I nod.

  “Will skipping this party get you fired?” She compresses her lips into a flat line. “Because I don’t want to stick these girls with you and have to move them elsewhere inside of seventy-two hours because your boss is threatening to fire you for caring for them properly.”

  I shake my head. “It’ll be fine.”

  “The first three days are going to be the hardest on all of you.”

  Nikki’s just coming out of her room, a massive backpack that looks dramatically overloaded on her back, and a huge duffel bag dragging across the floor behind her.

  I cannot think about what she’s dragging it through, or what may have hitched a ride in the bags.

  I’ve watched the news for thirty years of my life, and I’ve seen a lot of clips of prisoners of war being brought home. Nikki’s eyes look like that—like she’s wary and tired and angry and scared.

  I found them. I care about them. After spending time with Dave and Seren, I have an inkling of what’s in store for me. I firmly believe I’m their best placement. That matters more than a job I don’t even love.

  “They can come with me.”

  Alice stares at me without saying a word for ten seconds. Then for twenty. Finally, around the very awkward thirty seconds mark, she nods. “Alright. But you will call me if you find that you can’t do this, and you will not let those girls suffer through more trauma on your watch.”

  “I won’t,” I say.

  “You think I’m being hard on you, but those girls have no other advocate.”

  In that moment, I realize that Alice is so gruff because her heart’s constantly flayed wide open. I’m not sure I could survive handling a job like hers. Being called at all hours to remove kids from their homes, like tearing feral kittens out of their dens underneath someone’s warehouse. Then she has to pass them off to someone else, knowing that she won’t be able to do much if they’re not properly cared for other than ripping them away yet again.

  There are too many injured, neglected feral kittens in this world. Alice can’t care for them all. Neither can I. But I found these two, and I can care for them. So I will.

  “Alright,” I say. “Nikki, Ricki, let’s go. Anything you forgot, we can come back for tomorrow. Don’t stress.”

  “Rent’s only paid through Wednesday of next week,” Ricki says. “Can we come back before then?”

  I pity the landlord, having this bomb dropped on him or her next week. “Absolutely,” I say. “We will.”

  “I’ll come and help,” Bentley says. “In fact, if you need⁠—”

  I shake my head. “You’ve been a huge support, but I’ll get them home from here.”

  “Are you sure?” He studies my face carefully.

  I nod. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Ironically, once we’re out of the apartment complex and moving, like stray kittens might, both of them fall asleep in the car on the way to my place. And when we get there, neither of them says a word. They drag their bags inside, refuse to shower or bathe, and fall asleep on the queen bed in my guest room, curled up into two little balls.

  I almost feel guilty about thinking of them as stray cats, because they’re so similar. I want to go to sleep as well, but instead, I do the very thing I’d rather avoid.

  I call my boss.

  She picks up halfway through the first ring. “I should fire you,” she says.

  “The girls’ mom died three months ago, and they’ve been living alone for almost a year while paying her medical bills and their own living expenses.”

  She’s utterly silent on the other end.

  “They’re at my house now—I’m their emergency foster placement, and they’ll be staying with me for a while.”

  “Barbara.”

  I’d feel bad too, if I were her. “It’s going to be fine,” I say. “But they may need a little bit of extra attention for the next little while. I’ll still be at work, of course, but after they get out of school, I may need to leave a bit early.”

  “Barbara,” Jennifer says, “I told you to get in the car and come to the party.”

  “I know,” I say. “But I knew there was something wrong, and I was right about that.”

  “And now it’s your problem, because you doggedly insisted on making it your problem. And that means that now it’s also my problem, and I don’t like having more problems. I’m not even sure whether they can be our client, with you as their temporary guardian. Have you thought of that?”

  “Wait.” I can’t believe this. “Are you upset that I helped them?”

  “You’re shocked by that? You ignored me, and then you did exactly what I said not to do, and then you didn’t show for a party we were in charge of handling—leaving me holding the very empty, very disorganized bag. I looked like an idiot tonight, because you insisted on becoming a white knight.”

  “You had James and Kristy with you, and I had already lined everything up. The food, the decorations, the band, and even the cake were already there. I went by earlier to make sure⁠—”

  “I had to introduce Gary and the rest of the management team, and I had to give your speech, and I had no idea that any of that was going to fall to me. I looked basically incompetent, which I hate more than anything else.”

  “Did you hear any of what I said?” I wish I could slap her through the phone receiver. “Two little girls’ mother is dead and they have no one to care for them. They were living in squalor, surrounded by rats and roaches, and no one even knew.”

  “Two little girls I’ve never met, and to whom you had zero obligation were struggling,” Jennifer says. “The reality is that the world is full of sob stories, but we can’t be expected to do something about all of them, and⁠—”

  “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say any of that to me,” I say. “I’m going to tell myself that you’re really drunk or something, and that you aren’t being yourself. Because if I really thought you felt that way, if I really thought you were so selfish that you would order me to walk away from those little girls when I knew something was majorly off, then you wouldn’t have to fire me, Jennifer. I’d quit and never look back, and then tonight would be the first in a long line of holiday parties this season that you’d be handling. All. By. Yourself.”

