He held it out between two gloved fingers. "This has my name and a phone number on it," he said. "The number goes to Constance, who you've just met. If you ever need help, Sadie, with anything at all, you call that number. You don't have to explain.
You just say, 'This is Sadie. I met Mr. Bryce outside the post office.' Constance will know what to do." Sadie took the card. Her fingers were red and stiff, and the paper felt smooth and heavy between them, the kind of paper that did not bend easily. She looked down at it.
Printed in plain black letters, Leonard J. Bryce. Below it a phone number. Nothing else. No title, no firm name, no address.
She did not know, holding that card on a cold December morning beside a harbor she had looked at every day of her life, that the name Leonard J. Bryce had appeared on the mastheads of legal journals and in the business sections of national newspapers for the better part of 35 years. She did not know that the firm he had founded was one of the most respected in the country, with offices in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, and Montreal. She did not know that he had once been named to the Order of Canada and had declined the ceremony because he did not care for the attention. She did not know that the man standing in front of her in the navy wool overcoat could have purchased every buildings on Barrington Street with a fraction of what sat in a single investment account.
She only knew that the old man had given her a card with a name and a number and had told her she could call. "Thank you, sir," Sadie said. She slid the card into the inside pocket of her parka, the pocket closest to her chest, the same pocket where she kept the wooden horse her father had carved. Leonard and Constance exchanged a look over the girl's head. It lasted less than a second.
It was a look that had passed between them many times before in many different situations over 23 years, and it required no words. Constance gave the smallest nod, the kind a person gives when they have understood the question before it has been asked. She opened the rear door of the Volvo and the warm air from inside spilled out onto the gravel carrying with it the faint smell of wool and old leather and something else, something that Sadie recognized after a moment as the smell of a clean warm house. "Sadie," Leonard said, "I'd like to ask you something, and I want you to feel completely free to say no." He paused.
He did not lower his voice or soften it into the careful patronizing tone adults sometimes used with children when they were trying to be gentle. He spoke to her the way he would have spoken to anyone. "I'm going to have lunch in about half an hour at a small place near the public gardens. The woman who runs it is a friend of mine. The food is plain and very good.
I'd be glad of the company if you'd like to join me." He paused again. "You are not obligated. Constance can drive you anywhere you need to go. No lunch required.
I only wanted to ask." Sadie stood very still beside the green car. The wind off the harbor was pushing at the back of her neck and her stomach, which had been quiet for hours by sheer force of habit, gave a small treacherous turn at the word lunch. She thought about the wooden horse in her pocket. She thought about her father who had taught her to be careful with strangers and who had also told her, once sitting on the back steps of their apartment on a summer evening, that some strangers were just neighbors you hadn't met yet and that you could usually tell the difference if you paid attention.
She looked at Leonard's face. She looked at the patient gray eyes, the silver hair, the gloved hands folded calmly over the handle of the cane. She looked at Constance who had stepped back a respectful distance and was pretending to check something on the car's side mirror. "Yes, sir," Sadie said, "I'd like that. Thank you."
Leonard nodded once as if a small important agreement had been reached and gestured toward the open door. Sadie hesitated at the threshold the way a person hesitates at the edge of deep water and then she climbed in. The seat was wide and worn and warm. There was a soft hum from the heater running under the dash and the leather smelled like something old and cared for. She sat very still with her backpack on her lap and tried not to touch anything she did not need to touch.
Leonard settled in beside her with the slow deliberate movements of a man whose knees had stopped cooperating several ago. Constance closed the door, walked around to the front and pulled the car out of the gravel lot onto the quiet road along the arm. Sadie watched Halifax pass by the window in a way it never had before. From inside a warm car the city looked smaller. The icy sidewalks could not bite at her tape together boots.
The wind could not find her. "Constance," Leonard said, "the place on Spring Garden, please. Let Hattie know we'll be two for lunch and that one of us is a young woman who has done me a considerable favor this morning." "Yes, sir," Constance said. She glanced once into the rearview mirror, met Sadie's eyes and gave her a small reassuring nod that did not require any words.
The restaurant was on a side street just off Spring Garden Road tucked between an old record shop and a place that repaired clocks. Its name painted in quiet gold letters on the glass was Hattie's. It was small and warm and smelled of bread. That was the first thing Sadie noticed when Constance held the door open for her and the bell above it gave a soft friendly sound. The smell of bread.
The kind that has been baking slowly for hours. The kind that reaches into you and loosens something you did not know you were holding tight. There were 10 tables, maybe 12, each covered with a plain white cloth. The walls were a soft green, the color of new leaves, and there were framed photographs of the harbor in different seasons and a large chalkboard with the day's menu written in careful slanting letters. A woman came out from the kitchen wiping her hands on a towel.
She was in her late 50s, broad-shouldered, with dark hair streaked with gray pulled back in a loose braid, and when she saw Leonard, she crossed the room with the easy warmth of a person greeting someone she had known for years. "Leonard," she said, taking both his hands. "Two weeks. Two weeks, Leonard." "I know, Hattie.
I've been poor company lately. Forgive me." "The weather," Hattie said, and it was unclear whether she was blaming the weather or forgiving him because of it. Then she turned and looked down at Sadie, who was standing half a step behind Leonard with her backpack held in front of her like a shield. Hattie's face did not change in any sudden or dramatic way.
She did not gasp or fuss or do any of the things that adults sometimes did when they saw a child who looked the way Sadie looked. She simply bent her knees slowly until her face was level with Sadie's, and she said with the same directness she had used with Leonard, "And you must be the young woman who kept this man on his feet. I'm Hattie. This is my place. You're very welcome here."
"Thank you, ma'am," Sadie said. "I'm Sadie." "Sadie," Hattie repeated it slowly, the way a person reads a name on a christening gift. "That's a lovely name. Are you hungry, Sadie?"