Chapter 2 - The Little Girl Who Wasn't Afraid
Ruth discovered the first strange thing about August Howerin the following morning.
He knew her daughter's name.
She had not told him.
Walter had, perhaps. That was the reasonable explanation. Ruth repeated it to herself as she stood inside the enormous kitchen, wrapping two slices of toast in a napkin while the cook pretended not to watch.
Poppy had an appointment at Johns Hopkins that morning. Another blood test. Another consultation. Another white room where doctors spoke carefully around numbers that frightened Ruth more than any man with a gun ever could.
She had been employed at Howerin House for less than twelve hours and was already terrified of asking for time off.
"You can go."
August's voice came from the doorway.
Ruth spun.
He stood there with his cane planted beside one polished shoe, dressed in charcoal trousers and a white shirt buttoned high enough to hide the worst of his scars. Daylight made him look different. Not gentler. More human.
And somehow that was harder.
"I'm sorry?"
"Your daughter has an appointment at nine."
Ruth stared at him.
August's expression did not change.
"Walter told me."
There it was.
Reasonable.
Still, something in his tone made her uneasy.
"I can make up the hours."
"You won't."
"I don't want special treatment."
"Then don't mistake basic decency for special treatment."
His words were sharp enough to make the cook lower his eyes.
Ruth stiffened.
August immediately looked away.
For one strange second, she had the feeling he regretted the harshness more than she resented it.
Then he crossed the kitchen, each step announced by that familiar rhythm.
Knock.
Drag.
Knock.
Drag.
He stopped beside the table and placed an envelope near Ruth's hand.
"For transportation."
"I can take the bus."
"Take the car."
"I don't need—"
"Mrs. Brangan."
His gaze lifted to hers.
It was the first time she had looked directly into his eyes.
They were gray.
Not cold gray.
Storm gray.
And behind them lived the exhausted patience of a man who had spent years expecting every conversation to become a rejection.
"You have a sick child," he said. "Pride is an expensive luxury."
Ruth's cheeks burned.
"My pride is about the only thing I have left."
Something moved across his face.
Recognition.
"Then keep it," August said quietly. "And take the car anyway."
He left.
Two hours later, Ruth sat beside Poppy in a hospital waiting room with her daughter's small hand folded inside hers.
Poppy Brangan had inherited absolutely nothing from her mother except stubbornness.
Her hair was almost white-blond, cut unevenly because Ruth trimmed it herself. Her eyes were hazel and enormous. She wore a red cardigan three sizes too big and yellow socks with tiny ducks on them.
She had been born with a rare immune disorder that had become progressively worse during the last eighteen months.
At six, Poppy knew the names of medications most adults couldn't pronounce.
She also knew when Ruth was lying.
"Are we poor again?" Poppy asked.
Ruth looked at her.
"We were never un-poor."
"The car was fancy."
"It's my boss's."
"Is he rich?"
"Very."
"Is he mean?"
Ruth thought about the gray eyes.
"I don't know yet."
Poppy considered this.
"Does he yell?"
"Not really."
"Then he's probably not mean."
Children had simple measurements for monsters.
Adults complicated them.
The appointment lasted nearly three hours.
The doctor was kind.
That made the news worse.
Poppy's numbers were declining.
The treatment they had hoped would stabilize her condition wasn't working well enough.
There was another option.
Experimental.
Expensive.
And there was no guarantee insurance would cover it.
Ruth listened until she could no longer feel her fingers.
"How much?"
The doctor hesitated.
That hesitation told her everything before the number did.
When they finally left, Ruth smiled for Poppy all the way down the elevator.
She smiled through the lobby.
She smiled while helping her daughter into the black sedan August had sent.
Then the door closed.
Ruth turned toward the window.
And silently cried.
Poppy watched her reflection.
"Mommy?"
Ruth wiped her face quickly.
"I'm okay."
"No, you're not."
"I'm just tired."
Poppy reached into the pocket of her cardigan.
She pulled out two peppermint candies.
"One for you."
Ruth laughed through tears.
"Where did you get those?"
"The nurse."
Poppy placed one in her mother's hand.
"When people are sad, you give them something sweet."
The driver looked straight ahead.
But Ruth saw him wipe his eye.
When they returned to Howerin House, August was nowhere to be seen.
Ruth was relieved.
She brought Poppy inside because the babysitter who usually kept her after hospital appointments had canceled.
Walter met them in the hall.
His entire face changed when he saw the child.
Not surprise.
