“Daddy,” she said, muffled against him.

“Don’t leave today.”

Marcus smiled instinctively, the automatic smile of a busy parent dealing with a child’s clinginess on a morning when he needed to travel.

“It’s only for two nights, sweetheart,” he said.

And he might have kept smiling, kept thinking about Chicago, picked up his suitcase, and walked out the door into a very different future if his daughter had not done one small thing.

She shook her head.

Then she looked toward the kitchen.

That single glance, the quick flick of a six-year-old’s eyes toward the next room, made Marcus’s smile disappear. For the first time all morning, he actually stopped, looked at his child, and listened.

Chapter 2 — Don’t Leave Today

There was something about the way Lily had looked toward the kitchen.

It was not the glance of a child looking for a parent.