The Good Father

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  He and Ella were not going to get back together. Ever. And if Ella had given Chloe any reason to suspect differently...

  For a second, Brett felt a tiny flutter of the unfamiliar inside him.

  And then...nothing. Just like him and Ella. He was going to have to make certain that she understood that. Unequivocally.

  Though, after the way he’d reacted to her miraculous pregnancy—with no sign of positive emotion at all—he found it hard to believe Ella would ever want a relationship with him again.

  Still, to be safe, no more backhanded swim invitations. Or visits to his house.

  “I’m here about Chloe,” Brett said when he finally got the bartender’s attention and had his last beer on the way. He had another hour before he had to board his flight.

  Jeff’s frown, his stiffening, was instantaneous.

  “What’s wrong? How was she when you saw her? How was Cody?”

  “Chloe’s fine. She looked good. A bit tired, maybe, but good. I was glad to see her. Four years is a long time. And Cody, you did good there, my friend. That boy’s his daddy all over again.”

  Brett stopped himself before talking about a future golfer or anything else Cody might be or do when he realized that going on about the kid would only make it harder for Jeff to be apart from him.

  “So what’s up? Chloe seemed fine the last time I talked to her,” Jeff said. “She was in pretty good spirits. Said she’d been cooking for some people and that she’d enjoyed it. Must have had some kind of gathering wherever she’s staying.”

  “When I called to tell you I’d seen her, it was so that you’d know she was fine and leave her alone for a bit so she can get herself figured out and get back to you.”

  “I know.” He bowed his head and then looked back up at Brett. “And I’m grateful. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold on, and then you show up and go see her for me... It made all the difference...I can’t tell you how much... Anyway, thanks.”

  Brett’s instincts for weeding out fakers was honed to the hilt. And there was no doubting the sincerity in Jeff’s words.

  “How many times have you two talked in the past couple days?”

  With both hands on his glass, Jeff looked down into his beer. “I don’t know. Too many, I’m sure. I mean, you’re right. Her being gone isn’t going to do whatever it’s supposed to do if we talk like we always do. I get that. But I miss her and...”

  He looked over at Brett. “What if she decides that she likes her new life better than the one we shared? I want her to know that I’m willing to make changes if need be. I can work anywhere. If she wants to leave Palm Desert, or...you know, I’m open. I need her to know that.”

  Brett had made his assessment. Jeff was a lovesick man who needed his wife by his side. Not some stalker putting pressure on the woman who’d dared think she could leave him. He showed no signs of being angry with Chloe.

  On the contrary, he was a husband who was willing to do whatever it took to keep his wife happy.

  The type of husband Brett had planned to be.

  “I just wish I could see her,” Jeff said. “If she needs her time away, then she does, and I’m not going to ask her to come home before she’s ready. That wouldn’t be good for either of us. But not seeing her at all, and having our last memory together being with angry words between us—words I can’t get out of my head...”

  Ella hadn’t spoken with Jeff. Because Jeff wouldn’t put her in the middle. She had only Chloe’s side to go on. She couldn’t see what Brett was seeing.

  “Have you asked her for a meeting?”

  “Of course. She said no. Based on the fact that she doesn’t want us to be alone together again until she’s sure that things will be better for her when she comes back because it would be too hard for her to leave again.”

  “Makes sense. And also sounds like she’s missing you as much as you’re missing her.”

  “Yeah.” Jeff grinned. “I read it the same way,” he said.

  “So maybe it would be in your best interest to quit calling, just leave her alone and give her a chance to really miss you.”

  Jeff frowned. “I don’t like the feel of that. I don’t even know where she is. At least when we talk there’s some connection. We aren’t separated, Brett. We’re married. Husband and wife. Besides, Cody’s birthday is coming up. He’s only two. I don’t want him forgetting his daddy, or thinking I don’t care enough to wish him happy birthday.”

  But if, just if, a woman needed to break the mental manipulation she was experiencing from an abusive spouse...if she needed time to free her mind from his influence...

  He might not visit The Lemonade Stand, but he knew the rhetoric. He’d been through enough counseling in his lifetime to be fully versed.

  Not that he was changing his mind about Jeff and Chloe, starting to think that there could be some truth to the assertions of abuse. There wasn’t. It was impossible.

  But if Chloe felt as though she was losing herself to him, finding herself too dependent on him—it could happen with Jeff in his high-powered job and her being a stay-at-home mom—then she could very well need some time completely separate from his influence in order to find her own strengths.

  It could be that the only way to help Jeff, to get his friend’s wife and son back home with him, was to help Chloe have time away from him.

  Ella’s plan, but with a different spin. The separation wasn’t because Jeff had to get well, but because Chloe did.

  But Cody’s birthday...Jeff had a good point there. If he wanted to, he could press things with Chloe and force her to let him have equal access to their son.

  He’d done nothing wrong. Didn’t deserve not to see his own son.

  Used to sitting at board tables where quick thinking was paramount, used to making important decisions on his own, Brett said, “I’ve got an idea. How about if Ella and I chaperone a meeting between you and Chloe and Cody someplace neutral for a birthday celebration? And then, afterward, after you’ve had time to make a good memory to replace the bad one she left on, you agree to give her complete silence for a time.”

