5. Aria
A week later, I was elbow-deep in vendor contracts when Priya appeared in my doorway.
"There's a child here to see you."
I looked up from my laptop. The foundation's Brooklyn headquarters hummed around us, phones ringing in the outer office, the copy machine churning through flyers for the upcoming health fair, Nalani's voice drifting from the conference room where she was running a volunteer orientation.
"A child?"
"Well. A twelve-year-old." Priya leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over her vintage band tee. She was my operations manager, my reality check, and the only person on staff who could match my sarcasm for sarcasm.
Her dark hair was piled in a messy bun, held in place by what appeared to be two pencils and sheer willpower. "With a driver who looks like he could bench press a city bus. She says her name is Evie."
I set down my pen. Wait… what? I’d completely forgotten about that.
How did she even find this place? Right.
I’d handed her my business card over in Warren's office, bypassing Sebastian's outstretched hand.
I'd done it partly out of spite, partly out of genuine interest in the girl.
But I hadn't actually expected her to use it.
Rich kids didn't usually follow through on things like this.
They expressed interest, got distracted by the next shiny object, and moved on.
Summer programs in the Hamptons, tennis lessons, European vacations with nannies in tow.
It wasn't cruelty, just the natural consequence of having too many options and too little stake in any of them.
But here Evie was. A week later. Actually showing up here.
"Send her in."
Priya raised an eyebrow but didn't comment. She disappeared back into the hallway, and I heard her voice, softer than usual: "Right this way, sweetie. She's expecting you."
I stood, smoothing the front of my linen blouse.
The office wasn't much to look at: small desks, a mix of white and brown chairs, and walls covered with photos from our various programs. A far cry from the gleaming corporate spaces I could have afforded.
But every dollar that didn't go into decor went into the work instead. That was the point.
Evie appeared in the doorway.
She looked smaller than I remembered. A week had passed, and the bandage was gone from her forehead, leaving only a faint pink line near her hairline that would fade to nothing within a month.
She wore a navy blue dress with a Peter Pan collar, paired with ballet flats.
Her dark hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, every strand in place.
For a brief second, I wondered who Sebastian was paying to help his daughter get ready in the mornings. I knew for a fact that he wasn’t doing it himself. Did he even know she was here? He’d been pretty adamant about wanting her to do anything but volunteer work.
Speaking of, I hadn’t heard a peep from him since that day in Warren’s office. I’d forgotten all about the whole incident from the moment I walked out of that school. That was how irrelevant Sebastian Dubois was to me.
So, he’d thrown empty threats around. I wanted to laugh. It wasn’t surprising. He made a lot of noise, and that usually indicated an inability to act.
Her eyes moved around my office, cataloging. The cluttered desk. The overflowing bookshelves. The corkboard covered with photos of smiling women and children from our programs. The window that looked out onto a busy Brooklyn street rather than a manicured garden.
"Hello, Evie. I’m surprised to see you here," I said.
Evie's gaze snapped to mine. "You said I could come." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "Is that still okay?"
"Of course it's okay." I gestured to the chair across from my desk, one upholstered in bright yellow fabric that clashed magnificently with everything else in the room. It was my favorite. "Come sit. Tell me what made you decide to come."
She crossed the room carefully, like she was navigating a minefield. Perched on the edge of the yellow chair, her hands clasped tight in her lap. Her knuckles were white.
I sat back down, giving her space. The sounds of the office filtered in around us. I heard Nalani wrapping up her orientation speech, someone laughing in the break room, the distant wail of a siren passing on the street below.
"I looked up your foundation online," Evie said. "After… after that day."
Interesting. "And what did you find?"
"I saw stuff about the health clinics, the scholarships, and the education programs." She was reciting from memory, I realized.
She'd done her research. "The thing you did last year, with the mobile mammogram unit?
That was in the news. You helped find cancer in like, a hundred women who wouldn't have gotten checked otherwise. "
"Eighty-seven," I said. "But who's counting?"
The faintest smile flickered across her face. Gone before it fully formed.
