Page 90 of Falling for You

“What would make you say that?” I give her a cheesy grin.

“The look of absolute confusion on your face right now is a pretty good clue,” she smirks. “We lost our home to a fire a little over a year ago and long story short, if it hadn’t been for Ethan stepping in, we would have been homeless.”

“Oh wow, I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“Well, the story is much better, really. You’re Chloe, as in Ethan’s sister Chloe, right?”

“Efan’s your brudder?” Hillary asks, pure happiness shining from her brightly colored eyes. Gosh, she’s so cute.

Instead of voicing anything, I only nod my head, still not sure how to handle it all. Or how to label whatever this is. Are we brother-sister? Are we acquaintances? I have no idea and I hate that I don’t. Tonight threw me for a loop. To say I didn’t expect that Rex’s boss and best friend is my brother who I had never met until a few short hours ago would be putting it mildly.

This morning I was nervous enough thinking I was meeting all of Rex’s friends. Now I’m someone’s sister and sister–in-law and everyone seems to know but me. I don’t think Rex knew, because when Ethan accused him of knowing about it already, he seemed genuinely angry.

But, it’s obvious he knewofme. There wasn’t shock or surprise, at least not to the level that there could have been. What I saw on his face was more of understanding. Maybe a little bit of ‘ahh, this all makes sense now.’

“Chloe?” Samantha gingerly places a hand on my forearm to get my attention. I look up from where my hand has paused mid-air, brush poised to keep painting Hillary’s adorable and chubby face.

“Yeah?”

“You okay?”

“No.”

Compassion washes over her features before she says, “Let’s have a chat.”

“About?” I ask, but I know what she wants to chat about.

Rather than answer, she takes a seat next to where her daughter is still waiting incredibly patiently for me to finish her painting.

“Let me just finish up here.”

It only takes me a few moments to finish painting a turquoise butterfly with wings that look like waves. I put everything down and stand to get the hand mirror so she can see how it turned out. When I lift the mirror in front of Hillary’s face, she beams and shouts a thank you before Samantha tells her to go show her dad.

“Have a seat.”

“Other kids might be wanting their face painted,” I remind her.

“I told my husband it’s your break time. Olivia told me about what happened earlier tonight and I know you haven’t stopped working since you got out here. Take a few minutes, okay?”

I nod and wipe my hands clean before taking a seat next to her.

“Like I said earlier, we suffered a complete loss when our house burned down. What I didn’t mention, was that the first time we met Ethan was when we were driving through town, broke and homeless. We had nowhere to go, our car was running on fumes, and our money was running out fast. Add to that, our children — Hillary’s our youngest, she has three older brothers — were exhausted, not feeling great because we’d not been living the best, and we were terrified.”

“So where did Ethan come in?”

“We were at a gas station in town and met Ethan. I still don’t know why he felt the need to help us. He won’t tell us, he only says he knew he needed to. Though, we looked in bad shape, I’m sure. Four kids and the two of us in a car that was on its last leg. Stressed because we had nowhere to go, no family or friends. We were alone and terrified.”

“You don’t have any family? Insurance didn’t cover anything?”

She shakes her head, pulling a face that tells me she doesn’t want to discuss the matter much. “Not that could help, no. And, no insurance, either. It was a rental that we lived in and we didn’t have rental insurance. That was an expense we couldn’t afford at the time,” she huffs out a laugh. “Obviously, it would have helped, but my grandma always said you can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip and that’s kind of where we were at. We were barely getting by as it was.”

I feel that. There were many years that we ate because of food banks and most of my clothes came from second-hand stores. I never lacked for anything, though, and Mom and I were happy.

“He saved us, Chloe. And I’m not saying that to make him sound better in front of you. I mean it. He offered us a place to live. Supported us until we found jobs and a home to call our own. And no one knew. He didn’t tell a single person.”

“Why?”

She spins around an empty glass someone had left out here earlier, seemingly thinking over what she’s about to say. “I know that part of it was he was protecting us. He says it wasn’t his story to tell but I heard him tell Austin that it’s no one’s business.” She shrugs. “But the other part is, the bigger part of it, actually, is that he’s kind.”

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