  Let Jeff see his family, have time with them to assure him that they were well and still were his family, in exchange for total silence between him and them for a period of time afterward.

  And maybe, if they were extremely lucky, Chloe would have a moment of clarity when they were all together and no longer need the time apart.

  And Chloe and Jeff, seeing him and Ella together, would understand that there was going to be no reunion between them.

  Logistics played themselves through his mind—the challenges first. Like convincing Ella that this was a good idea...

  “You’d do that?” Jeff was saying, leaning on the bar’s round high-top table, focused on Brett. “You’d be willing to spend time with Ella? From the little she’s said, up until now you wouldn’t see her at all.”

  “You were there for me at my crossroads,” Brett said, meeting the other man’s gaze with difficulty. He and Jeff had had some emotionally sloppy moments, back when they’d been kids and Brett had been pretty messed up. But they weren’t kids anymore. “If not for you, I don’t know that I’d have stayed in school, much less graduated. I could’ve ended up a drunk just like my old man.”

  “You didn’t drink any more than the rest of us.”

  He’d never drunk at all until that first year in college. Not while Livia was alive. And he was living at home watching out for her and their mother.

  “I owe you,” Brett said now, needing not to get lost in memories that he could ill afford. “And it’s not like she and I would have to interact personally.” He was assuring himself as much as he was Jeff. “You and Chloe and Cody will be there the whole time.”

  “I know Ella would do it,” Jeff said. “My sister doesn’t know how to say no to me, which is why I’m always so careful not to put things on her.”

  A true statement on all counts, as Brett knew from personal experience way back w
hen.

  And not at all the actions of a manipulative, abusive man.

  “But what about Chloe? Would she be willing to leave wherever she’s staying and meet up with us all?” Jeff asked, looking hopeful and worried at the same time, his beer untouched on the table. “I mean, I’m pretty sure she would if Ella asked her,” he continued without pausing long enough for Brett to respond. “She’d never ask Ella,” Jeff said. “She’s careful not to pit my sister against me, which is why I was so glad to know that they’ve been in touch. Chloe still considers Ella and me part of her family.”

  He sipped from his beer then. And Brett waited.

  Being duplicitous with Jeff, for whatever reason and in whatever fashion, did not sit comfortably with him.

  “But if Ella suggested a gathering to Chloe,” Jeff continued as soon as he put his glass down, “Chloe would probably agree.”

  “I can’t guarantee anything,” Brett said, his mind calculating. “But I think we might be able to work something out.” Once he explained the plan. “We could meet up in LA someplace,” he said. Santa Raquel was definitely out, for obvious reasons.

  Such as Cody somehow letting his father know that the town was familiar to him.

  And while taking Chloe back to Palm Desert for a weekend might help her realize that she missed home, wanted to be there, belonged there, Brett was fairly certain that, for those very reasons, Ella would refuse to be a part of that plan.

  “I’ll go anywhere,” Jeff said. “You name the time and place, and I’ll be there.”

  “I think it might be best to suggest the idea, and then to let Chloe choose a time and place.” Brett was thinking out loud now. “We want her to feel comfortable and like she has some level of control...”

  “That woman has all the control where I’m concerned,” Jeff said, shaking his head with a bit of an affectionate grin on his face. “Has since the day I laid eyes on her.”

  “I remember.” Brett grinned now, too. He and Jeff had been on a bike trip along the coast—Brett’s choice for his bachelor party—and had stopped at a small but very popular diner along the ocean road. Chloe, who’d been in culinary school, had been managing the place. Jeff had seen her from across the room and had dropped his glass of spiked tea. He’d said the glass was wet. That it had slipped.

  What it had done was summon the manager over to their table, and she’d helped mop him up.

  They’d both ended up chatting with her. She’d asked where they were from. Jeff had told her that they were bent on raising hell one last time before Brett got married the next weekend to his baby sister.

  Before they left that day, Jeff had asked Chloe to the wedding.

  And they’d been together ever since.

  Unlike the couple whose wedding had been Jeff and Chloe’s first date.

  Brett and Ella hadn’t made it together, but as Brett boarded his plane half an hour later, he was determined that Jeff and Chloe would.

  There had to be some happy endings.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ELLA HADN’T SLEPT well the past two nights and was fighting irritability when she went into work Friday morning. Chloe’s constant need to have everything shiny clean, because Ella liked it that way, had bothered her that morning. While she appreciated Chloe’s attempt to keep Ella’s life as normal as possible, she also just wished Chloe would relax. She was tired of living with someone who walked on eggshells.

  Then she ended up behind a slow driver in the passing lane on her way into work. By the time she got to work, the closest parking lot was full and she had to park in the off-site garage. And then an orderly on the shuttle from the employee parking garage to the hospital’s main campus was on the phone the entire trip, talking twice as loud as he should have been.

  And there was a hair in her ponytail that was pulling. She’d redone the thing twice, but still felt a little jab to her scalp when she moved her head.

