Taller, maybe.
Or perhaps she had simply been smaller then.
She pressed the buzzer.
A camera turned toward her.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then a man’s voice came through the speaker.
“State your business.”
Brinley swallowed.
“Tell Jude Mercer that Brinley Wells came back for her bear.”
Silence.
Then the gate opened.
Reggie Shaw met her at the front steps with a black umbrella.
He was older now, but she recognized him immediately. Some people are built into memory not because they were kind, but because they were present at the exact moment your life changed.
“Miss Wells,” he said.
“Reggie.”
His eyes flickered.
“You remember.”
“Bits and pieces.”
“That is usually enough to hurt.”
She almost smiled.
“Is Jude here?”
Reggie hesitated just long enough for fear to rise in her throat.
“He is in the study.”
The walk through the house felt like moving through a dream that had been waiting for her to return. The hallway. The marble. The storm-ship painting. The faint smell of leather and smoke.
At the study door, Reggie paused.
“He is not the man he was.”
Brinley looked at him.
“Are any of us?”
Reggie opened the door.
Jude Mercer stood by the window.
The sight of him stole the breath from her lungs.
He was older, thinner, and paler, his black suit still immaculate but his body somehow less certain inside it. The scar on his cheek had faded to silver. His hair had gone white at the temples. But his eyes were the same.
Guarded.
Heavy.
Lonely.
On the desk behind him sat Buttons.
Brinley covered her mouth.
All the years collapsed.
She was three again, reaching for a bear she thought she had lost forever.
“You kept him,” she said.
Jude’s expression barely moved.
“He was entrusted to me.”
The formality of it nearly shattered her.
She walked to the desk and touched the bear with two fingers. His fur was worn but clean. His missing eye had never been replaced. Someone had carefully stitched the tear in his ear with brown thread.
“You fixed him.”
“Reggie did. My hands were not suited to delicate work.”
From the doorway, Reggie looked away.
Brinley lifted Buttons slowly, holding him the way she had as a child.
“My mother died,” she said.
Jude closed his eyes for half a second.
“I know.”
“You knew?”
“I kept track from a distance. Not enough to endanger you. Enough to know you were alive.”
Anger rose unexpectedly.
“You watched us struggle?”
Jude accepted the blow without flinching.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you help?”
“I did, when I could without leading men to your door. Anonymous deposits. Rent paid before eviction. A hospital bill that disappeared when you were twelve. A scholarship fund you thought came from a charity.”
Brinley stared at him.
Pieces of her life rearranged themselves.
The apartment they had almost lost.
The surgery Audrey could not afford.
The school that had somehow found money for Brinley after she won an essay contest she never remembered entering.
“That was you?”
“It was the least I owed.”
“Owed? For what?”
Jude looked at Buttons.
“For letting you leave without saying goodbye.”
The answer was absurd and devastating.
Brinley pressed the bear against her chest.
“I was three.”
“You were kind. There is
