Chapter 1 - The Woman He Wasn't Supposed to Remember
"SHE'S MY MOM!" the little boy screamed. "Don't let her take my mommy again!"
Caleb Whitlock, six years old and shaking so badly his teeth clicked, had both arms locked around the housekeeper's neck. His white sweater was wet with tears. The woman in the pale-blue uniform held him as though somebody might pull him apart.
Across the marble living room, Sloane Whitlock froze in her emerald-green dress.
"Caleb," she said carefully, "get away from that woman."
"No!"
"You're confused. She's an employee."
"Her name is Isabel!" Caleb shouted. "And she knows the three taps!"
The housekeeper's face crumpled. She pressed her lips into the boy's hair and whispered, "One for brave. Two for strong. Three means you're never alone."
Caleb tapped her wrist three times.
Sloane pulled out her phone.
"Security. Now."
"Put it down," the housekeeper said.
It wasn't a loud voice, but it stopped Sloane's thumb in midair.
"You are trespassing," Sloane snapped. "You lied to the agency, and now you're upsetting my son."
"Your son?" Isabel asked.
Sloane's jaw tightened. "I am his mother."
"You married his father seven months ago. I carried him for nine months."
Footsteps sounded in the hall. Ethan Whitlock appeared in shirtsleeves, phone still in his hand, looking from his wife's rigid face to the frightened child in the maid's arms.
He went pale.
"Isabel?"
His former wife met his eyes. There was no forgiveness in hers.
"You told me you couldn't find her," Ethan whispered.
"And you believed me," Sloane said before she could stop herself.
Ethan turned slowly. "What?"
Sloane corrected herself. "I meant the investigators. They couldn't find her. She's been gone over a year. Ask the police."
Isabel tightened her hold as Caleb began to cry harder.
"I didn't run away," she said. "I didn't abandon him. And I didn't come here to hurt anyone."
"Then why are you wearing a uniform?" Ethan asked.
"Because it's the only way I could get through the front door."
Sloane finally connected her call. "There's an intruder in my house. She's holding a child."
"Don't say that," Ethan warned.
"She has a court order against her!"
"I know about the order," Isabel said. "I also know who lied to get it."
Caleb lifted his red face from her shoulder. He wasn't looking at Ethan. He was staring at Sloane with a fear too old for a six-year-old.
"Daddy," he whispered, "please don't let her lock me in the blue room again."
Ethan stared at his wife.
May you like
"What blue room?"
Sloane opened her mouth. For the first time since she'd entered his life, she had no answer.
