Ethan’s state-of-the-art Jeep, but it’s alive. “Thank you,” I tell it, putting the gear in neutral and getting out, the car still on.
“That’s it. All she needed was a jump.” Ethan reaches out a hand to me, expectant. I stare at it for a second before I realize I’m still holding his jacket.
“Right. Here. Thank you so much for this. I don’t know how to repay you.”
“Yes, you do,” he says, shrugging into his fitted suit jacket. “You already promised. Brownies in perpetuity.”
“Of course. How could I have forgotten?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll keep reminding you. I have two kids to feed.” And then he winks, bending over to remove the jumper cables from my still-roaring engine without pausing. “Now I want you to go get this car serviced, all right? First thing tomorrow.”
“Sure, yes. And I’m sorry if I’ve made you late to some meeting.”
“Oh, that’s fine,” he says. “They’ll wait.”
I swallow at the casual mention of such power. “Oh. Good.”
He pauses with a hand on the front door to his car. “I work in tech, actually. We have a lot of system engineers at my company. I’m sure there are many who’d find your study interesting.”
My head bobs like a doll’s. “I know.”
“You know?” A raise of both eyebrows.
“No, I mean, I know that you work in tech. I think you gave a guest lecture a couple of years back at Washington Polytech?”
A smile breaks across his face. “You were there? Among the students?”
“Yes. It was a great lecture,” I say.
“Don’t lie. I made it all up on the fly.”
“All right, so it wasn’t very structured,” I admit, smiling back at him. “But it was even more interesting because of it.”
“Now that, I believe.”
“Your use of props was ingenious. The water bottle stunt? Ten out of ten.”
His grin widens. “You really were there.”
“Daddy!” An impatient voice on the other side of the fence. “Did you fix it?”
And then an older child’s voice. “Of course he did, silly. Don’t you hear the engine?”
An angry wail back, and then, “Stop it!”
“No, you stop it.”
Ethan gives me a look that is both tired and apologetic. “Don’t have kids,” he tells me, but there’s fondness in his voice. “It’s a trap.”
“I’ll consider myself warned.” My insides feel light—like I might float away at any moment, despite the engine running in my car or the meeting I’ll surely be late to.
“I’ll talk to you later,” he says, shutting the front door and reversing with one hand on the steering wheel, a move men have somehow always perfected. He looks like sin doing it. On the other side of the fence, I hear Maria calm down the girls’ fighting.
I slide into the front seat of my little Honda and reverse after his monster of a vehicle, shutting the gate with the automatic controller. The girls wave at me when I drive past. I wave back, watching how Ethan bends to hoist up the youngest.
Not for me, I tell myself. Those kids have a mother, someone who receives all of Ethan’s smiles. Besides, I have more schoolwork than I can handle. We’re from stratospherically different circumstances. Forget out of my league—Ethan Carter and I don’t even play the same sport.
And yet, I spend the entire drive to Washington Polytech sorting through my memories. Had I seen him wear a wedding ring?
4
Ethan
The asphalt is smooth under my feet. The sun’s first rays haven’t quite driven out the night yet, and the air is cool. A beautiful morning for a run.
I loop around Redfern Drive and head down to the park by Lake Washington. There’s almost no one out—the best time of the day, this. No work calls. No duties. No one to compete with except the smartwatch on my wrist and yesterday’s record.
No music in my ears, either, just blessed silence.
I glance down at the watch. Do I have time to run alongside the lake until Greenwood Hills ends? No. Haven and Evie will be up soon, and we always eat breakfast together. It’ll be a shorter run today. I wouldn’t trade mornings with my daughters for anything.
A woman comes jogging out of the adjacent street and onto the road in front of me. Few are the times I’ve seen other runners at this hour.
And there’s something familiar about her form, the long hair pulled back into a ponytail, the fair legs under her runner’s shorts…
I speed up. With each passing yard, it’s getting clearer who it is.