Chương 1
""Victoria Hale kicked the paper bag from Lily Carter’s hands before Lily had managed to say her name.
The bag skidded across the black-and-cream marble, struck the heel of a woman in a silver gown, and split at the fold. Two pieces of bread slid under a champagne table. An apple rolled in a slow red circle between polished shoes until a man stepped back to keep it from touching his tuxedo.
For half a second the ballroom continued as if nothing unusual had happened. Crystal glasses chimed. Someone near the orchestra laughed too loudly. Then the people closest to Lily began turning.
Victoria looked down at her.
“Wrong ballroom, sweetheart.” Her smile was narrow and practiced, the kind that had probably survived photographs, board meetings, charity dinners, and people she disliked. “Your mother isn’t coming back.”
Lily stopped breathing.
It was not the kick that did it.
She had heard adults use mean voices before. She knew what happened when store managers watched you too closely, when landlords spoke through half-open doors, when nurses thought children were asleep, when grown-ups lowered their voices because they had already decided what a child could handle.
But the sentence landed differently.
Your mother isn’t coming back.
Lily stared at Victoria’s emerald gown, because looking at the woman’s face suddenly seemed impossible. One of the diamonds at Victoria’s throat moved when she breathed.
“I didn’t ask you,” Lily said.
Her voice was so quiet Victoria almost missed it.
A few guests shifted.
Victoria’s smile tightened.
Lily knelt.
The marble was cold through the worn fabric at her knees. She crawled beneath the edge of the champagne table and reached for the bread. One piece had been crushed under somebody’s shoe. She picked it up anyway.
The woman in silver stepped farther back.
Lily could feel people watching her dirty sneakers.
She put the bread into the torn bag, found the apple, wiped it against her dress, then touched the place beneath her collar where the silver locket rested against her skin.
Her mother had made her promise not to lose it.
She had also made Lily promise something stranger.
If everything goes wrong, find Richard Hale.
Lily had hated that sentence when her mother was alive.
Now it was all she had.
“She told me he’d know this,” Lily whispered.
Victoria heard her.
The smile disappeared from her face for less than a second.
Then the enormous double doors at the far end of the ballroom opened.
Conversation weakened in waves.
People turned first because of the doors, then because several men in dark suits entered, and finally because of the silver-haired man walking between them.
Richard Hale did not hurry.
He was sixty-four and had spent enough years being waited for that rooms adjusted themselves around his pace. His black double-breasted suit fit so precisely it made the men beside him look underdressed. He was listening to one of the security officers say something near his shoulder when he looked toward the center of the ballroom.
He stopped.
The officer nearly took another step before noticing.
Richard’s gaze moved past Victoria.
Past the spilled crumbs.
Past the guests who had formed a loose, embarrassed circle.
It settled on Lily.
The color left his face.
Lily had imagined Richard Hale differently.
She had seen a picture of him on a hotel display downstairs, standing beside a hospital wing he had donated money to, and another on a card near the elevators advertising the Hale Foundation Winter Benefit. In the pictures he looked hard and expensive and far away.
In person he looked older.
Not weaker.
Just more breakable.
His eyes moved to Lily’s collar.
Lily’s fingers were still curled around the chain.
Richard took one step toward her.
“Where did you get that necklace?”
The room became so quiet Lily heard ice shift inside someone’s glass.
Victoria looked from Richard to Lily.
“Richard,” she began, “I think there’s some confusion. She wandered in from—”
Richard raised one hand without looking at her.
Victoria stopped speaking.
Lily stood slowly.
The locket had caught beneath the torn edge of her collar. She worked it free with both hands.
It was small, silver, and shaped like a heart. The surface was scratched from years of being worn under clothing. A dent near the hinge made one side close imperfectly.
Richard stared at the dent.
His mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Lily held the locket toward him.
He did not take it immediately.
When he finally reached for it, the tips of his fingers touched hers, and Lily felt them trembling.
That frightened her more than his security men did.
Richard pressed his thumbnail beneath the bent edge.
The locket opened.
Inside was a photograph no larger than a postage stamp.
A younger Richard stood beside a girl with long dark hair. They were both squinting into sunlight. The girl had one arm around his waist and was laughing at something outside the frame.
Lily knew the picture well enough to see it with her eyes closed.
Richard stared at it as if the floor had moved.
“Anna,” he said.
Lily swallowed.
“My mom said to find my grandfather.”
Somebody behind Victoria inhaled sharply.
Richard looked at Lily.
Not at the necklace.
At her.
His eyes moved across her dirty face, the dark hair she had cut herself badly near one ear two months earlier, the narrow shoulders beneath the beige dress, the stubborn set of her mouth.
Something inside his expression collapsed.
“Your mother is Anna?”
Lily nodded.
Richard closed his eyes.
It lasted only a moment.
Then he lowered himself to one knee in front of her, ignoring the marble and the crease it put in his trousers.
“Where is she?”
May you like
Lily looked at the bread bag in her hands.
The question had become familiar during the last six days. Police officers had asked it. A social worker had asked it. A woman at school had asked it while pressing tissues toward Lily even though Lily had not been crying.
