Chapter 2 - THE BOY IN THE BOOKSTORE
Three weeks earlier, Emily Carter had been sitting on the floor between Biography and Children’s Classics when Nathan Cole first noticed her.
Not because she was doing anything dramatic.
Because everyone else was.
A stack of hardcover cookbooks had crashed from a display near the front of the Michigan Avenue bookstore.
The sound was sharp enough to turn half the room.
A seven-year-old boy in a navy coat had dropped to the floor beside the register and covered both ears.
“Uncle Nathan!”
The store manager rushed forward.
A security man did too.
Then Nathan.
Three adults.
All moving.
All speaking.
All making the boy smaller.
Emily had been waiting in line with a cracked paperback tucked beneath one arm.
She saw the child’s face.
White.
Breathing too fast.
Eyes fixed on nothing.
She had seen that look before.
Not in children.
In her father.
After the stroke, David Carter sometimes woke from sleep confused, trapped between memory and the present. The worst thing anyone could do was crowd him.
So Emily stepped out of line.
Then stopped six feet away from the boy.
She sat on the carpet.
Nathan had turned toward her immediately.
“What are you doing?”
She ignored him.
Not bravely.
Practically.
His nephew was the one who needed attention.
Emily opened her paperback.
The Secret Garden.
She began reading.
Not loudly.
Just enough for the boy to hear if he wanted.
No instructions.
No “calm down.”
No touching.
After thirty seconds, the boy’s eyes shifted.
Toward her.
Emily kept reading.
At one minute, he lowered one hand.
At two, both.
At three, he whispered:
“Mary is mean.”
Emily looked up.
“She is.”
Nathan froze.
The boy had not spoken to anyone except family and his therapist for nearly four months.
Emily did not know that.
“Does she get nicer?”
“Sometimes.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the honest one.”
The boy thought.
Then crawled closer.
Nathan’s security man shifted.
Emily looked at him.
“Don’t.”
The word came automatically.
The man stared.
Nathan lifted one hand.
The security man stopped.
The boy sat beside Emily.
Not touching.
“Read another page.”
So she did.
Ten minutes later, his breathing was normal.
Twenty minutes later, Nathan learned her name because the cashier said:
“Ms. Carter, you forgot your receipt.”
Emily picked it up.
Nathan said:
“Thank you.”
She looked at him.
“For what?”
“My nephew.”
“He did the hard part.”
Then she left.
No phone number.
No dramatic connection.
Nathan remembered.
Now, standing in the October rain outside her mother’s locked townhouse, Emily remembered too.
Nathan looked at the blue suitcase.
“My nephew’s name is Theo.”
“I remember.”
“You never asked.”
“He was busy.”
That almost made him smile.
“Theo asked about you for two weeks.”
Emily’s chest tightened.
“Why?”
“He wanted to know whether Mary got nicer.”
Despite everything, she laughed.
One small sound.
It hurt.
Nathan looked toward the locked front door again.
Then back at her.
“I have a guesthouse.”
“No.”
“I haven’t offered yet.”
“You were going to.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Emily gripped the suitcase.
“Because I don’t know you.”
“Reasonable.”
“You are Nathan Cole.”
“I am.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“No.”
Rain gathered along the shoulders of his coat.
He did not step closer.
“My house has a detached carriage apartment. Private entrance. Lock you control. Empty since my sister died.”
Emily looked at him.
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
No performance.
No request for comfort.
“Stay one night,” he said. “Tomorrow you can decide what comes next.”
“I can get a hotel.”
“With what money?”
Heat climbed her face.
He saw.
Regretted the question immediately.
“Sorry.”
“I have money.”
“How much?”
“That is absolutely none of your business.”
“Correct.”
Good.
He was irritatingly quick to admit it.
Emily looked down at the grocery bag.
Her wallet held forty-three dollars.
Her bank account held one hundred eighty-six.
Her debit card would decline any hotel in Lincoln Park.
A shelter was possible.
She knew that.
She also knew her mother would hear and call it proof.
That thought should not matter.
It did.
Nathan said:
“No work.”
Emily looked up.
“What?”
“You do not owe me child care because Theo likes you. You do not owe me housekeeping. You do not owe me conversation.”
“I didn’t say I did.”
“You were about to.”
She hated that he was right.
“One night,” he repeated.
“What’s the catch?”
“You leave in the morning if you want.”
“That’s not a catch.”
“I’m bad at catches.”
She almost laughed again.
Then she saw the edge of her father’s photograph sticking from the grocery bag.
Nathan had noticed it earlier.
Something in his expression returned.
“Did you know him?” Emily asked.
The question left before she could stop it.
Nathan went still.
“Your father?”
“Yes.”
“What was his name?”
