He put Mia down too quickly.

She stumbled half a step before catching herself.

Then she pointed directly at him.

“Mommy, but Daddy’s there. Look! You need to save him!”

Heads turned.

A man near the bar stopped talking halfway through a sentence.

Heat rushed into my cheeks despite the summer air.

“Sweetheart, sweetheart, come here.”

I knelt and pulled Mia against me, smoothing her hair while whispering meaningless little reassurances into her curls.

“Harold, I am so sorry. She misses her dad. Sometimes she just… she says things.”

Harold nodded.

But he wasn’t really looking at me.

His eyes were fixed on the ground between us.

“It’s fine. It’s fine, Alison. Kids, right?”

Then my boss stepped backward.

Only one step.

But it felt strangely like a door closing.

“Excuse me for a minute.”

He walked toward the far end of the pool where the string lights hung lower.

I watched him leave while Mia’s fingers remained curled into the collar of my dress.

“Come on, baby. Let’s get you a cookie.”

I guided her toward the dessert table, sat her on a lounger, and put a lemon square in her hand.

She ate slowly, swinging her legs, completely calm again as though nothing unusual had happened.

But I couldn’t forget Harold’s reaction.

The sudden pallor.

The way he’d almost dropped her.

“Grief,” I muttered to myself. “Kids and grief. That’s all it is.”

Except Harold hadn’t looked like a man startled by a strange comment from a child.

He had looked like someone who had accidentally heard the exact sentence he’d been afraid someone might say.

Rachel’s warning from the office kitchen came back to me.

What that might be doing to your standing at the firm.

I stood.

I asked Mrs. Peterson from accounting to keep an eye on Mia for a minute, then walked toward the corner where Harold had disappeared.

***

My boss stood near the pergola with Benjamin, his business partner.

Both were holding fresh drinks.

Harold’s back was turned toward me.

I slowed down, not wanting to interrupt, planning to wait for a natural pause before apologizing again.

Benjamin’s voice carried toward me, warm and teasing.

“And the renovation? Are you really going through with the whole second-floor rebuild? For a family? Harold, come on. Are you finally settling down on us?”

I couldn’t hear Harold’s reply.

His answer was low, brief, almost mumbled.

But I saw his shoulders stiffen beneath his linen jacket.

The question had landed too close to something.

My stomach dropped.

A second-floor rebuild.

For a family.

Harold didn’t have a family.

He’d never married.

He had no children.

His parents lived in Arizona.

His sister lived in Boston with three teenagers who probably wouldn’t willingly spend a weekend in his guest room.

So who was the family?

I stood there holding a cocktail napkin I didn’t remember picking up, suddenly feeling as though the ground beneath the pool deck had shifted.

Then I looked at Harold again.

The memory of his face when Mia said those words sharpened into something I still wasn’t ready to name.

My eyes drifted toward the back of his ear.

At first, I saw nothing.

Just skin.

The edge of his collar.

Some graying hair he’d been wearing slightly longer over the past few months.

Then one of the patio lights shifted and caught him from another angle.

And I saw it.

A tiny tattoo.

Still slightly pink around the edges.

A compass rose no larger than a dime, tucked just behind his earlobe.

My knees went weak.

Mike had that exact tattoo.

In the exact same place.

The same little compass rose he’d gotten at nineteen during a road trip with his best friend.

My husband used to joke that almost nobody ever noticed it.

But Mia had.

A thousand times.

When she rode on his shoulders, her small fingers would trace that mark as though it were a private secret between them.

To a four-year-old child desperate for her father, that tattoo wasn’t simply a symbol.

It was Daddy.

“Oh my God, how is this even possible?” I screamed unintentionally.

Harold spun around.

His eyes met mine.

Something in his expression collapsed.

“Alison? You okay?”

“I, um… I just remembered I told the sitter I’d call. I should go.”

“You don’t have a sitter tonight.”

My stomach dropped again.

“I meant my friend. I’m sorry, I have to…”

I didn’t wait for him to answer.

I collected Mia, muttered something about her being tired, and drove home with both hands trembling against the steering wheel.

***

I didn’t sleep that night.

After putting Mia to bed, I pulled out the plastic storage bin of photographs I’d avoided opening for almost a year.

Eventually, I found the pictures from the Flagstaff trip.

There was Mike outside the tattoo parlor, grinning at the camera.

A fresh square of gauze was taped behind his ear.

He was sunburned, teenage-thin, and looked immortal.

The next photograph showed Mike and Harold inside some diner, probably an hour or a day later.

Harold was caught mid-laugh, his head half turned toward Mike as if answering something.

His ear was completely bare.

Nothing behind it.

Just the freckled skin of a boy who had apparently changed his mind at the last minute.