Chapter 1 - “Emma,” he said quietly.
I stared at him.
“You said your name was Ryan.”
A few heads turned away too quickly.
Anthony glanced around us.
“Can we talk somewhere less public?”
“No.”
He blinked.
That seemed to surprise him.
I surprised myself, too.
I had spent most of my life avoiding scenes. My mother used to say I could sense tension three rooms away and would immediately start washing dishes just to give myself something useful to do.
But this wasn’t anger.
It was embarrassment.
And underneath that, disappointment.
I lowered my voice.
“You told me you installed signs.”
“I do.”
“People are calling you Anthony Russo.”
“That’s also true.”
“That is not the kind of detail most people forget to mention.”
His jaw shifted slightly.
“I didn’t forget.”
That answer stung more than I expected.
Louise suddenly appeared beside us.
“Emma, sweetheart, the programs are perfect.”
“Thank you.”
She looked between Anthony and me.
Then she looked at Anthony.
“Mr. Russo, the electricians are waiting near the marquee.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Carter.”
Louise narrowed her eyes.
“You know I hate being called Mrs. Carter.”
A faint smile touched his face.
“Louise.”
“Better.”
She walked away.
I stared after her.
“You two know each other?”
“For years.”
Of course they did.
Apparently everyone in Rochester had been handed the same instruction manual except me.
Anthony took a breath.
“Emma, I can explain.”
“That sentence has never made anybody feel better.”
“I know.”
That, annoyingly, sounded like Ryan.
The man who admitted when a joke was bad.
The man who sent me photographs of crooked restaurant signs because he knew they would bother me.
The man who remembered that I hated raisins in baked goods but liked them in oatmeal, which was an absurdly specific distinction no one else had ever remembered.
I folded my arms.
“Start with your name.”
“My full name is Anthony Ryan Russo.”
I blinked.
He reached into his jacket slowly and took out his wallet.
He showed me his license.
Anthony Ryan Russo.
I stared at it.
“So technically you didn’t lie.”
“I did.”
I looked up.
He put the wallet away.
“I gave you the name my mother used for me. My sister still calls me Ryan. A few people who knew me before…” He paused. “Before my last name became the first thing people noticed.”
“That sounds convenient.”
“It probably is.”
“And the lighting business?”
“My family started Russo Electric and Sign Company forty-two years ago. I still own it.”
I had heard of Russo Electric.
Everybody had.
They did restoration work across western New York—historic theater signs, storefront lighting, municipal projects.
“You made it sound like you were an employee.”
“I said I worked in lighting and signage.”
“You let me assume.”
“Yes.”
At least he wasn’t trying to wriggle around it.
That made being angry harder.
Not impossible.
Just harder.
“And the rest?”
His eyes settled on mine.
“The stories?”
“Yes.”
“Some are true. Some are exaggerated. Some belonged to people who died before I was old enough to vote.”
“That isn’t exactly reassuring.”
“No.”
He glanced toward the old marquee visible through the glass doors.
“I came here tonight because Russo Electric is restoring that sign.”
I followed his gaze.
Workers had removed part of the metal trim earlier that afternoon. For months the neighborhood had been collecting donations—five dollars from bake sales, twenty dollars from retirees, fifty from small businesses.
“How much did your company charge?”
“Nothing.”
I looked at him sharply.
“Why?”
“Because we built the original sign.”
“What?”
“In 1978.”
I knew the marquee dated from around then, but I had never heard that.
“My grandfather donated the labor. The center paid for materials.”
“And now you’re restoring it?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t Louise tell anyone?”
“She wanted the fundraiser to remain about Riverside, not about me.”
That sounded exactly like Louise.
Still, something bothered me.
I remembered the applause when Anthony entered.
The councilman stepping backward.
The cautious faces.
“Why the suits?”
He glanced over his shoulder.
“They’re company security.”
“You need security to attend a fundraiser?”
“Sometimes.”
That answer raised ten new questions.
