For Lucy

Tatum whipped around just before opening the door to her white Toyota Corolla. “Cody. I like you.” Her teeth snagged her lower lip. “A lot. So I highly doubt this will be the last time you see me.”

I patted my hands over my pockets, searching for anything to write on, half-tempted to use my car key to etch my phone number into the side of her car, but I quickly discarded that idea into the growing pile of impulsive things I’d done in my life.

“Goodnight, Cody.”

“I’m not Cody,” I replied just above a whisper, my confession carrying a backpack of guilt.

Her smile all but vanished, leaving a tiny curl to her lips on one side as she eyed me, head tilted. “No? Then who are you?” She laughed.

Of course she laughed. Stealing someone else’s date was crazy. I was laughable that night. But also …

Spontaneous.

Courageous.

And I hoped one day we’d look back to find my bold actions romantic and admirable as well because I lassoed my gut feeling and chased what felt like fate. Or insanity. The two often blurred as they mingled next to the same line.

The truth contorted my face into an ugly cringe. “A redhead who happened to be in the right place at the right time … depending on your perspective.”

“I’m not following. It’s like you’re talking in secret code.” She deserved credit for laughing everything off as if she couldn’t get enough of my humor, but by that point her amusement lost momentum.

“I’m not Cody.” I shoved my hands into the front pockets of my jeans, lifting my shoulders into a preemptive apologetic shrug—an “oops … no harm, no foul.”

There it went … her smile succumbed to my confession.

“You thought I was this Cody guy. And I thought he would never be able to appreciate that smile of yours like I could, so …”

Her eyes flared as did her nostrils while she drew in a slow breath. “You lied? You … you’re … oh my god! What is wrong with you?”

I realized that was often a rhetorical question, but I still felt the need to explain why my actions were far more right than wrong. “Give me a chance to—”

Shaking her head, she backed away from me and her car. “I gave you, a complete stranger, nearly two hours of my night while my real date …” Her gaze drifted to the bar where we met. “Crap. Alice is going to be so mad. And Cody …” Taking long strides, she made her way back to the bar.

“There’s a new Bond movie out if next Friday works for you,” I called as she ditched me along the side of the road like the rotten apple core I was at the moment.

I didn’t receive so much as a brief glance backward. I did, however, get the middle finger just before she disappeared into the bar.

Chapter Three

NOW

“Please tell me you were kidding about staying in your truck.” Lucy pauses, door ajar and one leg reaching for the ground as I drop her off after a great day of biking followed by a painful trip to the mall for “a few things” that assaulted my checking account.

“When is this kid picking you up?”

“His name is Ashton. And not for an hour. I need to shower and get ready.”

“Perfect. I have about an hour’s worth of work to do on my computer.”

She gives me that pouty face again. “You’re not fine if you sit in your stupid truck and pretend to work just to avoid Mom. And if you’re not fine, then I’m not fine.”

When you share a life-changing secret with your child, it opens you up to nonstop blackmail. The truth? I don’t really know what Lucy thinks about our secret or if she even knows it’s a secret and not just the truth, which it’s not.

“Then I’ll come inside and wait. Or wait out back. Is my firepit still there?”

“It is. Mom sits out there all the time.”

This revelation gives me pause. Does she sit out back to enjoy the space I created for our family—when we still resembled a family? A badly damaged family, but still a family. Or does she feel him there? Does she replay that day in her mind like I do? We can’t rewind. I would change the tragedy if I held some kind of otherworldly power, but I don’t. As often as I replay my knee-jerk reaction to limit that day’s tragedy to one instead of two, I have never regretted my decision. I think I knew, at the very moment I made the decision, that my marriage was over.

We were perfect … until we weren’t.

“You’re okay. Right?”

I blink slowly.

Lucy comes first …

“Right,” I lie.

Since the divorce, my communications with Tatum have involved the occasional phone call when Lucy’s sick and we need to cancel her day with me. Our face-to-face encounters comprise of school events and dance recitals where we keep a safe distance but occasionally find ourselves brought within feet of each other connected by Lucy for a photo or sometimes sitting next to each other at parent-teacher conferences.