that had the window across from mine.
I had to force myself to focus and pay attention to the name on my phone. There was only one reason why I would be linked to anyone with the last name Givings, and sure enough there next to her name it had her listed as my child.
"Fuck!" I shouted as I jumped to my feet. "What the fuck!"
Everyone on the tour bus turned their attention to me as I was clearly losing my mind over something they knew nothing about.
I looked at my phone again and opened up Josephine's profile. She was born October 13th 2009. She had just turned 14. I clicked on the photo of her and felt my heart drop. I had a fucking daughter and she looked just like me, except for the eyes... she had her mothers eyes.
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I threw my phone against the wall and collapsed into my seat where hunched over and buried my face in my hands. I had a fucking daughter.
"Hey man, what's going on?" Ricky asked as he joined my side, his hand on my shoulder.
"She fuckin lied to me. Tierney lied about everything." I said through a voice thick with tears. It took everything in me to hold back my sobs, I was trembling from the effort.
"Tierney, is that the girl from back home." Justin asked. "The girl next door." He handed me a tissue and I quickly wiped my eyes as I gave a silent nod.
Ryan picked up my phone off the floor and stared at the screen with wide eyes before he looked at me. "Christ, man. I'm sorry." Was all he said before handing my phone back.
"Okay, what the fuck is going on. What did Tierney lie about?" Vinny asked.
I had to come out and be honest with them so I explained how 15 years ago Tierney and I had been arguing because she wanted to end things with me because she couldn't handle the fans and limelight and that things were only going to get worse. That she didn't want to hold me back from what I loved so she needed to let me go. Then I found the positive pregnancy test in the trash can and confronted her about it, and she told me she was pregnant but that she had lost the baby and shortly after that she said the pregnancy scare was too much and she didn't want to do this anymore and then she disappeared.
"She lied about losing the baby." I took a shaky breath to try and calm myself. "I fuckin loved her and I would have loved our baby too. She never gave me a fuckin chance and now I missed 14 years."
I clenched my fists and then jumped to my feet. "My own daughter probably thinks I'm some sort of dead beat. Fuck! What the fuck do I do?"
Ricky pulled me into his arms in an embrace before releasing me. "Look, just take a breath. This is a lot coming at you all at once. The first thing you gotta do is figure out where she is. From there you can hire a private investigator to figure out everything else. Once enough information is established you can figure out if you want to establish your rights as a parent and maybe even fight for custody-"
"Figure out, I missed out on 14 years. I want my fucking daughter. Look, her profile said she is in Norman, Oklahoma. We have a concert in Oklahoma City in three days. After that concert I'm not leaving without my daughter."
I saw the guys exchange a glance with each other before Justin took a step forward. "Okay. And we will all have your back if you are all in. But we gotta do this the right way. We don't need you catching any charges of kidnapping. So first thing, we are gonna have to get on the phone with everyone, get that private investigator on payroll and when we figure out what we are going to put out in terms of publicity if we have to cancel any concerts then we will tackle that, but everyone needs to keep this underwrap."
"Justin's right." Ryan chimed in. "So many things are at risk here if something goes wrong. First of all, Tierney lied for a reason, right? If she finds out Chris knows about his daughter she might disappear. As for the girl, we don't need the public getting wind of her true identity, you know how crazy some of our fans get. She probably doesn't even know who she truly is."
"Okay, so I guess that settles it, Ricky, you call our publicist, Ryan band manager, I'll take care of hiring the private investigator, and Vinny you scope out social media for anything on his daughter. Keep it on the downlow." Justin turned to me and handed me my phone. "You need to call your parents."
While the guys took care of everything else I facetimed with my parents about the information that came to light on my daughter. They were concerned at first that it might be a hoax, but when I informed them that ancestry only links people by their dna connections they realized that there was without a doubt no mistake.
Like me, they too were angry about her deceit and keeping my daughter from our lives. Fourteen years of memories were stolen from the family. I tried hard to not think about it on in-depth terms because it brought me to level of anger I never wanted to experience.
I loved Tierney. I planned on marrying Tierney. I didn't want a reason to be angry with her, not like this. It was one thing to have my heart broken by her, but to be angry and to hate her for stealing time with my daughter from me.
Time - the only thing in the world you can never replace.
