Kenyon Saylor White was driving down a Tennessee freeway on Feb. 25 when a friend sent him the picture that would immediately recast his life.

Saylor White moved to Nashville to “chase some dreams and happiness,” and to try to forge a career in music. Within a few weeks, the photo would draw him back home to Houston.

He pulled over at a gas station to give it a closer look. The picture showed a 9-year-old girl whose face, it seemed, mirrored his own. His friend, Saylor White said, “didn’t really beat around the bush.”

Is this your kid?

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“The face looks so familiar… I’m sitting here looking at a picture — it’s almost proof in itself,” Saylor White recalled. “It’s pretty powerful what a face can do.”

His friend told him the girl, Peyton, is Lindsay Ferrill’s daughter. Saylor White remembered Lindsay’s big laugh and her kind heart. He remembered when a mutual friend, Kasey Smith, introduced them more than a decade ago, and when she reached out again in 2012 to tell him Lindsay had been killed by an ex-boyfriend.

On that day in February, he flooded Smith with messages and calls about the photo. She didn’t immediately reply, so Saylor White tried to distract himself with his side job installing signs and graphics. He had been working when the photo popped up on his phone. He made more phone calls and sent more messages during his breaks.

“I felt I had to get to the bottom of it,” he said. “I called anybody I could think of that had some sort of connection to more information.”

When Smith finally called him back, she was shocked. She told him she hadn’t made the connection before. Smith told him she would reach out to Lindsay’s mom, who adopted Peyton after her death. It would take some time.

Saylor White did his best to be patient. But he couldn’t wait.

***

Shari Nightingale knew something was up as soon as she saw Smith’s message. They’d kept in touch since her daughter’s death, but Smith didn’t normally text.

“She said, I need to talk to you. Can I call you?” Nightingale said. Smith told her what had happened. “And there was dead silence on the phone for it seemed like five minutes.”

Nightingale’s first instinct was fear. She’d adopted Peyton when she was just 3 years old, and Nightingale said she has tried to raise and protect the girl in a way that would make her daughter proud.

Lindsay always saw the good in people, Nightingale said. She believed the best in them, forgave quickly, and never judged. She loved “with everything she had.”

The years since her murder haven’t been easy for Peyton, now 10, who was in the house when her mother was killed. So Nightingale feared this new man, what he wanted, and whether he’d try to take Peyton away.

“That was my first thought: No matter what, I have to protect her,” Nightingale said. She asked Smith what the man wanted her to do, and what he was expecting.

No expectations, Smith told her. He just wants the truth.

Nightingale told Smith she needed time to process the information. She said she didn’t know when she would reach out again. Maybe they should just wait until Peyton turned 18, and she could make a decision for herself.

“That was initially what we thought, you know, I don’t want to disrupt her life,” she said. “And having gone through Lindsay’s death itself, even after seven years, going through a little bit of grief, I didn’t think I could handle any more loss at that point. So it really was more protecting myself as well.”

Eight days later, Saylor White contacted her directly on Facebook.

***

From one stranger to another, I hope this message finds you well. I don’t know how to write these words, but I felt I needed to reach out. I suppose there’s so much to process and unpack here… Since last week when this came to light, this has been all I can think about. I can’t imagine what it might be like on your end.

Saylor White told Nightingale about his own background, about moving to Nashville a year ago in a “risking-it-all kind of thing.”

In my world, not knowing more information in regards to Peyton leaves my life in the balance. If she’s my daughter, I feel I need to move back and be available in her life in whatever way is best, and respectful to you and your family. Because we don’t know each other, I expect that to be a process, but yet a process I’ll be 100 percent committed to.

He asked if they could set up a paternity test to confirm what the photo already told him. He said he didn’t intend to be intrusive — he just wanted to find clarity.

It was a turning point, Nightingale said. He was gracious and considerate and sensitive. He didn’t make any demands. It made her feel more comfortable with the idea of letting him in.

She started to think this could be good for her granddaughter.

Peyton often asked about her father, but Nightingale didn’t have anything to tell her. She didn’t know who he was.

“As many times as I’ve heard Peyton say ‘I want my mommy,’ I couldn’t give her her mommy,” Nightingale said. “But I could give her her dad.”

***

Before Saylor White and Peyton would meet, there was a gauntlet of dinners where family members hoped to vet his intentions. There were background checks, and attempts to sort out the spectrum of emotions that his emergence stirred up.

