Chapter 10 - An Afternoon at the Local Park
The neighborhood park sat in a quiet pocket of the coastal town, sheltered by rows of tall, wind-bent eucalyptus trees and bordered by a weathered chain-link fence. Late afternoon sunlight slanted through the branches, casting long, wavering shadows across wood-chip mulch and metal playground equipment. Leo bolted toward the green plastic swings the moment we walked through the gate, his small boots crunching on the gravel path. He wore his favorite striped zip-up hoodie over his cream sweater, his blonde hair catching the golden light as he pumped his legs to get higher.
I settled onto a wooden bench near the edge of the mulch pit, pulling my cream knit cardigan tight against the chill rolling off the water. My handbag rested beside me on the slats, heavy with the usual assortment of crushed crayons, wet wipes, and a small juice box. Two hundred yards away, parked discreetly beneath the canopy of an ash tree, sat a nondescript dark sedan. The tinted window on the driver's side rolled down an inch, just enough to catch the glint of a familiar dark suit jacket and the sharp line of a jawline I would know anywhere.
Marco had called that morning—not with demands, but with a quiet, measured request. Just to see him. Not as a father laying claim, nor as a public figure managing a crisis, but simply as a man standing quietly at the edge of his son's world, asking for twenty minutes of shared air.
I hadn't answered right away. I had looked down at Leo, who was currently singing a made-up song about a pirate ship made of cedar wood, and then back out the window at the gray expanse of the Pacific. Fear still lingered in the marrow of my bones, the instinct to scoop him up and run to another town. But the exhaustion of hiding outweighed the terror. We were running out of maps.
A soft crunch of gravel announced his approach before I heard footsteps. Marco didn't wear his black tie today; he had traded it for a dark wool coat thrown open over a fine white shirt, his sleeves slightly pushed up at the wrists. He moved with that familiar, deliberate stride, though his shoulders seemed fractionally less rigid than they had outside the estate gates.
Without speaking, he stopped a few feet from the bench, his dark eyes following the arc of Leo's swing.
"He likes to go fast," I murmured, keeping my gaze fixed straight ahead on the mulch pit.
"He has good balance," Marco said, his voice low, sounding rough around the edges. He didn't ask permission; he simply lowered himself onto the other end of the wooden bench, leaving a careful distance between us. His hands rested on his knees, fingers lightly interlocked. "I used to come to a park like this when I was a boy. In Ohio. Before everything changed."
"You never mentioned Ohio," I said, a faint, involuntary curiosity breaking through the tension.
"There wasn't much to tell. Small town. Everything was gray until the sun hit the limestone quarries." He turned his head slowly, watching Leo reach the apex of the swing and let out a bright, unrestrained laugh that carried across the empty park. Marco’s breath caught slightly. A muscle twitched along his jaw, a microscopic micro-expression of profound, overwhelming disbelief smoothing away into something achingly tender.
For several minutes, neither of us spoke. The rhythmic creak of the swing chains and the distant call of a sea gull filled the quiet space between us. Marco watched every movement of the boy—the way Leo dragged his sneakers in the wood chips to slow down, the way he brushed blond curls out of his eyes with a small, flour-dusted hand.
"He has my mother's hands," Marco said softly, almost to himself. "The shape of the knuckles. I hadn't realized until now."
"You shouldn't be here in the open," I said, though the warning lacked its old sharpness. "If someone from the press—"
"Let them look," Marco interrupted, his voice hardening with sudden, quiet resolve. He turned his face toward me, his dark eyes steady and fierce. "I spent a week trying to calculate the political cost of this. I checked stock portfolios, public relations fallout, board meetings. And then I watched him laugh just now, and none of it mattered. Isabella, I am done hiding what belongs to me."
Leo let go of the swing chain early, tumbling feet-first onto the soft wood chips with a triumphant giggle. He dusted off his knees and looked around, his bright eyes locking onto the tall man sitting beside his mom on the bench. He didn't run, but he stopped, tilting his head with childish curiosity as he looked up at the stranger in the dark wool coat.
Marco stood up slowly, moving with deliberate caution so as not to startle him. He walked over to the edge of the mulch pit, crouching down to meet Leo at eye level.
"Hey, buddy," Marco said, his voice softening into a register I had never heard in all the years I knew him.
Leo squinted at him, clutching a stray twig he had picked up from the ground. "Are you a friend of Mom's?"
"I am," Marco answered, offering a small, fragile smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, but held absolute sincerity. "I'm Marco."
"You have a nice car," Leo observed shrewdly, pointing a thumb back toward the ash tree.
Marco let out a low, genuine chuckle, glancing back at me before looking back down at the boy. "It's a little too big, I think. Do you like parks?"
"They're okay," Leo shrugged, kicking a piece of bark. "We move around a lot."
May you like
Marco's expression tightened for a fraction of a second, the heavy weight of that reality settling squarely on his shoulders. He reached out, his hand hovering for a second before gently resting on Leo's small shoulder over the cream sweater. "We're going to fix that," Marco said softly. "I promise you."
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