Autumn ran like somebody was chasing her. Her lungs burned. A sharp stitch stabbed her side. Her muscles cried out in protest. So did her sister. The girl who ran cross-country in college.
The girl who ran the Chicago Marathon in three hours, twenty-six minutes.
“I thought…you said…a jog.”
Sweat trickled down Autumn’s back. Early-morning sun shone against her shoulders, already creeping past warm. Today would be a beautiful day. Families across the city would celebrate the fathers in their lives with grilled hamburgers and cold beer and Frisbee at the park, sunscreen and bug spray. After church, she would pick up hot dog buns and potato salad, because that had been her assignment from Leanne for today’s cookout. She would also pick up a Father’s Day card. Something generic. Something she would sign and he would throw away, because Dad wasn’t sentimental. Her mother hadn’t been either.
They hadn’t kept her drawings as a kid. Sometimes she’d find them in the garbage and pull them out with righteous indignation. How could they do such a thing?
Mom and Dad would look properly contrite, and then Mom would say, “Honey, we can’t keep everything you bring home from school. If we did, the house would be overrun with paper.”
Autumn would huff, and then she’d hang her soggy, food-splattered masterpiece on the refrigerator, where it would stay until she was no longer paying attention.
Reese had said her mother kept all her drawings and Tate’s drawings in a box under her bed. But Reese had lied. She had lied about the drawings. She had lied about the piñata and the Fun Dip and the bike rides. The Vivian Autumn thought she knew—the Vivian Autumn had built up in her mind—wasn’t the real Vivian at all.
The real Vivian was a cheater.
Paul had felt relief.
Reese had lied in her letters.
Autumn ran faster.
Until Claire grabbed Autumn’s arm and jerked them both to a halt. She bent over her knees, huffing and puffing. “Who…in the world…are you running from?”
Autumn clasped her side, like she might be able to press the sharpness away. But it stabbed every time she sucked in a breath.
Sparkles of sunlight rippled along the surface of the lake.
She heard a firm “Passing” as a couple whizzed past on a pair of bikes.
Autumn jumped.
Claire squinted at her. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Vivian was a cheater.
Paul had felt relief.
Reese had lied in her letters.
And Claire wouldn’t let her run.
Her attention zipped down the length of the lakefront, where another biker approached from the distance, closing in on a woman walking her dog.
“If I tell you something,” she finally said, “you cannot breathe a word of it to anyone.”
Claire’s eyes widened.
“Do you understand?”
“Of course.”
“Not a word.” Autumn held up her pointer finger. “Not even to Trent.”
“I promise. Now what’s going on?”
“I went to Paul’s last night.”
“Again?”
“Again? Claire, it’s been two weeks since the baseball game.”
Claire held up her hands.
Autumn sighed. “His grandfather had a stroke.”
“That’s awful.”
“He needed someone to watch his kids.”
“So he called you? You’re his go-to?”
“If you keep interrupting, I’m not going to tell you anything.”
Claire mimicked zipping her lips and throwing away the key.
Autumn pulled her off to the side, onto the grass so bikers could zoom past without having to announce themselves. They resumed their jog, this time, at a slower pace. They passed the dog walker, and by the time Autumn was through unloading everything, they were a block away from home.
“I can’t believe it.” Claire shook her head. “The Marriage Doctor was on the brink of divorce.”
“You can’t tell anyone.”
“I thought we already established that.”
“No funny comments under your breath. No innuendos. No vague references. Nothing.”
“I know. Chill.”
“I don’t even know how his grandfather is doing. I don’t even know if he’s alive. I asked, but Paul never answered. And then Tate came out, and I had to leave with all that between us. I have no idea when we’ll see each other again.”
“Something tells me it won’t be long.”
They had just turned down the walkway leading to the entrance of her apartment complex. Paul stood up from the front stoop. His hair was a mess.
Autumn’s heart took off. Thud-thud-thud, like she was sprinting again.
“Hey,” he said, his attention sliding from Claire to Autumn.
“Hi,” she said back.
Anticipation radiated off her sister in waves, making Autumn cringe. She wanted to step in front of Paul and shield him from Claire’s blatant curiosity.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Could we talk?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll just be upstairs.” Claire took the key from Autumn, her eyes wide with knowing, then disappeared inside with a not-so-casual glance over her shoulder. In two minutes’ time, she’d be peeking out the kitchen window.
It seemed terribly obvious that she knew something.
But Paul didn’t comment.
“How’s your grandfather?” she blurted, eager to know. “I’ve been thinking about him all night.”
Lie.
She’d been thinking about Paul all night.
He rubbed his forehead. “He’s stable. The doctors will know more in a day or two.”
“It’s good that he’s stable.”
“Yeah.”
“Happy Father’s Day,” she said lamely.
