The Good Father

But by the third, Brett was holding his own again. They were playing best of ten for the fifty-dollar bill sitting on one corner of the table. Eight ball. His call on the game. Next ten would be Jeff’s preference.

Taking a sip of beer from one of the two bottles sitting open on the bar, Brett assessed the fourteen balls remaining on the table.

“So what’s with Chloe?” he asked, bending to take a shot that, if properly executed, would leave his cue ball perfectly positioned to put the twelve ball in the corner pocket.

He made the shot. Exactly as planned. And was rounding the table to get set for the next hit as Jeff said, “I pray to God it’s just more of the postpartum depression she went through after Cody was born.”

He shot. Well. Then, cue stick suspended, he glanced over at his friend. “I didn’t know Chloe suffered from depression. Is she on medication?”

“Not anymore. And she was only depressed after Cody was born. The doctor said it just happens sometimes, part of the hormonal changes after a woman gives birth.”

“So, like, what did she do? Cry all the time?” It was important that he knew the facts. Proper assessments relied on them. And he was there to help.

“That, yeah, but for the first week or two she wouldn’t even hold the baby. She said he didn’t like her. That if she touched him, she’d make him cry.”

Brett listened as Jeff talked about the debilitating, though generally temporary, after-effect of birth that wasn’t commonly spoken about. At least not enough that he’d personally known of anyone who’d experienced it.

Had Ella struggled that way? Could it happen if the woman didn’t carry a baby full term?

Resting the bottom of his stick on the ground, he used it as a hand rest. “So you think, maybe, this...time away...is some sort of the same thing, except you’re the one she can’t make happy?”

Leaning back against one of the half dozen or so tan leather bar stools situated around the room, Jeff shook his head. But continued to meet Brett’s gaze head-on. “I don’t know, man.” His chin jutted. Trembled. “I truly don’t know. I’ve gone over every second, every hour, every day in my head. Again and again. Was there something I forgot? Not a birthday or anything major like that, for sure, but maybe some little remembrance, like the anniversary of our first kiss or something? Something I said that she took wrong? Something she found in my pocket that she might have misinterpreted...”

Senses honed even more than normal, Brett said, “Did you give her cause to misinterpret something?”

“Hell, no! Wait.” Jeff crossed his arms, trapping his pool cue against his body. “Are you asking me if I’ve been unfaithful to my wife?”

“You wouldn’t be the first guy...”

“No!” Taking hold of his cue stick, he stood. “I don’t even flirt with other women, just to make certain I don’t find myself in something I don’t mean to be in. I love my wife, Brett. I thought you of all people knew that.”

“I do.” Feeling a tug on emotions that were better off staying dormant, Brett stood toe-to-toe with his friend. “I do, Jeff. I’m just asking because the last I knew, Chloe felt the same way about you. You two...you’re that couple that makes it till you’re ninety and then dies within a day of each other because one can’t live without the other.”

Jeff’s chin dropped to his chest. And then he stood straight. “I have to believe she still feels the same way,” Jeff said. “That’s what keeps me going.”

He thought about what he wanted to ask. Speaking slowly as he chose his words carefully. “Have...you... Do you...have any reason...to think... Could there be...someone else? For her?”

Shaking his head, Jeff headed to his beer waiting on the bar. Helped himself to a big swig. And Brett, tense and feeling a little angry, missed his next shot.

“I’m going to be honest,” Jeff said, remaining by the bar, in spite of the fact that it was his turn. “Not that she ever gave me reason to doubt her, but after she left I went through everything. Searched her computer, her drawers. Her social-media accounts. I felt like a damned creep, but I just had to know, you know?”

“And?”

“Nothing. My wife is as sweet and loyal and honest as we both know her to be. Hell, she hadn’t even made a purchase she hadn’t told me about.”

“So why up and leave? You having financial problems? Something that just overwhelmed her?”

“Stocks are up and down. You know the business. But no. Our personal portfolio has enough safe investments to keep us secure.”

“What about work? Anything life-altering happening there?”

“Like, are any of the traders into something they shouldn’t be, you mean?”

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.”