I got one important thing wrong that morning. The woman upstairs wasn’t Chloe, though I was ready to swear I’d seen her with my own eyes.
My hands were wet from the breakfast dishes when Lucas called. I remember the little crack in the blue plate I was drying, because my thumb kept catching on it. I remember that more clearly than what I said first.
“Is Chloe home?” Lucas asked.
“She’s upstairs. She said she was taking a shower.”
There was a short pause. Then Lucas lowered his voice.
“Mom, I found her passport at the gate. She boarded my flight to Rome.”
I laughed once, because the other choice was to believe him. I heard water running above me. I’d heard Chloe’s voice from the landing less than ten minutes earlier. I’d even seen the back of her gray sweater as she went upstairs.
Then Lucas said, “She’s sitting beside a man. They look close.”
The bathroom water stopped.
I stood in the hall with the phone against my ear, looking at the stairs. The old clock by the front door ticked away like it was keeping time for a shift I couldn’t leave early.
“Lucas, don’t say anything to her,” I said. I don’t know why I said that. Maybe I still thought I could keep the house calm if I picked the right words.
“Mom, I’m not saying anything. I’m telling you what I see.”
Then I heard footsteps behind me.
I turned. Nobody was at the bottom of the stairs. The steps came from above, slow and careful, and stopped just out of sight.
“Who’s there?” I called.
No answer.
Lucas was still on the phone. “Mom?”
I told him to stay on the line. Then I started up the stairs.
David had left for his office in downtown Chicago before seven. Toby, his seven-year-old boy, had caught the school bus like always. The house was supposed to be empty except for me and Chloe.
That was what I thought.
Chloe had been married to David for eight years. We weren’t close in the way people like to say a mother and daughter-in-law are close. We were polite. We had a few things we did together, like folding napkins before Thanksgiving and trading recipes neither of us followed exactly.
She called me “Mom” sometimes, but never when David was around. I noticed that. I didn’t ask what it meant.
I loved Toby. I loved David, too, though I’d spent more years making excuses for him than I’m proud of.
He could be funny and generous when the room was going his way. When it wasn’t, he got quiet and made everybody else do the work of guessing what was wrong.
Chloe used to smooth things over. I told myself that was marriage.
Halfway up the stairs, I heard the bathroom door open. A woman’s voice said, “I’m almost done.”
It sounded like Chloe. Or I wanted it to.
“Chloe?” I called.
“I’m fine, Mom.”
Lucas spoke into my ear. “That’s not her.”
I stopped on the step. The old wood creaked under my slipper.
“You just said you saw her,” I whispered.
“I saw her get on. I’m looking at her right now.”
The woman upstairs moved again. I heard a drawer slide, then the click of a bedroom door. I kept climbing because turning around would have meant choosing which voice to trust.
The bathroom door stood open. Steam drifted into the hall. A wet towel lay over the tub, and the water was still dripping from the faucet.
There was no one inside.
The bedroom door was open a few inches. I pushed it with my fingertips.
A woman in Chloe’s gray sweater stood beside the bed, holding a hairbrush. She was about my age, maybe a little younger. Her hair was dark and tied back. I knew her face, but I couldn’t place it at first.
“Who are you?” I asked.
She set down the brush.
“I’m Tessa.”
I knew the name then. Chloe’s friend from work. I’d met her once at a school fundraiser and again at Toby’s birthday party. She had been there, but I’d never had a reason to remember her face.
“Why are you wearing Chloe’s sweater?”
Tessa looked at the floor.
“Because Chloe asked me to.”
I could hear Lucas breathing through the phone. I had forgotten he was still there.
“Where is Chloe?”
“She’s on the plane.”
“Why are you here?”
Tessa took a breath. She looked tired, not guilty. That made me angrier.
“She needed me to stay here until you figured it out.”
“Why would she do that?”
“So David wouldn’t know exactly when she left.”
I took one more step into the room. The sweater was familiar because I’d seen it on Chloe plenty of times. But the sleeves were too long on Tessa. That was what finally made my mind settle. I had seen a gray sweater. I had heard a voice. I had filled in the rest.
“Where is she going?”
“Rome. With her dad.”
“Her dad?”
Tessa nodded. “They’ve been talking again.”
I thought about the man beside Chloe on the plane. Lucas had described him as well-dressed and wealthy. I’d already made a story out of that. I’d decided he was a lover before I even knew his name.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Ray. He’s her father.”
“He left when she was a kid.”
“I know.”
That was all Tessa said. But the way she said it made me understand that there was more behind it than I knew.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. My legs had started to feel strange, like I’d climbed too many stairs too fast.
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
Tessa didn’t answer right away.
