Chapter 1
I looked toward the clock.
4:18 a.m.
My fingers were still beneath the pillow, inches from the gun I had reached for automatically.
Slowly, I pulled my hand away.
“Emma.”
Nothing.
“Emma.”
Her eyes opened.
For half a second, she looked confused.
Then she realized where she was.
“Oh.”
That was all she said.
Not a scream. Not an apology delivered in panic.
Just, “Oh.”
“You’re in my bed.”
“I noticed.”
“You fell asleep.”
“I also noticed that.”
I stared at her.
She sat upright and rubbed her face. “You kept waking up every ten minutes.”
“So?”
“So I stayed.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Emma glanced at the clock and sighed.
“Because every time I got to the door, you started shaking again.”
Something in my chest tightened.
I hated pity.
I had learned to recognize it instantly.
The softened voice. The lowered eyes. The careful expression people wore when they looked at my chair.
But Emma wasn’t looking at the chair.
She was looking at me like I had simply asked an unnecessarily complicated question.
“You could have called the night nurse.”
“You fired her yesterday.”
I remembered.
“That’s beside the point.”
“It seems pretty close to the point.”
Despite myself, I nearly laughed.
Nearly.
Emma stood, picked up her shoes, and headed toward the door.
“Carter.”
She looked back.
“You’re not getting paid to sleep.”
“Then deduct twenty-three minutes.”
“You were here longer than twenty-three minutes.”
“I only slept twenty-three.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I checked the clock before I lost consciousness.”
Then she left.
I sat alone in the dark for a long time afterward.
The strange thing wasn’t that Emma had fallen asleep beside me.
The strange thing was that I had slept too.
Really slept.
Not the shallow, drugged unconsciousness that usually followed bad nights.
For the first time in months, I had woken without feeling as if I had spent the night wrestling ghosts.
By breakfast, I was irritated about it.
Luke noticed immediately.
“You look rested.”
“Don’t start.”
He poured coffee.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to say the new security cameras arrived.”
I narrowed my eyes.
Luke hid a smile behind his cup.
He had known me since we were seventeen, back when we were both skinny boys from Bridgeport who thought owning three hundred dollars at the same time meant we were rich.
He was one of the few people who remembered Daniel Moretti before people shortened my name to Danny and started saying it carefully.
“Where’s Emma?” I asked.
Luke’s eyebrows rose.
“Housekeeping.”
“I know what department she works for.”
“Then why ask?”
I wheeled away from the table.
“Forget it.”
“Already forgotten.”
It wasn’t.
Nothing in that house was ever forgotten.
Over the next two weeks, something changed.
Not dramatically.
Emma did not suddenly become my nurse, and I did not transform into a cheerful man who appreciated morning sunlight and herbal tea.
I still hated physical therapy.
I still snapped at people.
I still woke angry some days for no reason I could explain.
But Emma had somehow become part of my routine.
At eleven every night, I heard her cart enter the private corridor.
At eleven fifteen, she cleaned the library.
At midnight, she passed my office.
Sometimes she said nothing.
Sometimes she left coffee on my desk without asking.
Once, she replaced the cup with chamomile tea.
I stared at it.
“What is this?”
“Tea.”
“I can see that.”
“You’ve had six coffees.”
“I employ people to count my money, not my coffee.”
“Congratulations.”
She kept dusting.
I took a sip.
I hated that it wasn’t terrible.
Then I began noticing another pattern.
Every Thursday, Emma arrived late.
Not very late.
Seven minutes. Twelve minutes. Once eighteen.
The head housekeeper complained.
Emma apologized every time.
Never offered excuses.
Then one Thursday, I happened to be in the front hall when she entered.
Her hair was damp from rain. Her face looked pale.
In her hand was an envelope stamped with the name of a memory-care center in Evanston.
She saw me looking and quickly slipped it into her bag.
“Late again,” I said.
“Nine minutes.”
“You counted?”
“I knew you would.”
She pushed her cart toward the service hall.
I followed.
“What’s in the envelope?”
She stopped.
“That’s none of your business.”
People rarely said that to me.
Emma said it without hostility.
Just fact.
“You work in my house.”
“That doesn’t make my mail yours.”
“No.”
I watched her carefully.
“You visit your mother on Thursdays?”
Her face changed.
Only slightly.
“Yes.”
“Before work?”
“Yes.”
“And then you take two buses here.”
“Yes.”
“How much is the facility?”
Her expression hardened.
“Danny.”
It was the first time she had used my name.
Not Mr. Moretti.
Not sir.
Danny.
I felt the word more than I should have.
“I didn’t ask for money,” she said.
“I didn’t offer.”
“You were about to.”
“How do you know?”
May you like
“Because rich people always think money is the fastest way to solve discomfort.”
“And poor people don’t?”
