Page 58 of Her Ex's Father
“I care for her,” I bite out, the words dragging like gravel from my throat. “More than I should. More than I ever thought I would again. I can’t… I won’t hurt her.”
The silence after is startling.
Her mouth opens, then closes. Finally, she smirks faintly, but there’s softness there. “Good. That’s what I wanted to hear.”
The door opens, and Maddie steps back inside, cardigan snug, cheeks pink. She stops when she sees our faces. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I say too smoothly.
“Absolutely nothing,” Stella echoes, far too bright. She holds out the little prints that Meredith made for us, images of the future though we can’t see much in them now.
Maddie narrows her eyes, suspicious, but Stella just flashes her a sly smile. The tension dissolves under Maddie’s exasperated laugh.
That night, I watch Maddie cling to Stella in the foyer of the lodge. Her arms are wrapped tight, her eyes wet.
They don’t know I’m here, just in the shadows, come to say my own goodbye to the little spitfire who lights this place up. Maddie is a warm glow, but Stella has swooped in these last weeks, crackling and full of energy.
“I don’t want you to go,” my wife whispers.
“You’ll be fine without me,” Stella says, squeezing back just as fiercely. “You’ve got Ben now. He’ll take care of you.”
Maddie laughs through tears, shaking her head. “You sound like you believe it.”
It’s an arrow in an old wound, but I don’t let it bend me. It’sdeserved.Still, despite the confrontation with Stella at the doctor’s office, I haven’t found a moment to sit down with Maddie and reassure her.
“I do.” Stella shoots me a look over Maddie’s shoulder. A warning, a promise. I haven’t fooled her by standing in the shadows, and now I step out of them, going to my wife.
She wipes her tears away, backs up into the shelter of my arm. I’m surprised by how much Stella’s leaving affects me, and before I think too much about it, I murmur: “You’ll be missed. Come back whenever you’d like; I’ll keep that suite for you, and any room you want at the resort, if you’d rather.”
Her laugh is a vibrant, smokey sound, reminiscent of Maddie’s but brighter and louder. I tug my wife closer, happy to have her, happy to see her reflected in someone else. How did her parents, so cold and aloof, create these two?
“You’ll regret that offer,” Stella promises, a sweet smile on her lips as she gives me a hug.
When the driver takes her away, Maddie stays at the window long after the car lights vanish. Her shoulders sag, her body folding into itself.
Later, when I find her curled on the bed, she looks up at me with eyes that are too full. “Will you stay tonight? I just… I don’t want to be alone.”
The plea carves into me.
I strip off my jacket, loosen my tie, and climb in beside her. She leans against me without hesitation, head on my chest, her breath warm through my shirt. My hands find her back, kneading gently, the knots in her shoulders easing under my touch. I can feel her stomach pressed against me—the little swell of it, the start of our secret coming to light.
“Better?” I murmur.
“Mhm.” Her voice is drowsy, small. “Feels good.”
I massage her slowly, carefully, tracing the tension down her spine. She melts against me, sighing, eyes fluttering closed. There’s no urgency, no hunger—just closeness, the fragile comfort of being needed.
At one point, she stirs, whispering, “Stella told me something sad today. About Montana.”
I pause. “Montana?”
“There’s this stretch of land—eighty acres near the foothills. I’ve always loved it. Used to say I’d buy it one day, build a house there. She said it’s being sold to developers now.” A soft, wistful sigh. “Breaks my heart a little. Feels like something beautiful is about to be erased.”
I smooth a hand over her hair. “The world does that. Erases what’s beautiful if you don’t hold onto it.”
She hums sleepily against me, and I press my lips to her forehead. “I knew you’d understand,” she half-yawns. “Of all the places you could settle, you chose here.”
So, she’s discovered that poorly-kept secret, then. No surprise: the lodge is remote, and I try several times a week to get out into the woods, to forget the chains that lock me to my business. Instead of the realization pushing me away from her, I only feel closer to Madeline.