The question sounded different when I heard it in the room. Not like concern. More like I was owed something.
“She didn’t think you’d keep it to yourself,” Tessa said.
I looked at her. “I have never told David anything Chloe said in confidence.”
Tessa’s face changed a little. Not much. Just enough.
“Please don’t make me argue with you about that.”
I knew then what she meant. I knew before I wanted to.
Three weeks earlier, Chloe had called me while Toby was at soccer practice. She’d asked if I could meet her for coffee. We sat in my car in the school parking lot because it had started to rain, and she didn’t want to be seen talking to me by the parents coming in and out.
She said David had been checking her phone. She said he’d told her that if she tried to leave, he’d make sure she never got Toby alone again.
I was startled. I was also embarrassed for her. I said she ought to talk to David when he was calm.
She said, “He’s never calm when it’s about me leaving.”
I told her not to say that unless she meant it.
I thought I was being sensible. I thought I was keeping her from making a mistake she’d regret.
That night, David asked me if Chloe had been acting strange. He said she’d been talking about moving out. He sounded worried, and I wanted to help him. So I told him she’d said something about being scared he’d keep Toby from her.
I told myself he needed to know. I told myself he was her husband.
The next day he told me he’d talked to her and they were fine.
I never asked what he’d said to her.
Tessa sat on the chair across from me. “She tried to trust you.”
I wanted to tell her she had no right to judge me. I wanted to say I’d raised David and knew his heart. I wanted to remind her that I had helped with Toby every week, that I’d kept him overnight when Chloe worked late, that I’d made dinners and picked up medicine.
I didn’t say any of it.
Instead, I asked, “Did she take Toby?”
“No. He’s at school.”
“That’s her son.”
“I know.”
The words were plain. That made them worse.
I picked up my phone and pressed Lucas’s name. “Are you still on the plane?”
“I’m in the aisle. We’re not moving yet.”
“Is Chloe there?”
“Yes.”
“Did you speak to her?”
“No. She saw me looking at the passport. She asked if I’d called you.”
I looked at Tessa.
“What did you say?”
“I told her I had.”
“Did she say anything?”
“She asked me not to make this worse.”
Lucas stopped talking for a moment. I could hear an airport announcement behind him.
“Mom, I don’t think that guy is her boyfriend.”
“He’s her father,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“Tessa’s here. She was pretending to be Chloe.”
He let out a breath. “What?”
I told him quickly. I left out the part about what I’d told David. I don’t know if that was because I was ashamed or because I still hoped I could keep it separate from the emergency.
Lucas said, “She’s okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ask her.”
I handed the phone to Tessa. She refused it with a small shake of her head.
“You talk to her,” she said. “She won’t answer me now.”
I took the phone back and called Chloe.
It rang three times. Then she answered.
“Hi, Mom.”
She sounded tired. Not frightened. Not angry, either. That was harder to hear.
“Chloe, I’m upstairs with Tessa.”
“I know.”
“I thought you were here.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
She didn’t answer.
Behind me, Tessa was twisting the hem of the gray sweater around one finger. The bathroom still smelled like her shampoo. I noticed that and then felt stupid for noticing it.
“Who’s the man with you?” I asked.
“My father.”
“I’m sorry. Lucas thought, ”
“I know what Lucas thought. I know what you thought, too.”
I had no answer for that.
“I should’ve told you,” she said. “But I didn’t know what you’d do with it.”
“I wouldn’t have told David.”
“You did tell David.”
She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to.
I looked at the carpet by the bed, where a loose thread had pulled free near the wall. I started to reach down and fix it, then stopped.
“I thought I was helping,” I said.
“You were helping him.”
That went through me quietly. The way a door shuts in another room, and you know you’ve been left out.
“Are you coming back?” I asked.
“I’m going to see my father. I don’t know what happens after that.”
“What about Toby?”
“His dad will get him after school. I’ll call him later.”
“You’re leaving Toby with David?”
“I’m not taking him across the ocean without a lawyer. I’m not giving David a reason to say I’m unstable.”
I didn’t know what to say. I could hear the aircraft cabin around her. People talking. A bag being pushed into an overhead bin.
“Chloe, I can help with Toby. If you need me to.”
“I know you love him.”
It was not the same as saying she trusted me.
Then she said, “I left you something.”
“What?”
“In the drawer beside your bed.”
I looked at the nightstand. The drawer was open by an inch.
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t know if I could say it to you.”
I felt my face get hot. “You can say it now.”
“No, I can’t.”
The call ended.
Lucas came back on. “Mom, we’re going to have to close the doors.”
READ THE NEXT PART: 👇👇
PART 3 – My youngest son, who works as a commercial airline pilot, called me out of the blue. “Mom,