“Thanks.”
“I hope your kids spoil you,” she said, even more lamely.
“Reese isn’t exactly talking to me.”
“Oh.”
“Listen, Autumn. I need you to understand that what I told you last night…” He glanced toward her apartment window, as if he, too, knew that Claire would be spying. He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “I’ve never told that to anyone. Not my mom. Not my grandfather. Not Mitch.”
“Paul.”
“I mean, I don’t even know if it’s true. About Tate. Vivian never said anything. And it’s not like it matters to me. Tate is my son, regardless of DNA.”
“Paul.”
“It’s just, if someone found this out. If Tate found out. I’m not sure—”
“Paul?”
He looked at her, the feathered lines in the corners of his eyes impossibly deep. She wanted to smooth her thumbs over them. Press away the stress he carried.
“I won’t tell anyone.” Except she already had. She told Claire, whom she’d have to swear to secrecy again. She would threaten to kick her out of the apartment if she breathed a word of it to anyone. She would do what it took to keep Paul’s secret safe. Because he had trusted that secret to her. Nobody else but her.
“And the footage?” Paul rubbed his forehead again. “I don’t want the things Reese said on there uploaded to YouTube or broadcast on Redeemer’s big screen.”
“I won’t use it. I didn’t even take the camera with me.”
Paul deflated with visible relief. All the tension he’d been carrying in his shoulders melted away. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
There was a brief pause, wherein she wondered where this left him. Vivian couldn’t be the only one not in the tribute. But how was she supposed to ask Paul for an interview now, knowing what she knew?
“It’s called fantastical thinking,” he said.
“What?”
“What Reese is doing. I did a bit of it when I was a kid. She wants to remember Vivian as better than she was.”
Autumn glanced over her shoulder. Besides a bird hopping along the grass, the apartment complex’s front lawn was empty. “Do you think Reese knew about—?”
“No.” His quick, decisive answer left no room for pushback. “She’s just trying to compensate for having a mom who wasn’t…involved. I think it’s one of the reasons she attached herself to you.”
“Me?”
He looked up at her apartment window.
The curtains swung back and forth.
“Can we sit?” he asked.
“Yeah. Sure.”
They sat down on the stoop leading to the front door, out of sight from Claire’s window-watching.
“You care about her, Autumn. You see her. You validate her opinions and her ideas. You made her laugh. You helped her a couple weeks ago. It’s meant the world to Reese. And it’s meant the world to me.”
His words made her dizzy.
Paul wound his hand around the back of his neck. “You probably think I’m the world’s biggest hypocrite.”
“Why?”
“The marriage campaign?”
“What about it?”
“I shouldn’t have agreed to do it. My marriage—”
“You stayed, Paul. You stayed when ninety-nine percent of the population wouldn’t have.”
“I should have gotten help. That’s what a good husband would have done. He would have gotten help.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered.”
“Maybe it would have.”
And there was the rub. They would never know. Not Paul. Not Autumn. Because Paul hadn’t gotten help, and now Vivian was dead, and time marched forward, never backward. Of all the thousands of paths a person could take in life, at the end of the day, they traveled only one.
Paul set his elbows on his knees and sighed. “I want you to know that Vivian wasn’t a monster. And I’m not a saint.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
“Good.” He smiled a self-deprecating smile.
“Do you regret telling me?”
He shook his head and leaned a little closer.
It was like the Scream movie. The discovery that Vivian hadn’t been the greatest mom. That she hadn’t been a very good wife. It altered things. Unbuckled whatever strap she’d wound around her emotions—her feelings for this particular man and his particular kids. It was hard to care about being faithful to Vivian when she hadn’t been faithful to Paul.
He reached for her hand, slid his fingers down her palm until they were interlocked with hers. “I like you,” he said. “Quite a lot.”
Something light and fluttery took flight.
How odd this all was. Paul Elliott, sitting outside her apartment, telling her these things. So close she could see the thinnest rim of gold circling his pupils. He had the most amazingly colored eyes.
“And since I’m being honest, I should probably also tell you that it scares me to death.”
“Me too.”
She was falling for a man who was bound to have trust issues. Vivian had cheated on him. She had lied to him since Reese was three. A thing like that would leak into any relationship, no matter how strong the connection. It would be inevitable.
On top of that, there was the media to contend with.
A relationship between them would be too juicy to leave alone.
And yet Autumn was impossibly drawn. She was a broken woman falling for a broken man who had a broken past and two beautiful, broken children.
“So where does that leave us?” he asked.
“I have no idea.”
The door swung open behind them.
Paul let go of her hand.
Autumn twisted around.
Claire stood there, wild in the eyes. “They caught him.”
“What?” Autumn asked.
“The police caught Benjamin Havel. They found him in Utah. It’s all over the news.”