Chapter 3
The hallway outside the ballroom was quieter but not quiet. The chandeliers' light didn't reach here, just the flat white of recessed cans and the thump of the band through the double doors. Sophie's hand was still fisted in my shirt. Roman stood two feet away, close enough that I could see the ink disappear under his collar, far enough that he wasn't crowding her.
He didn't reach for us. He held his phone out, screen up, but kept it in his own hand.
"You can look," he said. "I'm not handing you my whole history in a hallway. But look."
I didn't want to. I wanted to get Sophie to the car and drive back to Helena's house where the locks were familiar. But his thumb was already scrolling.
Chase. Monthly transfer. Fifty thousand. To Helena M. Adler, it said. January. February. March. The dates went back and back, a column of green checks. The most recent was three days ago.
"Every month," he said, his voice low. "On the fifteenth. It's auto. It's been auto for four years."
Sophie's cheek was pressed against my side. I could feel her breathing fast against my ribs. I stared at the numbers because I didn't know where else to look.
"Stop scrolling," I said quietly. He did. "That's her name. That's her account."
He nodded once. He locked the phone and slipped it into his suit pocket. He didn't push it at me again.
"I don't understand," I said. My voice sounded thin in the hallway. "If that's true, where—"
"It is true," he said, not unkind, but firm. "You tell me what happened on your end."
That was harder to say out loud with Sophie listening. I crouched a little so my face was level with hers, my hand on her back.
"We lived like it stopped," I said to him, still looking at Sophie's hair. "Three years ago. The checks you used to send directly? They stopped. Helena said your account closed. She said you were gone, so of course the money was gone."
I swallowed. The band hit a louder song inside.
"Rent went up. We couldn't keep the apartment on Jefferson. Groceries got— I started buying the store brand everything. I cut Sophie's dance class. We moved into her house last spring because she said it was the only way. She paid the utilities. She bought Sophie's shoes for school. She kept saying we had to be careful, that there was nothing left."
Roman's jaw tightened. A small muscle jumped there. He didn't interrupt.
"I didn't ask for statements," I said. "I believed her. She was my mom."
Sophie tugged at my shirt. She'd been quiet too long, just watching us, her eyes going back and forth between his tattoos and my face.
"Mommy," she whispered. She wasn't crying now, just wide-eyed and serious. "If Daddy's alive, why doesn't he live with us?"
The question was so small and so concrete it knocked the air out of me. Not are you alive, but where do you live. As if alive meant you should be in the next room.
Roman went very still. He looked at Sophie, not at me, and waited.
I put my hand on her pigtail, smoothed it even though it didn't need it. My fingers were shaking.
"He is alive, sweetheart," I said. My voice cracked on the last word and I made myself say it slower. "Daddy is alive. He was always alive. Grandma told us something that wasn't true. I don't know why yet, but Daddy didn't go away the way she said he did."
Sophie's brow furrowed. She looked at Roman.
"Do you live in a different house?" she asked him.
Roman crouched then, slow, so he was at her height. He kept his hands on his knees where she could see them.
"Yeah, I do," he said. "Not far. I've got an apartment near the river. It's got a parking lot and a busted elevator. But I've been here the whole time."
Sophie considered that, like it was a fact to file away. She leaned harder into my leg.
Through the glass doors at the end of the hall, I could see the parking lot. The exterior lights were bright and yellow, making hard shadows on the asphalt. My old Honda was parked near the sidewalk under one of them, second row out. I could see the chipped paint on its bumper from here. Behind us, the ballroom doors opened and a few people stepped out, laughing, and Helena's voice carried for a second, bright and practiced.
Roman stood back up. He looked past me toward those doors, then back at us.
"Take her to the car," he said quietly. "I'll meet you out there. Just to talk. No Helena. Five minutes, then you can leave if you want."
I wanted to say no. Every instinct from three years of living in Helena's house said don't make a scene, don't go to a parking lot with a man who was supposed to be dead. But Sophie's hand was still in my shirt, and his phone had shown a column of transfers with my mother's name on them.
"Five minutes," I said. "By the car. Not inside. And you stay where I can see your hands."
He nodded. "By the car. I stay by the sidewalk."
He stepped back first, giving us the hallway. I picked Sophie up — she was getting too big for it, but she wrapped her legs around me — and pushed through the side doors into the cool night air.
The parking lot smelled like asphalt and car exhaust and the faint perfume of the flowers they'd brought in for the gala. I got Sophie buckled into her seat, gave her the battered stuffed rabbit from the floorboard, and stood by the open passenger door, breathing.
May you like
Roman came out thirty seconds later, alone, hands empty at his sides. From across the lot, near the ballroom's side exit, I saw Helena slip out with her small beaded clutch, her champagne gown catching the light. She didn't look toward us. An attendant brought her car around and she got in quickly and left, taillights sweeping the lot. She didn't wait.
Roman stopped at the edge of the sidewalk under the light, exactly where he'd said he would. He looked at me and at Sophie in the car and waited for me to say it was okay to talk.