She narrowed her eyes.
“You saw the photo.”
“I recognized the face. I want to be sure.”
“David Carter.”
Nathan closed his eyes.
Not long.
One second.
Enough.
Emily’s pulse changed.
“You knew him.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
He looked toward the sedan.
“Not on the sidewalk.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It probably does.”
“Nathan.”
First name.
He noticed.
“Your father worked for Cole Shipping fourteen years ago.”
Emily stared.
“No.”
“He did.”
“He worked for Great Lakes Compliance.”
“Contractor.”
She thought.
Her father had traveled constantly then.
Audits.
Warehouses.
Port facilities.
He rarely said who the clients were.
“What did he do for you?”
Nathan’s expression became careful.
“He found something I needed to know.”
“What?”
“Financial theft inside one of my companies.”
Emily’s stomach tightened.
“Who?”
“My uncle.”
She stared.
Nathan continued.
“Your father refused a payoff. He gave me the records. He testified in a civil case. It cost him contracts.”
Emily had never known.
“He told us he was downsized.”
“Maybe that was easier.”
“Did you fire him?”
“No.”
“Did your family?”
“No.”
He paused.
“One of our vendors stopped using his firm after he cooperated. I learned later.”
Emily swallowed.
Her father had always said losing that contract was bad luck.
Then the stroke came two years later.
Then physical therapy.
Then another stroke.
Seven years of appointments, pill boxes, bath chairs, insurance calls, adult briefs, home exercises, broken sleep.
Seven years Emily spent being told she had “put her life on hold” as if she had misplaced it carelessly.
“What else?” she asked.
Nathan’s eyes narrowed.
“What do you mean?”
“You looked at the photo like there was more.”
There was.
She could see it.
He did not answer quickly.
Good.
“I sent your father money.”
The rain seemed to stop.
“What?”
“Not personally. Through a care trust.”
Emily stared.
“No.”
“After his second stroke.”
“No.”
“It was structured through my family foundation’s restitution program.”
“What restitution?”
“Your father lost work because he did the right thing in a matter connected to my company.”
“My father never said anything about money from you.”
Nathan’s face changed.
“He may not have known the source.”
“How much?”
“I don’t remember exactly.”
“How much, Nathan?”
“Forty-eight thousand a year.”
Emily stopped breathing.
Seven years.
Forty-eight thousand.
Her brain tried to do the math and refused.
“That’s impossible.”
“It was for home care.”
“I was the home care.”
Nathan went completely still.
Emily laughed.
It sounded broken.
“My brother told me Dad’s long-term-care reimbursement barely covered equipment.”
Nathan said nothing.
“My sister said there was no money for respite care.”
Nothing.
“My mother said we could not afford a professional aide.”
Nathan’s face hardened.
“Who managed the trust?”
Emily already knew the answer before he asked.
Her brother handled their father’s finances.
Jason.
Nathan said:
“Emily?”
She whispered:
“Jason Carter.”
The porch light behind her suddenly looked different.
Warm.
Safe.
Paid for, maybe, by money intended to compensate the person they had just thrown into the rain.
Nathan did not say that.
Good.
He only asked:
“Do you want to get out of the rain?”
Emily looked at the locked door.
Then at the stranger whose name frightened half the city.
Somehow he was the only person standing in front of her who had asked what she wanted all night.
“One night,” she said.
“One night.”
He opened the rear passenger door.
Emily did not move.
“Not front?”
Nathan looked at the car.
Then understood.
The back seat beside him would feel like being collected.
Managed.
Contained.
He stepped away.
“You can sit in front.”
“Thank you.”
His driver looked surprised when Emily climbed beside him.
Nathan got into the back alone.
The sedan pulled away.
Emily watched her mother’s townhouse disappear through rain.
She told herself she was not being rescued.
She was accepting a dry room for one night.
Those were different things.
They had to be.
Twenty minutes later, the gates of Nathan Cole’s estate opened.
Theo stood inside the foyer in dinosaur pajamas.
He saw Emily.
His entire face changed.
“You came back.”
Emily’s throat tightened.
“For tonight.”
Theo looked at Nathan.
“Can she read?”
Nathan answered carefully.
“If she wants.”
Theo turned to Emily.
She almost said no.
She was exhausted.
Humiliated.
Angry.
Then she looked at the cracked paperback still inside the grocery bag.
“Five pages.”
Theo considered.
“Ten.”
“Six.”
“Eight.”
“Seven.”
He nodded.
“Deal.”
Nathan stared at them.
Emily narrowed her eyes.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I’m not.”
Theo said:
“He is.”
May you like
Nathan sighed.
And for the first time that night, Emily entered a house without feeling as though she had to earn the right to be inside it.