"My mom used to do charity stuff." The words came out slower now.
“Before she stopped coming to see me. She'd take me to these events and write checks and take pictures, and then we’d come home, and she’d complain about how boring it was.
It was kind of boring, but I always wanted to know where the money went. "
I kept my face neutral. Said nothing.
"But your foundation is different." Evie looked up. "You’re right there with the people you help. It’s not boring at all."
I smiled. She might not have employed the right words, but I knew exactly what she meant, and that was why I did what I did.
I didn’t just want to throw checks at nameless causes and call that my charitable action of the month.
I wanted to be involved, to actually see the faces of the people I’d chosen to help.
My parents didn’t understand my passion or where the urge came from. Sure, they made their fair share of donations, but I preferred to be an active part of the solution. And I didn’t think I was better than them for it.
"You have a point," I said. "At least we try to make sure we’re always present. But I want to be clear about something, Evie."
She straightened in the chair. Attentive. Ready to be tested.
"This isn't a photo opportunity. It's not a line on a college application.
It's not something you can do for a week and then forget about when something more interesting comes along.
" I knew that wasn’t her angle, but it was something I always said to volunteers.
I leaned forward, holding her gaze. "If you come here, you work.
You learn. You show up even when it's hard or boring or uncomfortable. Can you do that?"
Evie nodded. "I can do that."
"It won't always be glamorous. Some days you'll be stuffing envelopes. Some days you'll be hauling boxes. Some days you'll sit in on meetings that go three hours long and feel like they accomplish nothing."
"That's okay."
"You'll meet people who've had lives very different from yours. People who might not like you at first, just because of where you come from. You'll have to earn their respect. It won't be handed to you."
"I know. I want to earn it."
I studied her for a long moment. The set of her jaw. The determined light in her eyes. The way her hands had unclenched in her lap, fingers relaxed now, like she'd found her footing.
She meant it. Kids were terrible liars, especially kids like Evie, who hadn't yet learned to pretend to be sincere. This was real.
"And your father? Does he know you're here?"
"He knows. He's not happy about it." She glanced toward the window, then back at me. "But he said I could come."
That must have been an interesting conversation, I thought. I could already picture Sebastian’s face, growing red as Evie insisted on coming here. It shouldn’t have filled me with so much joy, but it did. I relished the fact that he hadn’t succeeded in keeping her away from this.
"He's not that bad, you know. My dad. He just doesn't know how to..." She trailed off. "He's really good at business stuff. But people stuff is harder for him."
Sebastian Dubois is that bad, probably a lot worse if you dug deep enough. But I wasn’t about to tell this child what an absolute animal her father was. "I've noticed."
"He's trying, though. Since my mom left, he's been trying really hard. He just doesn't always know how."
Right. It mustn’t have been easy for him, being a single parent that is.
But I didn’t feel bad for him. Any unsuspecting woman would feel empathetic toward him.
The only person who deserved empathy here was Evie, and maybe Caroline.
I didn’t like the way she’d left Evie, but I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Because what if Sebastian had forced her hand? He was powerful enough to do that. Only God knew what horrors that woman had endured at his hands to have her fleeing from New York a few months after the divorce.
She’d come back a few times. The media had had a field day with that, speculations about whether the IT couple would reunite. But one photograph capturing Caroline with an Arabian billionaire, and that conversation died quickly.
"How about this," I said finally. "You come here three days a week to start. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. We'll see how it goes. If you like it, if you're good at it, we can talk about adding more days."
Evie grinned. "Really?"
"Really. But this is your thing, Evie. Not your father's.
" I made sure she was listening. "He doesn't get to manage this or control it or turn it into another item on your schedule.
He doesn't get reports on your performance or progress updates or any of the things I'm sure he's already asked for. This is for you. Understood?"
She nodded vigorously. "Understood."
I stood and offered my hand across the desk. "Welcome to the Kealoha Foundation."
