And from behind his legs, a small serious voice said, "Is that her?" Lily had appeared in the hallway in her dinosaur pajamas. Hair a wild cloud inspecting the stranger in the doorway with the full weight of her seven-year-old judgment. Marcus crouched down. "Baby girl, this is Miss Olivia. Remember I told you she might come Sunday." Lily walked right up to Olivia, past all the awkwardness the adults were drowning in, and looked up at her.
"You fix birthdays," she announced. Olivia blinked. I what? Daddy said you remember everybody's birthday. That's fixing birthdays.
It's a nice thing. Lily crossed her arms. Do you know how to make the smiley face or is Daddy going to have to teach you because he's not good at it? Last time the mouth looked like the pancake was throwing up. Lily, it did daddy.
Olivia laughed. A real laugh. Surprised out of her the way only two people in the world could surprise it out of her. And one of them was standing right there in dinosaur pajamas. She crouched down to Lily's level.
"Slow, careful the way you approach something you badly don't want to scare off." "I googled it," Olivia confided. The smiley face, I studied. "But I bet you're better than any website. Would you teach me so we don't make a throwing up pancake?" Lily considered this for a long waity moment. Okay, she decided, but you have to do what I say in the kitchen.
It's my kitchen on Sundays. Daddy's just the helper. Understood, Olivia said. You're the boss. I'm very comfortable working for a tough boss.
I do it all week. And Lily grinned the gaptothed grin, the one that was her mother's exactly, and grabbed Olivia's hand and towed her toward the kitchen. And Marcus stood in his own hallway watching his daughter lead the CEO of Carter Innovations away by the hand to make pancake art. And he had to put a hand on the wall for a second because it was easy. That was the thing that undid him.
He'd braced for 3 years worth of grief and guilt and complication. And instead, his little girl had taken one look at Olivia and decided she was fine and it was easy. And easy was the one thing Marcus Johnson had genuinely forgotten was possible. Breakfast took an hour and destroyed the kitchen. Olivia's first pancake did in fact look like it was throwing up.
And Lily laughed so hard she got the hiccups. And Olivia, who had not been laughed at by anyone in years without it being an insult, laughed right along with her delighted and tried again and got it slightly less wrong. And Lily awarded her second best in the kitchen better than daddy, which Olivia treated like a Nobel Prize. Marcus mostly stood back and watched. He didn't say much.
He didn't need to. He watched the two of them and he felt Renee close the way he sometimes did not. Said just present like she'd pulled up a chair. See, he imagined her saying elbowing him. Told you.
Let somebody love you, you fool. You went somewhere, Olivia said, catching his face across the wreckage of the kitchen. It was the same thing she'd said the night he called her baby. Yeah, he admitted where he looked at his daughter Flower in her hair teaching a billionaire how to flip a pancake. Right here, he said.
I'm right here. First time in a long time. Olivia's eyes went soft and she opened her mouth to say something. And that was when Marcus' phone rang. He almost didn't answer it.
He'd have given a great deal later to have not answered it. But three years of being the man who answers the man who's already moving before the emergency finishes happening made him pick it up on reflex. Marcus Johnson speaking. This is Denise Holloway. I'm the principal over at Southside Elementary.
I'm so sorry to bother you on a Sunday. A pause. A wrongness in the pause. Mr. Johnson, I need to ask you something and I need you to stay calm. Do you know a man who might have reason to be asking questions about Lily?
An older gentleman, very well-dressed, was here Friday afternoon at pickup, and one of our aids saw him talking to some of the parents, asking which child was yours, and when she approached him, he left. We didn't think much of it until this morning when our security company flagged that someone accessed our online directory Friday night using a former staff login. We take this very seriously, Mr. Johnson. I wanted you to know before Monday. The kitchen, the laughter, the flower, all of it went very far away.
What did he look like? Marcus said. His voice had gone flat and cold, and Olivia's head came up instantly, and Lily's smile faltered because children read their parents like weather. Tall, silver at the temples, expensive watch, the aid noticed the watch. Charming, she said.
Very charming. Marcus closed his eyes. Daniel, thank you, Marcus said. Thank you for calling. Yeah, I know who it is.
Yeah, I'll I'll handle it. Thank you. He hung up. He set the phone down very carefully on the counter because he did not trust his hands. Marcus Olivia was already moving toward him, reading his face.
"What happened?" Lily, Marcus said, and he crouched down and made his voice gentle by an act of pure will. Baby girl, why don't you go pick out a movie for us? Okay. Grown-up phone call stuff. Boring.
Go pick the dinosaur one. Lily looked between the two adults, worried. Are you mad? No, sweetheart. Not at you.
Never at you. Go on. Pick the good dinosaur one. Not the sequel. She went reluctant casting looks back over her shoulder.
And the second she was around the corner, Marcus stood, and the cold rage he'd swallowed at the gayla came back up all at once. He went to her school. Marcus said low so Lily wouldn't hear. Friday at pickup, Daniel Reed stood outside my daughter's school asking parents which kid was mine. Then Friday night, he broke into their directory to get I don't know her address, my address, whatever's in there.