Chapter 80 The Paper Trail
The smell of frying bacon and toasted bagels did more to warm the apartment than the radiator ever could. The girls were ecstatic, moving around the kitchen like they’d discovered a treasure chest. To them, the "grocery fairy" was a miracle; to me, it was a heavy, silent reminder of the gap between the man I was falling for and the life I was trying to keep afloat.
"Look, Mila! The good kind of juice!" Zoe cheered, holding up a bottle of organic orange juice as if it were a trophy.
Grace, however, was quieter. She sat at the table, watching me flip pancakes with a level of scrutiny that made me feel like the younger sister. She was sharp—too sharp for nine—and the silence of the disconnected phones was clearly weighing on her.
"Mila?" she asked, her voice cutting through Zoe’s humming.
"Yeah, Gracie?"
"The tall man. Nate." She paused, her dark eyes fixed on mine, searching for something I wasn't sure I was ready to show. "Is he the one who makes you cry, or the one who makes you smile? Because since you started tutoring, you’ve been doing a lot of both."
The spatula stilled in my hand. I looked at the golden-brown pancake, then at the ivory silk dress still hanging on the back of the door—a ghostly, shimmering reminder of the Hamptons. I thought of the way Nate looked at me on the pier, like I was the only thing that mattered, and then I thought of the debt collector's boot in our door.
"I think..." I started, then realized I didn't have a simple answer. "I think he’s the one who makes me feel like I can do both and still be okay. Does that make sense?"
Grace didn't look convinced. She poked at a strawberry, her expression guarded. "Just don't forget we're still here, even when the groceries run out."
I dropped the spatula and moved to the table, kneeling beside her chair. I took her small, cold hands in mine and looked her directly in the eyes. "Grace, look at me. I don't care how many groceries show up or where I go. You and Zoe are my world. I would never, ever forget about you. Everything I do is to make sure we stay together. Do you hear me?"
She held my gaze for a long second before her shoulders finally slumped, and she gave a small, hesitant nod. "Okay, Mila."
I gave her hand a final squeeze before bundling up in my heaviest coat. I needed answers. After making sure the girls were settled with the pile of new books from Theodore, I headed out into the biting Brooklyn wind.
As I walked toward the bus stop, a terrifying thought took root in my mind and refused to leave. My parents had lied to the Joneses to get the girls back to the apartment. They had left them there with twenty dollars and no heat, all while my mother and father were planning their own disappearance.
The weight of it hit me like a physical blow. They hadn't known I was coming back from the trip yesterday. I was supposed to be gone for another two days. If Nate hadn't decided to bring us back early, what would have happened to Grace and Zoe? They would have been alone in that freezing apartment for forty-eight hours with no way to call for help. The thought of them huddling together in the dark, waiting for a mother who wasn't coming, made my stomach turn with a mix of fury and grief.
My first stop was the diner where my mother had worked. The bell above the door chimed with a lonely, tinny sound.
"I told you on the phone, Mila," the manager, Lou, said without looking up from his ledger. "She’s gone. She hasn't been in for a week. She called last Tuesday saying she had a 'family emergency' and never came back. I already cleared out her locker."
"A week?" I repeated, my heart sinking. "Lou, she told me she was working doubles. She was leaving every morning at six."
Lou finally looked up, his expression softening into something pitying. "She wasn't here, kid. I don't know what to tell you. Maybe your dad knows something more."
I headed toward the shipyard, the wind whipping off the East River with a predatory chill. The docks were a maze of towering cranes and rusted shipping containers. My father had spent twenty years here, a permanent fixture of the morning shift.
I found his foreman, Miller, near the loading terminal, checking off manifests on a clipboard.
"Miller! Wait!" I called out, my voice nearly lost in the roar of a nearby freighter.
The man turned, squinting through the snow flurries. "Mila? What are you doing down here?"
"I’m looking for my dad. He isn't answering his phone."
Miller sighed, a heavy, weary sound. He pulled a glove off with his teeth and reached into his pocket. "He didn't tell you? Mila, your father quit eight days ago. Said he was moving on to 'bigger and better things.' He took his payout in cash and cleared out his locker before the sun was even up."
I stood in the shadow of a massive crane, the world tilting on its axis. They hadn't just disappeared yesterday. They had been planning this for over a week. Every morning they had "gone to work," they had actually been preparing their exit, lying to my face while I worked myself to the bone to help them.
They had waited until I was safely in the Hamptons—safely under the protection of the Salvatores—to pull the plug. They hadn't just left to "clear the air." They had treated me like an asset they’d successfully handed off to a higher bidder, assuming Nate would simply pick up the bill they left behind.
I walked back toward the street, the cold seeping into my very marrow. My parents saw Nate not as a person, but as a permanent solution to their failures.
I leaned against a frozen brick wall, pulling my phone out. I wanted to call him. I wanted to hear his voice. But as I looked at the name Nate in my contacts, Grace’s question echoed in my head.
Is he the one who makes you smile, or the one who makes you cry?
Right now, standing on the edge of the docks where my father had abandoned his life, the answer felt terrifyingly like both.