The Good Father

And yet, to help his friend, Brett had to put his own emotional health in the direct line of fire.

A line he’d told himself he’d never approach again.

Brett took another sip of wine, uncomfortably aware that he could well be facing the challenge of his life.

* * *

EITHER SHE NEEDED more wine, or she needed to go home to bed. Ella was wiped out.

“So, are we done here?” she asked as she finally finished her glass of wine. One glass was all she’d had. Over the space of an hour.

She could afford to have another and stared at the bottle as though it would tip itself over above her glass.

“No.” Picking up the bottle, Brett poured a little more wine into each of their glasses. More than half the bottle remained. “I called you here to discuss an idea, and I haven’t yet told you about it.”

She thought back. They’d discussed Chloe and Jeff. It had felt as though they were on the same page for the first time since this whole thing had begun. Except that she knew Chloe’s bruises were Jeff’s fault. And knew that her brother needed help.

And they hadn’t actually decided what to do for the other couple. Hadn’t discussed ways to help.

So how had more than an hour passed?

And why had she let it? She’d promised herself she wasn’t going to get sucked in by Brett’s magnetism again.

“What’s the idea?” she asked.

“Each day that passes without your brother knowing where his wife is, or understanding why she’s gone, he gets a little more desperate. Not as a sick man with control issues, but as a man in love with his wife, who’s just had his life disrupted and isn’t sure it’ll ever be right again.”

“I know—that’s where you came in. I’d hoped you’d help him see why Chloe left so that he can get help, and his world can be right again.”

S

he still wasn’t convinced that Jeff didn’t have a very real and dangerous problem.

“I don’t want my brother falsely accused,” she said. “But I don’t think Chloe imagined all of this. When you listen to her over a period of time, you hear how the fights escalate, and I think she’s right to be concerned. I was concerned,” she admitted. “I’m the one who suggested she get out of there. She thought she could stay with him and help him to see that he needed help. I was scared to death that if she did, Jeff would really hurt her. To the point of her needing a doctor or the police being called, and then there’d be no going back.”

“But if the situation continues as is, especially now that Sara’s involved, he could start looking like he’s stalking her when in reality he’s just a desperate man trying to save his marriage.”

“Regardless of what’s happening, she needs time apart from him to get herself straightened out, Brett.”

“I agree.”

Okay. Good. She met his gaze. Almost smiled at him. That intimate, it’s-me-and-you smile that they’d shared when other people were around.

“The other problem is that Cody’s birthday is coming up, and Jeff has every right to see his son for his birthday.” Brett’s words stole the smile before it could escape.

Jeff could push things. Get the law involved. And win his birthday party with his son. But at what cost?

They’d be right back where they started.

“I asked Jeff if he’d be willing to give Chloe total silence, no phone calls, no attempts to see or speak with her, if we could arrange a weekend away first—the five of us—to celebrate Cody’s birthday. A weekend would give him enough time with Chloe to celebrate their son’s birthday, but also for them to reconnect. Just enough to reassure him that he and Chloe aren’t becoming strangers.”

The five of us. They were the only words she heard.

For a few wonderful years it had been the four of them. And then she’d gotten pregnant, and it was going to be the five of them.

Now here they were, all these years later. And Chloe and Jeff’s baby made the fifth, not hers.

The five of them...