Two weeks later, she came back with a thank-you coffee and a little girl hiding behind her legs. That was Grace. She was four years old, wearing a tutu over jeans and clutching a stuffed rabbit by the ear.“Say thank you to the nice man who saved Mommy’s job,” Laura coaxed.
Grace peeked out, her eyes huge and dark—so different from her mother’s. She didn’t speak, just offered a tiny, shy wave.
That wave changed the trajectory of my life.
We fell for each other with the speed of a summer storm. Laura was everything I wasn’t—vibrant, loud, messy, and full of a light that made my dusty shop feel like a cathedral. But there was a shadow in her life, a silhouette of a man who had left a crater where a father should have been.
Chase.
I knew the name before I knew the man. Everyone did. Chase Miller was the hometown hero, the baseball prodigy who got drafted out of high school and went on to play for the majors. He was on billboards. He was on cereal boxes. He was the golden boy who could do no wrong.
Except, apparently, he could.