Before I could ask them, Louise tapped a microphone at the front of the room.
It squealed.
Everybody winced.
“Wonderful,” she said. “Technology continues its war against me.”
A ripple of laughter moved through the room.
“Before dessert disappears completely, I want everyone outside. We have waited nine years to see that marquee lit again, and I refuse to compete with lemon squares.”
People began moving toward the doors.
I stayed where I was.
Anthony did too.
“You should go,” I said.
“I’d rather finish this conversation.”
“I wouldn’t.”
His expression changed, not dramatically, just enough that I saw disappointment.
“Okay.”
No argument.
No pressure.
He simply nodded.
Then he reached into his pocket.
“I was going to give you this before tonight got complicated.”
I almost laughed.
“Tonight got complicated when you walked through the door with half the room afraid to make eye contact.”
“Fair.”
He placed something on the table between us.
A small folded piece of paper.
“You don’t have to read it.”
Then he walked away.
I waited until he was outside before opening it.
It was not a letter.
It was a receipt.
Corner Print & Copy.
Dated seventeen years earlier.
My stomach tightened.
I recognized the old logo immediately. My mother had designed it when the shop first opened.
The order was for five hundred fundraiser flyers.
Customer:
Riverside Neighborhood Center.
Paid by:
Daniel Hayes.
My father.
For a moment the room seemed to tilt.
My father had been gone from my life for sixteen years.
He had not died.
Sometimes I thought death would have been easier to understand.
Daniel Hayes had simply become one of those fathers who existed in pieces.
A birthday card when I turned fourteen.
A voicemail two Christmases later.
An apology letter when I graduated high school.
Three promises to visit.
Three empty chairs.
Then silence.
My mother had rarely spoken badly of him. She had simply said, “Your father had trouble staying when staying mattered.”
I had never known he had anything to do with Riverside.
Or that he had used our print shop for the center.
I folded the receipt and went outside.
The August air was warm and thick with the smell of cut grass and grilled corn from the food tents.
More than two hundred people stood facing the old marquee.
Anthony was near the electrical panel beside two technicians.
I moved through the crowd until I found Louise.
“Where did he get this?”
She looked at the receipt.
Her face changed.
Not guilt.
Recognition.
“Oh,” she said.
“What does my father have to do with this place?”
Louise glanced toward Anthony.
“Anthony showed you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I suppose he finally found the courage.”
“Courage to do what?”
She tucked the receipt gently back into my hand.
“Ask questions, Emma.”
“I am asking.”
“Not me.”
Before I could stop her, she stepped toward the microphone.
“Ready?”
The crowd answered with cheers.
One of the electricians signaled.
Louise flipped a ceremonial switch.
For half a second nothing happened.
Then the old Riverside letters glowed one by one.
R.
I.
V.
E.
R.
S.
I.
D.
E.
Warm gold light spilled across the brick building.
People applauded.
An older woman beside me cried quietly and smiled while doing it.
Children clapped from the safe distance behind the rope line, delighted by something most of them had never seen illuminated before.
And despite everything, I felt tears sting my eyes.
The center looked different.
Not new.
Remembered.
Anthony stood away from the applause.
Watching the sign.
Then he saw me holding the receipt.
He did not smile.
He simply waited.
I walked toward him.
“Tell me.”
He nodded toward a quiet side garden.
We moved beneath an old maple tree where strings of paper lanterns swayed above the picnic tables.
“My father knew your father,” Anthony said.
My pulse jumped.
“How?”
“They worked together.”
“At Russo Electric?”
“For a while.”
Nobody had ever told me that.
“My father sold office supplies.”
“That was later.”
I searched his face.
“When?”
“Before you were born, mostly. And for a few years after.”
Doing what?”
“Signs. Layout work. Painting. Your father could letter almost anything by hand.”
That sounded strangely believable.
I remembered one thing.
When I was six, my father had painted my name across a wooden toy chest.
Perfect gold letters.
May you like
I still had it.
“Why have I never heard this?”
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