  Standing in the elevator, it occurred to her that Chloe’s walking on eggshells in the apartment might not be as much about living with her as she’d thought, but rather another symptom of being a victim of domestic violence.

  Then she was irritated with herself for taking so long to figure that out. And felt even guiltier for the ill thoughts she’d had regarding Chloe’s obsessive cleaning.

  The NIC unit’s on-duty child-life specialist was standing in the hall just outside the elevator when Ella got off.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” Jacqui said, though Ella was half an hour early for her shift. “Henry’s being discharged this morning. Nora’s taking him home.”

  Henry. The baby of the young abuse victim Ella had turned over to Lila.

  They’d been expecting the orders to come through for the past two days. “The Lemonade Stand’s ready for him,” she said, switching immediately into work mode. Child services had been up the day before. Without any formal proof against Ted Burbank or Nora, they were releasing the baby solely into his parents’ care.

  Lila had police and lawyer members of the High Risk team working to establish proof that would help prevent Ted from having unsupervised access to his son until he got help.

  In the meantime, the man wouldn’t know where to find his wife and son, or be able to get to them if he did.

  “No,” Jacqui said, twisting her fingers together as she walked beside Ella and, when Ella slid her pass card through the reader, followed her onto the unit. “She’s taking him home, home. She’s in his pod now, packing up the things she had in there for him.”

  Stopping in her tracks, Ella stared at the woman whose prime responsibility was advocating for the patients in her care. And secondarily to their families. “What do you mean home, home? She’s going to her home at the Stand, right?”

  Jacqui shook her head. “She’s going home. I thought her permanent address on the paperwork was a mistake so I went in to have her correct it, and she’s not going back to the Stand.”

  Ella hadn’t gotten a call...

  Pulling her cell phone out of the pocket of her scrubs, she glanced at the screen. No missed calls. No voice mail. No text messages.

  Lila would have called. The High Risk team would have been notified...

  “There must be some mistake,” she said, turning toward Henry’s pod. They had pictures of Nora’s back. The woman had talked to the police and was willing to testify against her husband...

  “I thought so, too.”

  “Did she say she checked out of the Stand?”

  “She didn’t. Check out, that is. She said she just decided on the way in this morning.”

  Before seven in the morning? Right after waking up? She’d decided to take her baby out of a safe environment and back to a dangerous home that spontaneously?

  “I’ll talk to her,” Ella said.

  Thus began a morning that didn’t improve as the day wore on.

  * * *

  DRIVEN BY A tension he couldn’t assuage, Brett finished business on Friday afternoon and sped most of the way to Santa Raquel. Was he that worried about Jeff? Just determined to be there for his friend as his friend had been there for him? Or that eager to get the business with Ella behind him?

  He asked the questions. And had no answers.

  Something he didn’t usually abide. There would be no unanswered questions in his life. He’d made the promise to himself when he’d left his marriage with the intention of living alone for the rest of his life.

  He wasn’t going to risk hurting anyone as he’d hurt Ella. Or worse, risk hurting anyone as his father had hurt his mother and him. The nightmares he’d had after finding out he was going to be a father had ceased. The memories had faded. But they’d served their purpose.

  He’d spoken to a counselor about them, of course. Who’d talked to him about fear versus reality. About the residual effects of growing up in an abusive home. But he knew that statistically, abusers had very often grown up as victims. That the pattern of abuse perpetuated itself. His parents had both grown up i
n abusive homes, had promised each other that abuse would not enter their home. Trusting that, because they knew better and so badly needed and wanted a safe home, they’d break the pattern.

  His father had failed first.

  And then, according to his mother, she’d failed, too. Brett didn’t agree with her assessment, knowing that when she’d lashed out at him the afternoon of Livia’s funeral, beating him on the chest with blows that didn’t even leave bruises, she’d been railing at life, distraught with grief, and clinging to him as much as pounding her fists against the wall he presented between her and her need to die...

  She’d cut herself off from him after that day. And shown her son by example how to be accountable to the intense emotions that could be smoldering inside him. No one had been able to assure him that there was no chance he’d be capable of becoming his father. Of someday exploding. Just as no one had been able to guarantee him that those dreams he’d had after Ella had finally become pregnant hadn’t been a warning from his unconscious mind.

  His phone beeped with a text message, but he didn’t stop to read it. He was low on fuel, noted that his dashboard computer told him he had enough miles until empty to make it home and passed on the fill-up for now.

  Ella’s shift ended at three. He needed a few minutes of her time. Without Chloe.

  After pulling into the visitor parking lot of Santa Raquel’s new children’s hospital—a building he’d visited during the grand-opening ceremonies—he strode inside and had Ella paged, saying only that someone was there to see her for personal reasons. And then waited.

  If she was with a patient, he could be there a while.

  So be it. This was going to get done.

  “Brett?” Her face was ashen as she came hurrying toward him from behind a locked door. “What’s wrong?”

  He’d always thought her scrubs were sexy. Something years and distance apparently hadn’t diminished.

  God, she was beautiful.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” he said a bit curtly. For both their sakes. “I just needed to speak with you.”