  I hang up.

  Before I collapse in bed, which I badly want to do, I call Seren, and the second she answers, I start to cry. “I have no idea how you did this for so many years,” I say. “I’m scared, and I’m exhausted, and I might get fired, and I have no idea what I’ll do if that happens.”

  Seren spends more than thirty minutes talking to me, and even though I’m tired, I feel way, way better when we’re finally done. “I’ll come over and watch them any time you need me to over the next few weeks,” Seren says.

  “I can’t ask you to do that. You have the inn, and Dave and Killian, and with the holidays⁠—”

  “You watched the kids how many times for me?” Seren asks. “Countless. Whenever I felt like I was at the end of my rope, you came running. I can help you now, and I’m happy to do just that.”

  “I’m just not sure why I did it. My boss thinks I’m insane, and even though I got mad at her, now I’m wondering whether she’s right.”

  “You’re not insane. I know how you felt—I felt the same way when I met Emerson. You just lost your mom, and now you see these poor girls who lost their mother in an even worse way.”

  In that moment, I realize that Seren’s a genius.

  I lost my mom a little more than a year and a half ago now, and then I lost my dad shortly after. Then my husband quit on me, and I’ve never really felt more alone than I have this year.

  But when I saw those girls, I realized how lucky I have been. I had my mom when it mattered. I had her for all the years that I was in school, when I couldn’t care for myself. Now that she’s gone, I have a job, a career, a support system of friends, and I can drive myself to and from things. I had a father and a mother who both loved me and they kept me safe for a really long time.

  No matter how alone I feel, my mom taught me to be self-sufficient. These girls have no one—and they can’t do anything for themselves. So Jennifer may think I’m insane, and maybe she’s even right, but now those helpless girls have me for as long as they need me. Through my tears, I manage to squeeze out a “Thank you” for Seren.

  “Your parents may be gone, but you have a lot of family who loves you,” Seren says. “Don’t ever forget that, and reach out to me whenever you need it. Phone call. Babysitter. Grocery delivery. Pedicure date. Whatever. Okay?”

  It feels like calling Seren’s helping me realize a lot of things I should already have known. “I barely know them,” I say. “But I don’t want to give these girls up.”

  “I know,” she says. “I knew that when you called me earlier.”

  Of course she did. Seren’s an emotional genius. “Unless you think they could find a better place to live.”

  “I think people come into our lives for a reason,” she says. “I’ve always thought that, but anyone who has met you and heard about how you found them would agree. Alice already told me she thinks those girls went home tonight.”

  After bawling for another half hour, I finally go to sleep.

  10

  Bentley

  In first grade, my parents had me tested, and they found that I had an IQ far above the average. They put me in gifted classes, and I had special tutors. They did everything they could to make sure I had every opportunity to excel.

  By the time I was thirty, I’d started my own business.

  By the time I was thirty-five, my business was a raging success.

  I’ve proven that test right over and over and over. But I also do my share of stupid things. Even so, one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done was give Barbara my eHarmony login.

  “I told you,” she’s saying over the phone. “The date with Lila the Librarian may have been a bust, but that doesn’t mean⁠—”

  “She disappeared in the middle of our meal, Barbara.” I don’t tell her why or how I failed to notice until she was gone.

  “Okay, so it was a bust. That’s fine. More often than not, even when you play the odds, you don’t get a love connection on the first try, but you know numbers better than I do. What are your chances of finding Mrs. Right when you never go on dates at all?”

  I roll my eyes, but it’s totally wasted. She can’t even see me. “We should have done a video chat,” I say.

  “I’m on the road,” she says. “I just dropped the girls off at school, remember?”

  “Listen, it’s not a good time for you right now, so let’s just table the dating thing until after Christmas.”

  “Why does it need to be a good time for me?” I can practically hear her rolling her eyes through the phone, so maybe she could tell earlier when I did it.

  “Because.” Like stepping on a Lego, the answer shoots through me. “I’m not going on another date unless you’re there to analyze it.” Then I tell a brilliant, gifted lie. “I have no idea why she left, so I could just do the same thing wrong I did that time again and again.”

  “Bentley, I do not have the bandwidth to go on any dates right now.”

  Which is exactly why I want to push pause and wait until you are. “That’s why I said we should wait,” I say. “We can do this in the new year, no problem.”

  “You need to do this while you have the excitement to try it.” It sounds like she’s parking and getting out. That means I’m quickly running out of talk time.

  “I’ll still be excited after Christmas.”

  “I won’t, even then,” she says. “I’m not sure when I’ll want to double, so you should⁠—”

  “Wait, who said anything about double dating?” I ask.

  “Huh?” She sounds nervous now.

  “You could just come along, sit at the table behind me, and listen.”

  “Like some kind of super-stalker?” She scoffs. “Bentley, you have got to be kidding me. If I’m sitting there during your date, she’ll recognize me when we meet.”

  “You’re assuming things will go well enough that I’d bring her to family functions later,” I say.

  “You should be assuming that too!”

