“About the little boy.”
“You know about Leo?”
“Chloe called us yesterday evening from the road. She was… very upset. She said you had a son you’d been hiding from her, that you’d been planning to end your relationship, so she was leaving for a few days while you moved out.” Erin’s voice was carefully neutral. “She said it was just like what happened with Sean.”
From the road.She was driving somewhere, but where?
Just like what happened with Sean.The ex-fiancé who’d cheated on her, who’d destroyed her trust in relationships entirely.
“Mrs. Parker, it’s nothing like Sean. I never cheated on Chloe. I never wanted to leave her.” I took a breath, keeping my voice steady. “I was planning to propose to her on her birthday. But that evening, a woman I had a fling with five years ago texted me with a photo of a boy she said was my son. I panicked and made the wrong call - I tried to handle it alone instead of bringing Chloe in immediately. Then someone lied to her, convinced her that having a son meant I didn’t want to be with her anymore. None of it’s true.”
Silence on the other end of the line, then: “You’ve been keeping this secret for nearly a week.”
“I wanted to have all the answers before I told Chloe - the paternity test results, some idea of what this would mean for our lives. I thought if I could just figure everything out first, I could present her with a clear picture instead of dumping chaos on her.” I closed my eyes. “I’m an idiot who thought I could handle everything myself instead of trusting her to help me figure out a complicated situation together.”
The truth was, I’d been imagining Chloe as part of my future for so long that I couldn’t picture it without her anymore. Not the big moments – the wedding, the family we’d build – but the small ones. Coming home to find her scrubs draped over the bathroom door because she’d been too tired to hang them up properly. The way she’d steal fries off my plate, even when she’d ordered her own. Her terrible singing in the shower. The sound of her laugh when I made a bad pun.
I wanted to show her Leo’s drawings and watch her face light up. I wanted her opinion on how to handle a scraped knee or a bad dream. I wanted to build pillow forts together and teach him to ride a bike together and figure out this whole parenting thing together, the way we’d figured out everything else.
“I know how it looks. I know why she thinks what she thinks. But Mrs. Parker, I love your daughter. I want to marry her. I want to build a life with her that includes my son.”
I heard Mrs. Parker take a deep breath.
“Mrs. Parker, I need you to understand something. I’ve dated other women. I’ve had relationships that were fine, comfortable, easy. But Chloe—” My voice cracked. “Chloe is the only person I’ve ever met who makes me want to be better just by existing. Not because she demands it or makes me feel inadequate, but because watching her move through the world with that much integrity and compassion makes me want to live up to her standard.”
I thought about last winter when we’d been snowed in for three days. Most couples would have driven each other crazy. We’d made a blanket fort in the living room, binged terrible reality TV, and talked for hours. She’d told me about her dreams for the clinic and her complicated relationship with her parents’ expectations. I’d told her about feeling like I was supposed to want more than a bar in a small town, about watching my friends’ lives get bigger while mine stayed small.
She’d looked at me with those green eyes and said, “Sam, your life isn’t small. You’re the heart of this town. People come to the Copper Fox because you make them feel like they belong somewhere. That’s not small. That’s everything.”
The next day, when the roads cleared, I drove to the jeweler’s in the city. I’d looked at everything they had, but nothing felt right. So I’d spent ages explaining exactly what I wanted – simple, elegant, nothing flashy because that wasn’t who she was. The jeweler had to make it custom. I’d picked it up just a few weeks before her birthday, the receipt tucked away in my office safe from prying eyes.
“I can’t imagine my life without her in it,” I told Chloe’s mom. “Not because I thought we should get married or becausewe’d been together long enough. Because she’s the only person I want to share everything with – the good days and the hard ones, the victories and the failures, everything. She’s the one.”
Another long pause, then: “Where is Leo now?”
“Leo and Jenna are staying at a motel in Millfield that I’ve been paying for. They were moving around a lot after her divorce. She’d run out of money, and they were close to living out of their car. I couldn’t let a four-year-old live like that, so I offered to pay for stable accommodation while we sorted out paternity.” I took a breath.
“And yesterday?”
“I don’t know for sure what happened, but I do know Jenna went to see Chloe yesterday. I’d bet my life she lied about what was going on - convinced Chloe that I was planning to leave her, which is the exact opposite of the truth.” I kept my voice level. “My friends, Jack and Harper, convinced me not to confront Jenna immediately, to think clearly first. Which is what I’m doing now - getting the facts, understanding what I’m up against, and figuring out how to fix this.”
There was a long pause. Then: “Sam, why are your tenants moving out?”
The question caught me completely off guard. “What? My tenants?”
“Chloe mentioned that your tenant called while she was home yesterday. Said they could move out immediately, be out in two days.”
My stomach dropped. “What? No. Jimmy left me a voicemail two days ago. His wife got offered a promotion that requires them to move to New York, and they’ve decided to go for it. He said they’d be moving in a month, so they were giving notice.” I ran my hand through my hair. “I’ve been so caught up with everything else, I hadn’t gotten around to calling them back. I didn’t even know they’d spoken to Chloe.”
“A month,” Mrs. Parker said quietly. “Not two days.”
“Definitely not two days. He said they need time to pack, arrange movers, find a place in New York…” The pieces clicked into horrible place. “Oh god. Jenna tells Chloe I’m moving in with them, and then Jimmy calls, saying they can move out immediately. Chloe must have thought—”
“That you’d already arranged everything,” Mrs. Parker finished. “That the timing confirmed what Jenna had told her.”
I felt sick. The coincidence was so perfectly damning. Jenna’s lies, followed immediately by what must have seemed like proof. No wonder Chloe ran.
“Sam.” Mrs. Parker’s voice was gentler now. “I can’t tell you where Chloe went. She specifically asked me not to.”