Pain.
Old pain.
Then it disappeared.
"This must be Miss Poppy."
Poppy studied him.
"Are you the butler?"
Walter looked offended.
"I manage the household."
"That's a butler."
Ruth covered her mouth.
Walter's eyes sparkled.
"I think I like you."
Poppy nodded gravely.
"I usually have that effect."
For the first time since Ruth had arrived, laughter filled the foyer.
It traveled farther than anyone expected.
Up the staircase.
Through the long gallery.
Past portraits of dead Howerins.
And into the study where August sat with three men discussing a shipment that had disappeared somewhere between Baltimore and Newark.
He stopped speaking.
The men stopped with him.
A child's laugh echoed faintly below.
August's fingers tightened around his pen.
One of the men, Vincent Marr, noticed.
Vincent noticed everything.
He was August's oldest lieutenant, nearly fifty, elegant, silver at the temples, and dangerous in the polished way of men who never needed to raise their voices.
"I thought children weren't allowed here," Vincent said.
August looked at him.
"I don't remember asking what you thought."
Vincent smiled.
August dismissed the meeting twenty minutes early.
He told himself it had nothing to do with the laughter downstairs.
He told himself that twice.
Then he went looking for it.
He found Poppy in the library.
She was standing on a chair.
August stopped in the doorway.
Poppy had apparently decided the lowest shelves were beneath her ambitions. She had climbed onto a leather chair and was reaching toward an illustrated book high above her head.
Her fingers brushed the spine.
The chair shifted.
August moved before thinking.
His cane struck the floor and fell away.
He caught her.
Pain exploded through his ruined leg.
He nearly went down with her.
But he didn't.
Poppy landed against his chest.
Both of them froze.
August had not held a child in ten years.
Not since—
He pushed the memory away.
Poppy stared up at him.
Her eyes dropped to the scar creeping from his collar toward his jaw.
August knew what came next.
The recoil.
The small frightened breath.
The turning away.
Instead, Poppy reached up.
Her fingertips touched the scar beside his ear.
August stopped breathing.
"Does it hurt?"
His throat tightened.
"Not anymore."
"Did fire do it?"
He could have lied.
"Yes."
"My arm has scars."
She pulled up her sleeve.
Three tiny marks from repeated IV lines crossed her skin.
"Needles."
August looked at them.
Poppy looked at him.
"We match a little."
Something inside August cracked.
Not dramatically.
Not loudly.
It cracked the way ice does deep beneath a frozen lake.
Quiet enough that no one standing nearby would ever hear it.
But enough to change the shape of everything above it.
Ruth appeared in the doorway.
"Poppy!"
Her face went pale.
She rushed forward.
"I told you not to climb furniture."
"I wanted the dragon book."
August realized he was still holding her.
He carefully set her down.
Ruth looked horrified.
"I'm so sorry, Mr. Howerin."
"It's fine."
"She shouldn't have touched you."
August's eyes lifted sharply.
Poppy looked confused.
Ruth immediately regretted the wording.
"I mean—your scar. I didn't mean—"
"It's fine," August repeated.
But his voice had changed.
He reached for his cane.
Poppy picked it up first.
She held it toward him with both hands.
August stared at her.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
He took it.
Their fingers touched.
Walter, standing unseen at the far end of the hall, closed his eyes.
Because Ruth did not know.
Poppy did not know.
But Walter remembered another child standing in that same library ten years earlier.
Another small hand wrapped around August's burned fingers.
A child who had disappeared the night Warehouse Seven burned.
And when Walter looked again, he saw Vincent Marr standing on the upper landing.
Watching Poppy.
Watching August.
Smiling.
That evening, after Ruth and Poppy had gone home, August opened the locked drawer of his desk.
Inside lay no money.
No weapon.
No photograph of a woman.
Only a small blue wooden horse.
One wheel missing.
Its paint blackened by smoke.
August picked it up.
His damaged hand trembled.
Then Walter entered without knocking.
"You saw the girl."
August kept his eyes on the toy.
"Yes."
"She touched you."
August said nothing.
Walter stepped closer.
"August."
"Don't."
"You cannot keep doing this."
August's jaw hardened.
"Doing what?"
"Punishing yourself for surviving."
The wooden horse creaked in August's grip.
Walter lowered his voice.
"Daniel would have been sixteen this year."
August closed his eyes.
May you like
And somewhere outside the study, a floorboard gave a soft, deliberate groan.
Someone had been listening.
