Page 38 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

After dinner, I washed the dishes while Emma sat at the kitchen table with her crayons, drawing a portrait of Sir Chomps-a-Lot that was mostly green scribbles with teeth. I was humming to myself, thinking about Dollie arriving, thinking about wine and laughter and a weekend that felt like the first good thing in a long time.

Then Emma’s voice cut through the quiet. Casual. Curious. The way only a child can be when they have no idea what they’re looking at.

“Mama, why did that car stop in front of our house?”

My blood went cold.

I moved to the window. A black SUV, parked directly across the street, engine still running. Three men in dark clothes stepping out. One of them looked up at our window. He wasn’t trying to hide it. He wanted me to see him.

Jonathan’s men.

The divorce was final. The restraining order was in effect. None of that mattered to a man whose father owned half the city and whose ego could not survive the humiliation of being left by a kindergarten teacher from a mountain town.

My hands were shaking. My heart was slamming against my ribs so hard I could feel it in my throat. But my voice, when it came out, was calm. A kindergarten teacher’s calm, the kind I’d perfected over years of handling tantrums and bloody noses and fire drills. Steady and measured and completely at odds with the tsunami of adrenaline flooding my system.

“Emma, baby. Come here. Bring Sir Chomps-a-Lot.”

Emma looked at my face. She was six years old, but she had the intuition of a child who had learned too young to read the weather in her mother’s eyes. She didn’t ask questions. She didn’t protest. She slid off her chair, picked up the stuffed dinosaur, and took my hand.

I grabbed my keys, my phone, and Emma’s jacket from the hook by the door. The front was not an option. The men were already on the sidewalk, and I could hear footsteps on the building’s front stairs.

Back door. Now.

I pulled Emma through the kitchen, down the narrow hallway, out the door that opened into the alley behind the building. The night air hit us, cold and sharp, and the darkness swallowed us whole. I held Emma’s hand tight and walked fast, my eyes scanning every shadow, every parked car, every flicker of movement in my peripheral vision.

Emma was quiet. Her small legs worked hard to keep up, Sir Chomps-a-Lot bouncing against her chest with every step. She didn’t ask where we were going. She didn’t cry. She just held my hand and trusted me to take her somewhere safe, and the weight of that trust was heavier than anything Jonathan Perry had ever put on my shoulders.

We cut through the neighbor’s yard, past the dumpsters, across the side street. My heart was hammering so loud I could hear it in my ears, louder than our footsteps, louder than the distant hum of traffic, louder than the voice in my head that was screaming run, run, run.

I fumbled for my phone with my free hand and called Dollie. She picked up on the first ring.

“Hey, I’m about forty minutes out. Tell Emma that Auntie Dee has the biggest surprise ever and she’s going to…”

“Dollie.” My voice cracked. Just her name, just the one word, and she heard everything in it.

The playful tone vanished. “What happened. Where are you.”

“Jonathan’s men. They’re at the apartment. I’m on foot with Emma. We went out the back. I don’t have my car, they blocked it in.”

“Where are you right now. Exactly.”

I looked around. The side street behind the grocery store, two blocks east of our building. I told her.

“Stay there. Don’t move. I’m rerouting now. I’ll be there in thirty minutes. Chloe, listen to me. Find somewhere to wait that’s not out in the open. A store, a gas station, anywhere with lights and people. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“I’m coming. Don’t hang up.”

I didn’t hang up. I held the phone to my ear with one hand and Emma’s hand with the other and walked three blocks to the 24-hour laundromat on Fifth Street. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead and the dryers hummed and the woman behind the counter didn’t look up from her magazine. I sat Emma on the plastic bench, wrapped her jacket around her shoulders, and held Sir Chomps-a-Lot in her lap while she looked at me with those big green eyes.

“Mama, are we having an adventure?” she asked.

“Yes, baby. A big one.”

“Is Auntie Dee coming?”

“She’s coming right now.”