Chapter 3 - The Feast for Two
The lawn belonged to them now.
The caterers, four young men in crisp black waistcoats who had spent the last two hours leaning awkwardly against the boxwood hedges, snapped into motion the moment Grant caught the head waiter's eye. There was no need for words; the unspoken command rippled through the staff with electric urgency.
"Bring the sliders," Grant instructed quietly as he passed the staging station. "Bring the truffle fries, the fruit skewers, the sparkling cider. All of it. Fill the center table."
"Sir, for two children?" the banquet captain asked, glancing at the vast array of warming trays.
"Did I stutter, Marcus?"
"Right away, Mr. Hawthorne."
Within three minutes, the long banquet table—designed to seat twenty-eight squirming heirs to timber fortunes and software empires—was transformed into an absurd, glorious mountain of food. Platters of wagyu beef sliders with tiny golden flags, pyramids of strawberries dipped in white chocolate to look like little moons, bowls of spun-sugar clouds, and flutes of apple cider that fizzed like champagne lined the white linen.
Sky sat in one of the oversized mahogany chairs, her feet dangling a foot above the grass. She stared at the spread with wide, disbelieving eyes.
"Is this... all for us?" she whispered, looking at Nova across the table.
"It was supposed to be for a bunch of people who talk about their riding lessons," Nova said dismissively, waving a hand toward the empty lawn. She picked up a slider with both hands, taking a deliberate, messy bite. "This is way better. My dad gets nervous when there are too many adults around. He makes this face like he's trying to calculate the cube root of a telephone pole."
Sky let out a sharp snort of laughter, quickly clapping a hand over her mouth. "That's rude!"
"It's true!" Nova giggled. "Look at him over there."
Grant was standing near the terrace, attempting to look casual while watching them like a hawk, his hands tucked deep into his pockets. Catching his daughter’s eye, he deliberately crossed his eyes and flared his nostrils, causing Nova to double over against her armrest, her wheelchair rocking slightly.
Sky picked up a slider. She didn't bite into it immediately. She held it, feeling the warmth radiating through the brioche bun, her fingers trembling slightly. When she finally took a bite, her eyes closed. She chewed with a slow, reverent focus that made Grant’s chest tighten from across the yard.
That was not the appetite of a child who had skipped lunch because she was busy playing. That was the unmistakable, bone-deep hunger of a child who measured meals by whether the bread had green spots that needed cutting away.
Juny Park stepped up beside Grant, holding two napkins and a pitcher of lemonade. "She's wearing her mother's socks, Mr. Hawthorne."
Grant glanced down. "What?"
"Her socks," Juny murmured, her voice tight with an emotion she was trying hard to suppress. "They're women's wool running socks. Pushed down into the shoes and folded over twice at the toes so they don't bunch up. I noticed when she sat down."
Grant looked away, his jaw working. "Where does she live?"
"She told Nova she lives in the brick apartments behind the old brewery in Fremont. The ones near the canal."
"The old mill district," Grant muttered. "Those buildings were condemned for redevelopment two years ago. The city hasn't cleared them because the tenant rights coalition filed an injunction."
"She’s polite," Juny said softly. "Look at her. She wiped her hands on the napkin before she reached for the glass. She hasn't touched the chocolate yet because she thinks it’s rude to eat dessert before the meat is finished. Whoever raised that girl did it with everything they had."
Across the table, the magician—a man named Christopher who had spent twenty years perfecting sleight-of-hand for ungrateful corporate executives—was giving the performance of his life. He was no longer doing the rote, bored card flourishes he had planned. He was down on one knee on the grass, producing polished silver dollars from Sky’s worn collar, making bouquets of lavender bloom from the spokes of Nova’s wheels, and teaching both girls how to palming a sponge ball.
"Now, Miss Sky," Christopher said with grand theatricality, holding up an empty velvet bag. "Reach inside. Don't look. Tell me what you find."
Sky plunged her arm into the velvet. Her fingers searched the bottom, and her face went completely still. "It's... it's soft."
"Pull it out! Slowly, with the magic word!" Nova shouted, clapping her hands against her thighs.
"What's the magic word?" Sky asked, breathless.
"Supernova!"
Sky yanked her hand out. Perched on her palm was the white dove, blinking calmly in the afternoon glare, its feathers gleaming like mother-of-pearl.
Sky let out a sound that wasn't quite a gasp and wasn't quite a sob—a pure, unfiltered burst of childhood wonder that seemed to ring against the limestone walls of the estate. The dove cooed, ruffled its wings, and stepped delicately onto the cuff of her oversized denim jacket.
