The Good Father

It happened far more than Brett would have figured before he’d gotten into the watchdog business. “Something like that.”

“We’re clean,” he said. “We run audits with an independent company, just to make sure.”

One by one, Jeff was shooting holes in the theories Brett had come up with to explain Chloe’s leaving her husband and moving in with Ella.

And not telling Jeff where she was.

“Where is she, by the way?” he asked now, justifying the duplicity implicit in asking a question to which he knew the answer with the idea that all he wanted was to help Jeff.

Jeff took a shot. And then another. He sank four balls in a row, leaving only Brett’s striped balls on the table, and motioned to a side pocket as his call for the eight ball.

He sank that, too. Leaned his pool cue against the table, pulled the rack off its hook on the wall, reached under the table for the balls and began placing them inside.

When the fully racked balls were ready for Jeff to break for the next game, he faced Brett.

“I don’t know where she is.”

Brett could not doubt the sincerity of the response.

And knew an odd second of relief that Ella’s secret was safe.

Because he was still protective of his ex-wife? And because the secret meant a lot to her?

Ella—and her secrets—were no longer in his control, or of his concern.

“She just up and left and didn’t tell you where she was going?”

“Yes.” Jeff, at six-two and two hundred pounds was a big man, but lean. Almost to the point of skinny. With his sandy-blond hair and freckles, his glasses, he looked like the stereotypical guy next door.

“What about her mother? Isn’t Chloe’s mother in Florida?”

“Yes, and Chloe said she isn’t there and begged me not to call her mother and get her all upset. I’ve agreed not to look for her, and in exchange, she’s agreed to answer her cell phone each and every time I call. Or, at the very least, call me right back. I need to know that she’s safe.”

Ella hadn’t told him that Chloe and Jeff were in constant contact. Brett was glad to hear it.

“She hasn’t told her mother she left you?”

“Nope.” Pulling back, Jeff shoved his cue stick forward, making perfect contact with the cue ball, slamming it into the freshly racked triangle of balls, spreading them all over the table. Two fell. A solid and a stripe.

“I’ll take the stripes,” Jeff said, proceeding to sink another three balls.

Brett studied the solids. He was likely only going to get one shot at the game. Not that he cared about the fifty dollars balanced there to taunt them, but because he was a guy, and guys didn’t like to lose. Not even to good friends.

Jeff missed a nearly impossible shot. Reached for his beer.

“I’d say it’s a good sign, then.” Brett stood, watching Jeff rather than the pool balls. “If she was looking to do anything permanent, she’d let people know.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Jeff’s expression relaxed.

And Brett cleared the table.

* * *

CHLOE WAS DUSTING the living room when Ella let herself into the apartment. Cody sat on the floor with a line of little cars around him, watching Nick Jr. reruns.

“El! El!” The little boy jumped up when he heard her, running over to hug her knees and then to grab her finger. “Sit,” he said, pointing to his cars.