Chapter 1 - The Question in My Kitchen
“Did we… did we sleep together?”
Elaine Prescott asked it from the doorway of my kitchen, barefoot and pale, wearing an oversized white sleep shirt and gray shorts that had belonged to my late wife.
For a second, I forgot how to breathe.
Morning light fell across the wooden table where my seven-year-old daughter, Lily, sat quietly with a cereal bowl and her tablet. Cartoon voices filled the room in the background, absurdly cheerful against the look on Elaine’s face. She looked frightened, but not in the dramatic way people do in movies. She looked like a woman bracing herself for an answer she did not want.
“No,” I said too quickly.
She flinched, and I forced myself to slow down.
“No. Elaine, nothing happened. Nothing like that.”
The relief that crossed her face was so immediate it almost made me look away.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I woke up in a room I didn’t know, wearing clothes that weren’t mine, and I thought…”
Her voice died. She glanced toward Lily, then back at me, embarrassed by the question and still too unsettled to hide it completely.
“You were in no shape to get home safely,” I said carefully. “I brought you here. Mrs. Patel from next door helped me get you settled in the guest room and changed out of your clothes after you spilled coffee and wine all over them. I slept on the couch. That’s all.”
Elaine closed her eyes and let out a long, shaky breath.
“Thank God.”
Then, almost immediately, she tried to straighten herself into professionalism. It was like watching someone put armor back on while still standing in borrowed clothes.
“I wouldn’t want something like that to damage our working relationship.”
I nodded once, but the words landed harder than they should have. Of course she would think that. She was my boss. She was vulnerable. She had every right to protect herself. Still, something in me reacted before reason could catch up. Maybe because grief has a way of making every small distance feel older than it is.
Lily set her spoon down and looked between us with solemn curiosity.
Elaine noticed her and softened. “Good morning, Lily.”
“Good morning,” Lily said. “You were sleeping when I got up.”
“I was,” Elaine said, almost smiling.
I gestured toward the guest-room hallway, keeping my distance. “Your phone is charging in there. Your handbag’s on the chair. I made coffee if you want it.”
She looked at me for a long moment, fear slowly giving way to trust.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For not being that kind of man.”
That should have felt good.
May you like
Instead, it opened something.
Because twenty-four hours earlier, I had no idea Elaine Prescott would ever be standing in my kitchen, wearing Sarah’s clothes, looking at me like I had just passed some terrible test.