"He likes you," Nova whispered, leaning forward, her eyes shining with tears of pure delight. "He wouldn't even look at me earlier. He likes you because you smell like outside."
"I smell like laundry soap," Sky said, her face inches from the bird's white crest. "We had to wash everything in the tub yesterday because the coin machine in the basement broke."
The unvarnished, matter-of-fact reality of her poverty hung in the air, but neither child treated it like a tragedy. It was simply the weather of Sky’s life, just as the chrome wheels were the weather of Nova’s.
Grant began walking slowly toward the table, intending to offer them cake, when his foot caught the corner of Sky’s discarded grocery bag resting against the base of her chair.
The brown paper tipped over.
A handful of items spilled out onto the manicured turf: a half-used pad of graph paper covered in intricate hand-drawn ellipses; three nubby colored pencils held together with a hair tie; and a small, worn leather wallet with a broken zipper.
Grant crouched down immediately to gather them. "Pardon me, Sky, I didn't mean to—"
His fingers brushed the leather wallet. As he picked it up, the flap fell open, exposing a plastic sleeve containing an old institutional ID card.
Grant froze.
The photograph on the card was faded, the lamination peeling at the corners, but the face was instantly recognizable. High cheekbones, dark hair pulled back into a severe laboratory clip, and eyes that held the stubborn, fierce intelligence of a pure researcher.
*VANCE, CLARA M.*
*SENIOR BIOCHEMICAL FELLOW*
*DEPARTMENT OF CELLULAR ONCOLOGY*
*HAWTHORNE-STERLING JOINT RESEARCH INITIATIVE (2018)*
Grant’s heart slammed against his ribs with the force of a hydraulic piston. The world around him—the music, the sound of Nova’s laughter, the rustle of the Douglas firs along the fence line—retreated into a dull, underwater roar.
*Clara Vance.*
Seven years ago. Before the split. Before Victor Sterling had forced the hostile division of their joint research venture, taking the patents for synthetic protein synthesis and leaving Grant with a hollowed-out corporate shell and a mountain of laboratory debt.
Clara had been Marin’s closest confidante. When Marin’s degenerative neuro-muscular symptoms had first begun to manifest—the subtle loss of coordination, the phantom pains that preceded Nova’s diagnosis—Clara was the only scientist who didn't look at Marin like a walking clinical failure. She had worked seventy-hour weeks in the sub-basement labs, pursuing an aggressive molecular therapy targeting the specific genetic marker Marin and Nova shared.
And then, one morning in the autumn of 2018, Clara had simply vanished from the company directory.
Victor Sterling had presented the board with an internal audit alleging Clara had stolen proprietary cell lines and sold them to an offshore venture. He had shown emails, timecard logs, bank transfers. Grant, drowning in the first paralyzing months of Marin’s terminal decline, had signed the termination papers without looking twice. He had been too weak, too exhausted, too broken to question Victor’s evidence.
Clara Vance had been blacklisted from every major pharmaceutical lab in North America. Her research credentials had been revoked, her pension stripped, her reputation pulverized beneath the weight of Sterling’s legal division.
Grant stared at the small, frayed ID card in his palm.
"Mister Hawthorne?"
Sky had stopped looking at the dove. She was watching him from her chair, her gray eyes suddenly guarded again, noticing the white-knuckle grip he had on the worn leather wallet.
"Is that your mother, Sky?" Grant asked. His voice was barely a whisper. He held up the card, his hand shaking with a tremor he couldn't control. "Is Clara Vance your mother?"
Sky slid down from the chair. She didn't look happy anymore. The defensive wall that had dropped thirty minutes ago snapped back up with terrifying speed. She snatched the wallet from his hand and shoved it deep into the pocket of her oversized jacket.
"She didn't steal anything," Sky said fiercely, her chin trembling as she backed toward the path. "She never stole anything in her whole life! She told me you guys were the ones who lied. She told me the rich men in the suits took her notebooks and locked the door!"
Nova’s smile vanished. "Sky? What's wrong?"
"I have to go," Sky said, her breath hitching in her throat. She looked at the banquet table, at the half-eaten sliders and the magnificent chocolate planet, as if they had suddenly turned to poison. "I shouldn't have come. I just... I wanted you to have the starlight thing because you were nice to me at the museum. That's all. I didn't want anything from him."
May you like
She spun on the worn rubber soles of her shoes and began to run toward the gate.
***
