Chapter 8 Anna
The quiet of the penthouse felt different when we returned.
Wrong, somehow. Like stepping from sunlight into a tomb.
I could still smell the citrus cleaner and old paper from Bright Pages, still hear children's laughter echoing in my ears. Still feel the weight of Daisy, trusting and warm, in my lap as I'd read from Elena's chair.
Here, the silence pressed down like a physical weight.
Elena Spencer hadn't just started a charity.
She'd built a world. A deliberate, compassionate, colorful world where every nook was designed to make a child feel seen and every book was a promise.
Seeing it, walking through it, was like reading the most intimate biography of a person I'd never meet.
It humbled me to dust. It shamed me to my core.
Jack had barely spoken on the drive back.
He'd stared out the window, his eyes pondering while looking out the window.
His hands were awkwardly placed on his knees.
Once, I'd seen him start to say something, his mouth opening, then nothing.
Just that carved mask of some unnameable emotion I didn't dare try to read.
As soon as we'd entered the penthouse, he'd muttered something about missed meetings and retreated to his office, the door clicking shut with a finality that felt like a dismissal.
Daisy, however, was different. She'd slept peacefully in the car, clutching that photo of her mother, but now, she was buzzing with so much energy.
She didn't go to her room as usual. She took my hand and led me decisively to the vast kitchen, walking with purpose I'd never seen in her before. She pointed to a stool at the island. "Sit."
I obeyed, my legs grateful for the rest. She disappeared for a moment and returned with a folder, the kind used for school projects. She placed it on the counter between us with a solemnity that made my breath catch.
"I made pictures," she announced, her voice soft but clear. She opened the folder.
They were drawings, done with crayon and marker.
The first few were scenes I recognized from the foundation: the yellow building, stacks of books, stick-figure children holding hands.
Then there was one of a woman with a flowing scribble of yellow hair, sitting in a chair, a book open on her lap, surrounded by smaller stick figures.
Daisy pointed a careful finger at the woman.
"That's Mommy," she whispered. "Reading."
My throat tightened. "It's beautiful, Daisy. You captured her perfectly."
She nodded, accepting the praise as a simple fact. Then she turned to the next page.
I stopped breathing.
This drawing was newer, the lines bolder, the colors brighter. It showed a similar scene; a woman in a chair, a book, a circle of children. But this woman had a scribble of dark brown hair.
My hair.
Daisy pointed. "That's you," she said, her finger tapping the dark-haired figure. Then she moved it to the small figure in her lap. "And that's me."
My hand went to my chest, pressing against the sudden ache there. The honor of it. The terrifying, beautiful honor of being placed into Elena's story, by Elena's daughter, made my eyes burn.
"Oh, Daisy," I breathed, my vision blurring. "Thank you for showing me."
She studied my face for a second, then, satisfied, turned the page. She was thinking, her little brow furrowed.
"Miss Margaret told me stories," I said softly, filling the silence. "About your mommy. How she would stay after everyone left to help a kid who was struggling with reading. How she used to buy books with her own money if she saw one she thought a certain child would love."
Daisy listened, her gaze fixed on my face, absorbing every word like a plant soaking up the sun. When I finished, she was quiet for a long moment. Then she stated, with the simple, bedrock conviction of a child, "You read like Mommy. You can help."
The statement was so enormous, so terrifyingly sure, I had no idea how to respond. Before I could form a sentence, she turned to the last page.
I saw it before she explained it. Three stick figures standing together, holding hands. The foundation building behind them, bright yellow and alive.
They were labeled in wobbly block letters: DADDY. ME. ANNA.
My heart stopped.
Daisy put her small finger on the 'DADDY' figure. "He's sad." She said it like a diagnosis. “You help me feel better. You can help daddy feel better..." She pointed again at the drawing of the three of us, hand in hand. "And keep mommy’s place open."
It was an impossible command delivered with a five-year-old's certainty that adults just needed to try harder.
"Daisy, sweetie, I don't think—"
"Please?" She looked up at me with those gray eyes, Elena's eyes, Jack's eyes. "Please ask daddy to keep mommy’s place open?"
It was the same 'please' that had unlocked her bedroom door. It was a weapon I had no defense against.
I looked from her earnest, hopeful face to the drawing of our joined stick-figure hands. I thought of the children asking if I'd be back. I thought of Margaret's kind, weary eyes.
"Okay," I heard myself say, the word tasting like fate. "I'll talk to him."
Daisy nodded, a swift, decisive movement. Mission understood. She carefully gathered her drawings back into the folder, hugged it to her chest, and skipped out of the kitchen, leaving me alone with the aftershocks of her request.
For a long minute, I just sat there, my hands trembling on the cold marble counter.
I couldn't do this. What was I thinking? Jack Spencer had spent nine months plotting my destruction. He'd only stopped because Daisy needed me. Asking him for this, to let me help with Elena's foundation, was insane.
But I'd promised Daisy.
Before my courage could evaporate completely, I stood. The walk down the long hallway to Jack's office felt like walking to my own execution. Each step echoed too loudly. My hand shook as I raised it to knock.
