Chapter 1 - Two Empty Chairs
“Don’t get up,” my mother told my daughter. “You haven’t earned a chair.”
Amelia was eating dinner on the kitchen floor beside our dog.
There were two empty seats at the table.
And my mother hadn’t seen me standing in the doorway.
For a second, Gabriel Hart couldn’t move.
He had caught an earlier flight from Chicago, bought his daughter a silver music box, and driven home imagining her running into his arms.
Instead, his little girl sat with a plastic tray across her knees while Biscuit lay against her leg.
“Amelia.”
Her face lit up.
“Daddy!”
Then she looked at Marlene.
The smile vanished.
Gabriel set down his bag.
“Why are you on the floor?”
“Because she spilled yesterday,” Marlene said.
He looked through the doorway.
His father, Everett, sat at the dining table with Gabriel’s nephews, Bryce and Theo.
Four people.
Six chairs.
“You’re early,” Marlene added.
“That’s what you want to talk about?”
Amelia put down her fork.
“Grandma said the table was crowded.”
Gabriel crouched beside her.
“Sweetheart, there are two empty seats.”
“I know.”
Those two words hurt more than anything else.
She knew.
She had been sitting there looking at them.
“How long has this been happening?”
Amelia glanced at her grandmother.
“Answer me,” Marlene said sharply. “Tell him you like sitting with Biscuit.”
Gabriel stood.
“Don’t help her answer.”
Everett appeared behind his wife.
“Let’s keep this calm.”
“Did you know?”
His father looked away.
Gabriel turned back to Amelia and held out his hand.
“Come eat with me.”
“Am I allowed?”
“You don’t have to earn a place at your own table.”
He moved Marlene’s purse off a chair, seated his daughter, and put the music box beside her plate.
When Amelia spilled a little water, she flinched before the glass stopped moving.
Gabriel caught that, too.
Later, at bedtime, she asked whether he had been too busy to call.
He had called every night.
Marlene had told him Amelia was asleep.
“She said your messages were grown-up things,” Amelia whispered.
Gabriel stayed until she fell asleep.
Downstairs, his mother accused him of embarrassing her.
He barely heard it.
A blue envelope stuck out of the kitchen trash.
Westbridge Trust Company.
The trust Nora had established for Amelia before she died.
Inside was confirmation of an $18,450 payment for home-based developmental services and respite care.
Services Amelia had never received.
Attached was an authorization bearing Gabriel’s signature.
He had never signed it.
“Give me that,” Marlene said.
Everett appeared in the hallway.
One look at the letter drained his face.
Gabriel folded the pages.
“No.”
May you like
His father gripped the doorframe.
“Son,” he whispered, “there are more.”