The first such meal was at Guadalajara’s Hacienda near the Memorial City Mall. A storm thrashed outside, effectively stranding them there. Inside, there were chips and margaritas and questions.

Erica Brettell, Lindsay’s sister, was the first to break out the tough inquiries, Nightingale said. Saylor White threw his hands up, as if to say, “Let’s do this.”

Two attorneys hired by the family returned separate packets of information they had compiled in background checks. They didn’t find anything of concern.

The family also reached out to acquaintances and mutual friends.

“We tried to get somebody to say something bad about you,” Nightingale said she told Saylor White.

Nobody would.

Saylor White moved back to Houston in April. It was Shari Nightingale’s birthday, and the seventh anniversary of her daughter’s death.

***

The family decided to tell Peyton about her father after the school year ended. They rented a house in Galveston on the weekend of May 24, and Nightingale sat down on the couch with her granddaughter and told her about an “amazing thing” that had happened.

Peyton was really excited, Nightingale said.

“When I can meet him?” she wanted to know. Nightingale told the girl that was up to her. He could be in Galveston the next morning if she wanted, or they could wait until they got back to Katy.

Saylor White said there were a few lingering moments in the last nine months that felt like eternities: when he was waiting for Nightingale to respond to that first message, and when he knew they were in Galveston telling Peyton about him.

Nightingale had told him to stay by the phone. He paced and tried, futilely, to take his mind off what might be happening.

In Galveston, it didn’t take long for Peyton to give her grandmother an answer.

“In the morning,” she said.

The next day, Peyton waited for her father on the couch. Saylor White brought a bouquet of flowers.

“I got these for you,” he told her before offering a hug. “Nice to meet you.”

About a half-hour later, Peyton said she was taking Saylor White to the beach. Did she want anyone to come with her, Nightingale asked. “Nope,” she replied.

“After that, I put her to bed and she said, ‘I can’t believe I found my dad. … My mom would be so happy.’”

***

Saylor White said they’ve been celebrating a series of “firsts” as they’ve assimilated into each other’s lives.

There was Father’s Day in June, when Peyton and Nightingale bought him an obligatory “Best Dad Ever” mug and socks that have Peyton’s face on them.

His birthday was in July. Peyton, who was interested in music before she found out her father played professionally, learned to play “Happy Birthday” on the guitar for him.

“He was blown away,” Nightingale said.

One of the more important “firsts,” they said, was when Saylor White took Peyton to her first day of school this year. He walked her to class and met her teachers and the principal.

“The entire school staff and Katy community knew the story, wanted to meet Kenyon and were moved to tears,” Nightingale said.

There was also the first time Peyton stayed at his home in Spring Branch, where Saylor White’s stepmother — equally excited to be a newly-minted grandmother — had set aside a room for her.

Peyton, unafraid to “roast me,” Saylor White said, told them she liked it, but there were going to need to be some decorative changes. The wall color had to change, for one, and she would need a pink rug and a pink chair.

Peyton didn’t want to be interviewed for this story, but Nightingale asked her to write down some of her thoughts.

In one note, next to a doodle of a rainbow, she wrote of her dad: “He’s funny and amazing and lets me burst out music in his car. I love him.”

In others, she said she has been wishing for a father.

“I don’t have to wonder if I have a dad,” she said. “I know he loves me and will always be there for me.”

***

As the family prepares for its first Thanksgiving together, there’s a lot to be grateful for, they said.

For one, Saylor White’s emergence has been great for Peyton.

“Everybody has noticed a big difference in her,” Nightingale said. She had been in counseling for years after her mom’s death. Recently — after Saylor White came into the picture — the counselor said she didn’t need to come regularly anymore.

There’s a bittersweet element to it too, Saylor White said. He’s missed so much time — the diaper changes, daycare, scooping her up in his arms. But he’s grateful he found Peyton when he did and that he didn’t miss another decade.

“As far as strangers coming together and being a family, I mean this is for me, it’s been like the best-case scenario,” Saylor White said. “They bend over backward to, you know, just make me feel welcome. It’s not your typical thing. I feel very, very fortunate. And I love them. I love them.”

Nightingale said the story of their newfound family is about a girl who, after her losing her mother in a tragedy, gained a father “through a series of miraculous events.” And it’s about a man who has “totally stepped up and embraced being a dad.”

“Our hearts are full,” she said. “We are blessed, and we are very thankful.”

dylan.mcguinness@chron.com