Chapter 1 - The Wooden Fox in the Workshop
The warm air inside Harbor House Restoration smelled heavily of cedar, fresh pine shavings, and sweet varnish. But as I stood in the shadow of the doorway, my chest felt so tight I could barely draw a breath.
Thomas Hale—the man my wife Claire had buried in her heart eight years ago, the man whose framed black-and-white portrait sat on our mantle every memorial day—was kneeling beside my seven-year-old daughter.
"Red is too loud," Maisie declared, crossing her tiny arms over her safety goggles. "Birds like blue. Like the sky."
"Sky blue it is," Thomas said softly. His voice possessed a low, raspy cadence that sounded so much like Claire’s when she spoke in low tones that a shudder ran down my spine.
Ruth sat on a high wooden stool beside them, holding her coffee mug with both hands, watching Thomas and Maisie with an expression I had never seen on her face during her five months in our guest cottage. It wasn't the bitter, controlling look of a grieving widow. It was a look of profound, quiet sorrow mixed with unspoken relief.
"Ethan?" Ruth’s voice cracked as her eyes suddenly caught mine standing near the timber rack.
Her coffee mug rattled violently against her saucer. She stood up so quickly her stool scraped loudly across the concrete floor.
Maisie gasped, turning around in her seat. The little wooden fox Thomas had given her dropped onto the workbench. "Daddy?"
Thomas slowly straightened up. The silver at his temples caught the fluorescent workshop lighting. He looked at me—at my tailored charcoal suit, my polished leather shoes, and the cold rage radiating from every line of my body.
"Ethan," Ruth whispered, her face going completely white. "What... what are you doing here? You were supposed to be on a plane to Chicago."
"I canceled Chicago, Ruth," I said, my voice dead calm, carrying the weight of a storm about to break. "I canceled a fifty-million-dollar deal because my daughter told me her grandmother was making her hide on the floor of a car to see a dead man."
Thomas took a step forward, putting his hands up in a placating gesture. "Ethan, please. Let's talk about this away from Maisie. Ruth didn't mean any harm—"
"Don't tell me what Ruth meant!" I snapped, stepping into the light. "You are supposed to be dead, Thomas. Claire wept over an empty grave eight years ago. She spent three years in therapy trying to recover from the night the police told her your boat went down off Montauk!"
Maisie shrank back into her chair, her eyes wide with terror as she looked between me and the man she only knew as the wooden fox carver.
I saw her fear and instantly forced my breathing to slow down. I knelt beside her bench, taking her small, trembling hands in mine.
"Maisie, sweetie," I said softly, keeping my voice as gentle as humanly possible. "I need you to go sit with the lady with the gray braids near the front desk for a few minutes. Can you do that for Daddy?"
Maisie looked at Thomas, then at Ruth, and finally nodded. She grabbed her little wooden fox and ran toward the front lobby.
May you like
The moment the workshop door clicked shut behind her, I stood up and faced Ruth and Thomas.
"You have five minutes," I said, folding my arms across my chest, my jaw clenched tight enough to break teeth. "Five minutes to tell me why my wife believes her father died in an ocean wreck, while he's sitting here carving birdhouses with my daughter in Port Chester."
