But in my heart, I’d already made a difficult decision about my husband.
“Everything okay?”
On the third morning, he grabbed his keys and told me he had errands.
“I’ll be back by lunch,” he said, avoiding my eyes.
“I’ll be right here when you get home.”
It was a lie.
I had already decided to follow him the moment he reached for those keys.
It was a lie.
The instant his motorcycle pulled out of the driveway, I got in my car and went after him.
I told myself I was being paranoid.
That whatever Cole was hiding would turn out to be innocent.
But then I recognized the road to the hospital.
My father hadn’t been mistaken about the hospital.
The only question left was what else he’d been right about.
I got in my car and went after him.
I parked several rows behind Cole and watched him climb off the bike.
Then I saw the boy.
He came racing up to Cole, seemingly out of nowhere, and threw his arms around my husband’s legs.
Cole laughed and hugged him back.
Then I saw the boy.
My father’s words screamed in my head.
Looking at them, I understood exactly why Dad had been suspicious.
The love Cole had for this boy was undeniable, even from across a parking lot.
Everything inside me went quiet and numb.
I watched Cole take the child’s hand, so tenderly, and lead him inside the hospital.
I understood exactly why Dad had been suspicious.
Every prejudice my parents had ever voiced about Cole felt suddenly, sickeningly real.
“A man covered in tattoos, riding motorcycles and playing in bars every night has a past,” Dad had once warned me.
Mom had been even simpler.
“Men who live like that always have stories they don’t tell their wives.”
“Men who live like that always have stories they don’t tell their wives.”
But something else tugged at me too.
It was quieter and harder to name.
Cole hadn’t glanced over his shoulder when he hugged the boy.
He hadn’t acted secretively at all.
That wasn’t the way a man caught in a lie behaved.
He hadn’t acted secretively at all.
I didn’t know what to believe.
But I knew that the truth lay somewhere inside that hospital.
I stepped out of the car, my legs unsteady, and walked toward the doors he had just disappeared through.
Whatever waited inside that hospital, I could not spend another night not knowing.
The truth lay somewhere inside that hospital.
