Chương 2
Daniel’s hand remained around Lucy’s shoulder.
“How long?”
“Daniel.”
“How long was she out here?”
Evelyn breathed in through her nose. “She needed time to settle down.”
“Two hours?”
“She was hysterical.”
Lucy whispered, “I wasn’t.”
Evelyn glanced at her.
It was quick.
Daniel still saw it.
Not affection. Not even anger exactly.
A warning.
He moved so that his body blocked Lucy’s view of her grandmother.
“Don’t look at her like that.”
Evelyn’s eyebrows lifted. “Like what?”
“Like she said something she wasn’t allowed to say.”
His mother’s lips pressed together.
Marisol said, “She wasn’t hysterical.”
Evelyn turned.
Marisol’s voice shook harder now, but she continued.
“She cried for maybe ten minutes. Then she asked if she could go back in. Mrs. Mercer said no.”
Daniel’s throat tightened.
“Did she ask for me?”
Marisol looked at him.
“Yes.”
He closed his eyes once.
He had three missed calls from his mother on his phone. He had listened to none of the voicemails because he had been driving the last mountain stretch through weak reception and assumed she was calling to complain that he was late.
He had texted at seven thirty.
Thirty minutes away. Tell birthday girl I love her.
His mother had responded with a thumbs-up.
Daniel opened his eyes.
Evelyn said, “If you intend to have a family discussion, I suggest we not conduct it in a service hallway.”
“You left my daughter in a service hallway.”
“For heaven’s sake, Daniel, she was not abandoned in the wilderness.”
Lucy moved against his coat.
That was the moment something in him became very quiet.
Not calm.
Quiet.
He had spent thirty-eight years learning that Evelyn became more powerful when someone else became emotional. She could wait out shouting. She could reorganize tears into evidence of instability. Anger gave her material.
Daniel had been good at anger when he was younger.
He had also been good at apologizing afterward.
His mother had trained both habits into him.
Now he heard himself say, “We’re leaving.”
Evelyn blinked. “The cake hasn’t been brought out.”
Daniel looked at the crushed white box on the bench.
Then at Lucy.
“She already had cake.”
Nobody spoke.
Lucy’s face folded.
Not into a tantrum. Not even proper crying. Her chin trembled once, and she looked down as if embarrassed by it.
Daniel lifted her.
She weighed almost nothing.
That frightened him too.
Not because she was underweight. She wasn’t. Because at home she usually made herself impossible to carry, all knees and opinions, insisting that six was practically seven and seven was nearly grown. Tonight she put both arms around his neck and let him hold her.
Her bare foot hung beside his hip.
Daniel stooped for the missing shoe.
Marisol got there first.
“I’ll get it.”
She crouched beside the cart, reached underneath, and pulled it free. There was a streak of something brown across the white leather.
Lucy murmured, “I stepped in sauce.”
Marisol’s mouth tightened.
“It happens.”
Evelyn gave a small, incredulous laugh. “Daniel, you cannot possibly be considering walking out of a room containing eighty people who came here for this family.”
Daniel picked up the wrapped present from the bench.
The paper had torn at one corner.
He looked at his mother.
“They didn’t come for Lucy.”
Evelyn said nothing.
“That’s the part I should have understood sooner.”
He shifted his daughter higher against his chest.
Lucy’s head rested under his chin.
Evelyn’s face finally lost some of its polish.
“This event supports the Mercer Foundation.”
“It was supposed to be her birthday.”
“It is her birthday. We combined the occasions. You agreed.”
“I agreed to dinner with a few donors.”
“You agreed to the guest list.”
“I didn’t see the final guest list.”
“You never see anything final because you’re perpetually running late and then offended that other people have made decisions.”
There it was.
The old opening.
The old invitation.
Daniel felt himself want to take it.
He wanted to explain the traffic leaving Denver. He wanted to explain the call with the auditors. He wanted to point out that he had left work early, that he had driven two and a half hours through snow flurries, that he had bought the gift weeks ago, that he had asked Lucy what kind of cake she wanted and had gone to the bakery himself because she insisted supermarket frosting was “too loud.”
He wanted to defend himself so badly that the words crowded his mouth.
Then Lucy breathed against his neck.
He shut it.
“Not tonight,” he said.
His mother’s eyes narrowed.
Daniel looked at Marisol. “Is there somewhere I can get her food?”
Marisol nodded immediately. “The lounge kitchen is still open. I can call ahead.”
“No,” Lucy whispered.
Daniel glanced down. “No?”
“Grandma said—”
“Grandma doesn’t decide whether you eat.”
Lucy looked toward Evelyn again.
Daniel stepped farther away.
“She doesn’t,” he repeated.
His daughter studied his face for several seconds.
Children were supposed to believe their parents easily. Daniel had always assumed that.
Lucy did not.
She was checking.
That nearly broke him.
“I want noodles,” she said.
“Okay.”
“With butter.”
“Done.”
“And cheese.”
“You drive a hard bargain.”
Her mouth twitched.
The expression lasted less than a second.
It was enough to keep him moving.
Daniel carried Lucy toward the elevators.
His mother called after him.
“Daniel.”
He kept walking.
“Do not make a public spectacle out of this.”
He stopped.
Not because she had persuaded him.
Because Lucy went rigid in his arms.
Daniel turned slowly.
Evelyn had remained by the ballroom door. Marisol stood several feet away now, hands clasped in front of her uniform.
Daniel said, “I’m not the one who turned her birthday into a public spectacle.”
May you like
Then he left.
The elevator doors opened on the first floor to a lobby full of dark wood, stone, firelight, and adults wearing clothes chosen for photographs. The resort had the polished warmth of a place designed to make wealthy people believe winter was something that happened prettily outside glass.
