The Good Father

I’m not feeling well.

His fingers flew over the tiny keys, and his thumb punched Send. It was bunk. And shamed him. But he needed her, dammit. She was the only one who would understand.

You’re fine. I saw you leaning against your car.

So she was watching him through the window.

Ella’s seeing someone. A doctor, he typed.

I hadn’t heard.

Why should she have? Did she think a date would come through on a High Risk team report? She was just blowing him off. And he knew it.

I’m struggling with it. Don’t know what to do.

He was a powerful businessman. Known and respected across the nation. And here he was, standing outside his mother’s house, feeling lost and unsure of himself.

Dammit. He was what he was, incapable of having a normal relationship, in part because of her. She’d raised him in that home...

No. Brett climbed back in his car as his thoughts deteriorated. He didn’t blame his mother for anything his father had done. Or for keeping them in that home. She’d stayed because as long as she was there, his father looked for jobs and eventually found work. Those jobs had not only eventually provided the insurance that paid for Livia to have the best care, but it had also allowed his mother to be a stay-at-home mom, there to care for Livia 24/7. And not once had his father inflicted his violence on Livia. Not once. His mom had stayed for Livia. And Brett would have done the same.

He turned the key in the ignition. And his phone buzzed.

Would you marry her again if you could?

He read the question twice.

No.

His answer to her was unequivocal. She’d understand that, too.

Because it hadn’t just been his father who’d broken the vow to keep violence out of their home. She’d broken it, too.

Then you have to let her go.

Just as his mother had let him go.

Because she was afraid she’d take her anger out on him again.

As she had the last day he’d seen her. The day of Livia’s funeral.

The day any hope of a happy life for him had ended.

He just hadn’t known it yet.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

BRETT HADN’T HEARD from Ella at all since he’d told her that nothing had changed.

Nor had he tried contacting her, other than a brief call to finalize Jeff and Chloe’s meeting plans.

As his mother had said, he had to let her go.

And still he hoped, as he flew into LA and drove home to Santa Raquel the following Thursday in time to meet Jeff at his place, that when Chloe showed, Ella would be with her.

“What time did she say she’d be here?” Jeff paced from the living room to the formal dining room and back again, his heels sounding on the hardwood floor with each step. Still in black pants and a white dress shirt with small black pinstripes, he’d taken off his tie.

And looked...wrinkled.