The sound was absurdly loud in the quiet.
"Come in."
His voice was neutral. I pushed the door open. He was at his desk, not looking at his computer, but at his phone.
"Margaret texted." He said it without looking up, his tone careful. "She said you were a natural with the children. That they asked for you by name."
A pause. I couldn't read it.
"They want to know if you're coming back next Saturday."
I swallowed, my mouth dry. "The foundation... It's a special place. It shouldn't close."
He finally looked up, his gray eyes hooded.
"No," he agreed, his tone was heavy. "It shouldn't.
But keeping it open feels like a performance.
And shutting it down feels like killing her all over again.
" He set the phone down with a precise click.
"I don't know how to run a children's literacy charity.
My skill set is in algorithms and hostile takeovers. "
This was my opening. The one Daisy had mandated. My heart was a frantic drum against my ribs.
"Daisy showed me her drawings." I stopped. Started again. "She... she made one. Of the three of us. At the foundation." My voice was unsteady, barely above a whisper. "She wants to help. She wants me to help. With Bright Pages."
I forced the next words out before I could choke on them. "And I... I want to—"
His expression didn't change, but the air in the room grew colder, denser. "Help."
"With the foundation. Not running it, I could never—Margaret runs it.
But... helping. The reading sessions. The outreach.
Whatever they need." The words were tumbling out now, a chaotic stream.
"I was a teacher's aide for a while, before.
.. a long time ago. I'm not qualified, I know that.
But today, reading to them... it felt... "
"It felt like what?"
He stood. Walked around the desk. Each step, deliberate. Each breath, controlled. He stopped three feet away, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. Close enough to be intimidating.
"It felt like what, Anna?"
"It felt right," I whispered, the admission terrifying in its vulnerability.
He leaned back against his desk, arms crossed. The gesture was so controlled that it was violent. "Let me understand this. You think you have the right to step into Elena's role? To sit in her chair?"
The accusation was a lash. "No!" The word burst out of me, too loud.
"No, Jack. That's not what this is. I don't want to replace her.
No one could. Ever. I just..." I scrambled for the right framing.
"I want to help the work continue. For the kids who need it.
Margaret and the staff are still there. They're the heart.
I could just be... an extra pair of hands. A voice for the storytimes."
He studied me, his gaze like an X-ray. "Why?" he asked, the single syllable loaded. "Why would you want to? Why would you subject yourself to being surrounded by her ghost every day?"
The truth was a raw, bleeding thing. I had no polished answer.
"Because I can't bring her back." The words scraped my throat. "I can't undo my silence. I can't fix the mistake I’ve made, staying in that car."
His face steadied, and his brow slightly furrowed. I saw his hands clench at his sides.
"I can't give Daisy her mother or give you your wife." My voice broke, but I pushed on. "But that place, what she built, it's still here. It's still doing good for others."
I took a shaky breath.
"Maybe helping it survive, helping a little piece of what she loved keep going... maybe that's the only way I can ever try to make any of it right. Even a fraction. Even if it's just by reading a book to a child who needs to hear a story."
The silence that followed was unsettling.
He turned away from me and walked to the window. Stood there with his back to me, hands in his pockets, staring out at the city lights. A minute passed. Then another. I could hear my own heartbeat, my own shallow breathing.
Was he going to answer? Was he waiting for me to leave?
I stood there, feeling exposed and hollow, every nerve ending raw. Waiting for the verdict. Waiting for the cold, logical demolition of my ridiculously painful hope.
Finally, after what felt like hours but was probably only minutes, he spoke. His voice was low, devoid of any readable emotion.
"I'll think about it."
That was all. Not a yes. No furious denial. No acknowledgment of my confession. No indication of which way he was leaning.
It was a stay of execution. A tiny crack in the wall. Or maybe just a polite way of saying no.
"Okay." I could barely get any words out. "Thank you."
He still didn't turn around. The conversation was clearly over.
I turned and left, pulling the door shut softly behind me.
Once in the hallway, with the door closed between us, the adrenaline deserted me.
My knees buckled. I leaned back against the cool wall and slid down until I was sitting on the floor, hidden from view if anyone walked by. My hands were shaking so badly that I had to press them against the hardwood to keep them still.
What had I just done?
I'd asked the man who'd engineered my entire life for the last nine months, who blamed me for his wife's death, I'd asked him to let me help run his late wife's foundation.
I wrapped my arms around my knees and let the tremors take over.
I had just laid my broken, guilty heart on his desk and asked him to trust me with the most sacred relic of his grief.
It was either the bravest thing I had ever done or the most spectacularly self-destructive. The line between the two had never felt thinner or more terrifyingly easy to cross.
From behind Jack's closed door, I heard a sound. Low. Muffled.
It took me a moment to recognize it.
Jack Spencer was crying.
I sat frozen on the hallway floor, listening to a man break apart in the silence I'd helped create, and wondered if asking to help save Elena's legacy had been kindness or the cruelest thing I could have done.