The Good Father

Jeff knew the designated time. But Brett told him again anyway. “Seven.” After dinner at the Stand, but Jeff didn’t know that, of course.

Chloe was a couple minutes late.

“She could be caught in traffic,” Jeff said now. “You know what LA traffic is like at rush hour.”

He did know. He drove in it a lot. And commiserated with his friend. More than Jeff knew. Loving a woman you couldn’t have—for whatever reason—was difficult.

“She’s bringing Cody with her, right?”

“That’s what she said.” Or rather what Ella had said when she’d spoken with him briefly to finalize meeting plans. He hadn’t actually spoken to Chloe. “She wants you to see him.”

He knew the mistake of his words as Jeff swung around, a look of horror on his face. “I thought...hoped...with Thanksgiving coming up and all...but if she’s bringing him so he can see me, that would imply that she’s not planning to come home.” He flopped down on the couch. “Where he’d see me every day.”

“You don’t know that,” Brett said. But he’d drawn the sam

e conclusion. “Could be she didn’t want to leave him wherever he’s staying. Could be that she wants to ask for just a little more time.”

All Ella had told him was that Chloe needed to speak to Jeff.

A car turned in, coming up his drive. Ella’s car.

Was she with them?

“You sure we can talk in your bedroom?” Jeff stood, dangling his hands at his sides, rubbing them together and dropping them again, as though he didn’t know what to do with them.

“When you’re ready, I’ll take Cody into the living room, turn on the TV while you two talk. There’s a conversation alcove in the suite, and you’ll have privacy there.”

It was the only place he could think of where the couple could talk without being overheard. The walls in his house weren’t well insulated, and sound traveled through the old register ducts.

And the fact that there was a bed in the room, if they needed it...well, he’d changed the sheets.

* * *

ELLA DIDN’T SHOW. After playing with his dad for half an hour or so, Cody had fallen asleep on the blanket Brett had laid on the wool rug in the family room, watching a Blu-ray about a dog named Blue. Something Chloe had brought with her.

Jeff and Chloe had been in the bedroom for over an hour. With the little one asleep, Brett could concentrate on his agenda for the next morning’s meeting in Phoenix—a fifty-page booklet of motions—and research every item on it.

He was more than a quarter of the way through when he thought he heard his bedroom door opening.

The knob was old—had a bit of a squeak to it. Saving his work, he set his laptop on the coffee table, turned off the television and reached to eject the disc so that he could pack up the bag Chloe had brought with Cody’s things in it. The boy had fallen asleep before he’d had the graham cracker snack his mother had brought for him.

A snap and he turned. Had that been the door closing again? He heard a thump and, disc forgotten, Brett moved across the family room, through the kitchen to the hall leading back to the master suite. “Let me go, Jeff.”

Brett heard the words as he started down the hall. Chloe’s tone was firm. Not frightened.

“Chloe, wait! Just give me a second. I listened to you. I heard everything you had to say. I just want you to understand my perspective...”

A fair request. Brett stopped. Thinking he’d turn and go back to work.

“I listened to you, Jeff. For over half an hour. I understand that you think this is all me—but who, when he says he wants to reconcile, calls his wife a stupid bitch?”

What? Had he heard that right? Moving forward, Brett stood outside the door, his hand on the knob.

“I know, that was completely wrong,” Jeff said in a tone that told Brett his friend was truly sorry. “I apologized. It’s just...you have no idea how hard it’s been with you gone and me not knowing where you are. Not being able to see you or Cody. My son is learning new words, and I don’t even understand them because I’m not there...”

“And telling me I’m not very bright just because I don’t agree with your take on our problems?”

“Frustration, Chloe. You know I don’t mean it. Hell, you’re smarter than I am by far, and we both know it.”