Evie scrambled to her feet and shook my hand with exaggerated formality, pumping it up and down like she was closing a business deal. Her palm was small and slightly sweaty against mine. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.
"Now," I said, releasing her hand. "Let's put you to work. Priya?"
Priya materialized in the doorway so quickly she'd clearly been hovering just out of sight. "Boss?"
"This is Evie. She's going to be volunteering with us this summer. Can you give her the tour, introduce her around, maybe set her up with something useful to do?"
Priya looked at Evie with an assessing gaze that probably would have made grown men nervous. Evie stood a little straighter under the scrutiny.
"Are you any good with computers?" Priya asked.
"I… yes? I think so?"
"Great. Our database is a mess and I've been looking for someone detail-oriented to help clean it up. Are you detail-oriented?"
"I organized my entire book collection by genre, then author, then publication date," Evie said. "Does that count?"
Priya's lips twitched. "That counts. Come on, kid. Let's see what you've got."
She led Evie out of my office. I watched them go, Priya's long stride, Evie hurrying to keep up, her ponytail bouncing with each step. At the door to the main office, Evie glanced back at me. A quick look. Almost shy.
I nodded at her. She smiled and disappeared around the corner.
I sank back into my chair. Stared at the doorway for a long moment.
"Well," said a voice from behind me. "That was adorable."
I swiveled to find Nalani leaning against the window frame, a knowing smile on her face.
She must have come in through the side door while I was focused on Evie.
She did that a lot, materialized out of nowhere like some kind of benevolent ghost, usually at the exact moment when I was doing something she could tease me about.
"How long have you been standing there?"
"Long enough." She pushed off from the window and dropped into the yellow chair Evie had just vacated, crossing her long legs at the ankle.
Nalani Reyes was tall, willowy, with the kind of effortless grace that came from a decade of professional dance before a knee injury ended that career.
Now she ran our community outreach programs and served as my unofficial advisor on all things involving human emotion, a subject I sometimes struggled with despite my warm reputation.
"She's Sebastian Dubois's kid, isn't she?"
"You know about that?"
"Honey, everyone knows about that. You two have been circling each other like angry cats since you were teenagers." Nalani tilted her head, dark eyes sparkling. "Also, Priya texted me the second she walked in. 'SOS, ice king's daughter in the building, Aria's going to adopt her.'"
"I'm not adopting her."
"You're absolutely adopting her. I know your MO."
"What are you talking about? I don’t have an MO."
"Yes, you absolutely do. You find a wounded bird and decide it's your personal mission to teach it to fly." Nalani's smile softened. "It's one of your best qualities. Also, one of your most exhausting."
I rubbed my temples. "She's a good kid, Lani. She's lonely and lost, and she wants to do something that matters. How am I supposed to say no to that?"
"You're not. That's my point." Nalani stood, smoothing her flowing skirt. "Just be careful. Getting involved with that kid means getting involved with her father. And I've seen the news about him. He's a very intoxicating person. You don't want to get drawn into all of that."
"Sebastian doesn’t interest me in any way. My business is with Evie, not him. I won’t be seeing him at all."
"Uh-huh. So, when he walks in here to pick up his daughter, are you going to chase him out with a broom, or are you going to put on your professional smile and welcome him in?"
"You’re being absurd."
"Am I?" Nalani raised an eyebrow. "Okay. Sure. You keep telling yourself that." She headed for the door, then paused, looking back over her shoulder. "The health fair planning meeting is in twenty minutes. Try to stop thinking about Sebastian Dubois long enough to focus on vendor contracts, yeah?"
She swept out before I could respond.
The nerve of her. I was not thinking about him, nor would I be doing any thinking at all. Nalani was wrong. Whatever I felt when Sebastian Dubois's name came up, it wasn't attraction. It was irritation, repulsion, and every other vile word I couldn’t think of at that moment.
The man was cold, arrogant, and completely incapable of seeing past his own privilege. The fact that his daughter was kind and perceptive and desperately hungry for connection didn't change that.
It didn't change anything.
I pulled my laptop closer and got back to work.