  I guess she’s right, with the information she has available. “Okay, fine. You can sit two tables over, and I’ll only ask you to do it for our first date. I’ll make sure that you’re only in my line of sight.”

  She sighs. “I’m at work, Bentley.”

  “No problem,” I say.

  “I set up your date for today already.” I can hear the giddiness in her voice, dropping that on me now, like a sneak attack.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Not at all,” she says. “It’s just a lunch date, so it’s low pressure. It’s the not-bomb-girl you weren’t keen on, but you never know. Give it a chance. She said she’s fine with eating anywhere, so I picked that cafe by your office. They have a pretty good turkey melt.”

  “And you’ll be there to eat one too, right?”

  She huffs. “Bentley.”

  “Did I mention that I called your boss and told her that I would be moving my marketing to your firm, but only if you handled it?”

  “You don’t even need marketing.”

  “Three of my clients do,” I say. “And I called them and told them you’re the best.”

  “Of all the—Bentley!”

  “Be there at lunch. Please?”

  She grumbles like crazy, and clearly she’s climbing up the stairs to her building entrance, but right as she hangs up, she says, “Fine.”

  After I’m virtually certain she’s going to be in a meeting or otherwise occupied, I open the app, dig around and find the message with this Oppenheimer person, and I tell her I can’t make it today. I’m subjected to an obscene number of emojis, but she finally agrees that we can postpone.

  My assistant at work has to help me, but I manage to delete everything after the message I sent saying where to meet. That should keep Barbara from realizing the date was called off by me.

  I can’t help my evil smile.

  “Is this the lady you helped last night?” Oliver asks.

  “Yep,” I say.

  “The one who’s now fostering two little girls?” He looks like he’s asking whether she has a horrible case of athlete’s foot.

  “Yes, that’s Barbara.”

  “And you’re wanting to meet her there, while this woman—the cute, smiley one—is going to supposedly stand you up. Right?”

  I nod.

  Oliver scratches his face scruff. “I do not understand what you’re doing at all.”

  I ought to be angry. I mean, he’s basically saying I’m stupid for wanting to date Barbara. I whip out my phone and pull up a photo of Barbara—my favorite one. She’s half-smiling at the woman from that makeup company, and she’s clearly in her element.

  “Now you’ll get it.” I swivel it around.

  “You know I’m gay, right?” Oliver pulls a face.

  “You can still recognize beauty.” I shake the phone.

  “I can,” Oliver says, “and that woman on the app is objectively way prettier. And she’s not chubby.”

  “You’re an idiot,” I say. “And you’re wrong. Barbara looks amazing.”

  “They do say it’s in the eye of the beholder,” he mutters as he walks off.

  “I can fire you, you know, and I will if you make one more comment about Barbara not being good enough.”

  “You didn’t fire me when I accidentally booked you to Macedonia when you were supposed to go to Malaysia.”

  “This is a bigger deal than botched travel plans,” I say. “Watch what you say.”

  “Barbara does have good taste in fashion. For someone who’s clearly on a budget.”

  It’s not glowing, but it’s something. Oliver’s always a little brutal in his honesty, but he never makes up compliments.

  “You’re moving in the right direction at least,” I concede.

  Oliver reminds me half an hour before my lunch that it’s almost time, so I wrap up my client call. “You’re redeeming yourself.”

  “Don’t blurt anything out,” Oliver says as I’m leaving.

  “What?”

  “You’re a straightforward guy,” he says. “It’s usually good. No messing around. But if this woman just got divorced⁠—”

  “It’s been almost seven months,” I say.

  “Just got divorced,” Oliver says, his eyes wide and his tone patronizing, “and if she’s opened her home to two little girls, she may be. . .overwhelmed. It may not be the right time for you to spring anything heavy on her.”

  Well, shoot.

  Is he right? Am I being selfish, wanting to date her now?

  I’m not in a great mood when I walk into the cafe, at least, not until I see her sitting in the corner booth. I can’t help my smile, and I lift my hand to wave.

  She scowls at me and shakes her head. Then she pointedly looks at the door. Because she has no idea that Oppenwhatever isn’t coming. Maybe I’m not so smart.

  After ten minutes of her ignoring me, I start to get frustrated. I’m definitely not going to get anywhere with her if we can’t even talk on our fake date. And with the cutest little girls in the world at her place, it’s not like I can ask her out for night things.

  “How late is she?” I stage-whisper.

  Barbara glances at her watch, her hair falling forward to block her face. “Almost twenty minutes. We should check and see if she’s messaged something.”

  Now I’m alarmed. What if Barbara sends her a message, and she replies saying that I cancelled? “I don’t want to seem clingy.”

  She frowns. “But she should have at least warned you if she was running late.”

  I stand up and slide into Barbara’s booth.

  “Whoa.” She shoos me back. “What are you doing?”

  “You’ve been eating,” I say. “But I’m starving.” I steal a bite of her turkey melt. “Oh, you weren’t kidding. That is good.”

  She snatches it away. “That’s mine.” But when our hands meet, a spike of energy shoots through me.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19