My heart raced at the sight of a small child playing out in front of their house. The little girl was in one of those red-and-yellow plastic cars. A rush of adrenaline hit. Whose kid is that? Nathan’s? Farrah’s? I’d specifically asked my mother not to seek out information on them, and to the best of my knowledge, she’d never run into them in the three years I’d been gone; she would have told me if she had. I had no idea what had transpired with them because I’d made a conscious effort to stay out of their lives.

Totally freaked, I got out of my truck and approached the driveway.

Jesus Christ.

The more I looked at the little girl, the more worried I became. She couldn’t have been more than a few years old, maybe younger. I did the math in my head, and a terrifying thought occurred to me. Could she have been my kid? Her hair was almost black like mine. Maybe that thought was crazy, but it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.

Before my nerves had a chance to explode into full-fledged panic, a woman rushed out and took the child into the house through the garage. She turned around once and flashed me an alarmed look. Apparently, I’d gotten a little too close and had been mistaken for a perpetrator.

Who is that woman?

The mother? A sitter?

A friend of Farrah’s, maybe?

I went from possibly having an illegitimate child one second to just dazed and confused the next.

As I continued to stand in front of the house staring at it blankly, a voice to my left said, “Hey, I know you.”

I turned to find a teenage girl who looked vaguely familiar. Then it hit me. Nora. The eleven-year-old who lived next door was now a teenager.

Well, I’ll be damned. I felt so old. “Hey.” I moved toward her. “Nora, right?”

“Yeah. You’re Jace. I remember you. You used to live there.” She tilted her head. “Were you looking for Farrah?”

“Um…no. Not really. I was just driving by and…stopped.”

“They don’t live here anymore.”

My eyes widened. “They don’t?”

“No. They moved about two years ago.”

My stomach sank. “Where do they live now?”

“Off of Tamarind.”

That was sort of a crappy neighborhood compared to this one.

“Are you still in contact with Farrah?”

She frowned. “Unfortunately, no. I lost touch with her after she moved. She was always so sweet to me, though. I miss her a lot.”

Yeah. I can relate.

Nora grinned. “I’ll never forget the time she bought me Shawn Mendes tickets. I’m over him now. But back then? He was everything.” She laughed. “I remember going next door one day to tell her my mom said it was okay if she took me to the concert. I was all excited to ask her to go with me. I caught her at a bad time, though. She was crying and upset. I asked her what was wrong, and she said you had left town. I’ll never forget that. She didn’t want to talk about it. After that, I was afraid to ask her to go with me because I thought she wouldn’t be in the mood. I ended up going with my mother, but I would’ve rather gone with Farrah.”

Jesus. I needed to get away from this one before she told me something else I didn’t want to hear. “Thanks for letting me know they moved.”

“No problem.” She disappeared inside her house.

My pulse continued racing as I stood on the sidewalk. It would take a while to get over that long-ass minute where I thought I might’ve had a daughter. How fucked-up would that have been?

I returned to my truck and rested my head on the back of the seat to calm down for a few minutes before heading home.

Thoughts of Farrah tormented me the rest of that night. I had questions. Lots of them. Why the hell did they move to a shitty neighborhood? Farrah had loved that house, that pool. I suspected it wasn’t her choice to leave.

• • •

The following afternoon, Dad napped while I got some work done on my laptop in the living room. I was fortunate that my property management job allowed me to handle a majority of my duties remotely. I needed to delegate more while away, but managing everything from here had been doable so far. I’d probably have to fly to Charlotte once or twice during my stay here if they needed me on site, though. Between my job and helping Dad out at Muldoon Construction, I was plenty busy.

The doorbell rang, interrupting my work. I got up to see who it was—probably yet another neighbor coming by with a casserole. Or maybe it was someone from Mom’s church checking in on my father. It had been a couple of weeks now since my mother died, but people still trickled in from time to time.