Chapter 4. Haley
Haley
TEN YEARS AGO
I was ten years old the first time I met Ace Murphy.
Paige and I were in the kitchen dancing and singing to Martha and the Vandellas with my dad while his grilled cheese sandwiches sizzled in the pan.
He was a chef and the owner of Riverstone’s only high-end restaurant, a charming riverside bistro named HAM—Haley and Matt.
Dad’s creative cooking had earned him a coveted Michelin star, but the remote location meant that he struggled to fill tables after the summer rush was over.
“How was school today?” Dad loved all the gossip and had arranged his work schedule so he could be home when we got in from school.
Mom left early every morning for work in her law office so Dad fed us breakfast, made our lunches, and sent us off to school.
He did his shopping and meal prep at the restaurant during the day, then came home to fix our snack and prepare dinner for when Mom came home.
He spent his evenings at the restaurant, often not getting back until Mom was in bed.
I never appreciated how well their system worked to ensure we always had a parent in the house, nor did I appreciate what we had—stability, security, and the absolute joy of his presence—until he was gone.
That late-summer day, we filled him in on all the gossip while he nibbled on a dry rice cake.
His doctor had put him on a strict diet after his last checkup revealed he was not only overweight, but his blood pressure was too high, and his heart wasn’t working the way it was supposed to.
When Mom told Matt and me that we had to make sure he didn’t sneak any bad food, I pretended it was a game and tried not to think about the family curse.
His dad and his grandfather and his great-grandfather had all died young from heart attacks, and the doctor had told him he was heading that way if he didn’t look after his health.
Dad had just plated our sandwiches and was about to show us a new dance move when Matt walked in the door with his friend Rafael and another boy I’d never seen before.
“This is Haley and Paige,” Matt said behind me. “Don’t be too nice to them or they’ll follow us around and be a total pain. Everyone, this is Ace. He just moved to Riverstone and he’s in my class.”
Curious that Matt had brought home someone who didn’t know me and Paige, I looked back over my shoulder as Dad twirled me around.
Rafael stuck out his tongue like he usually did.
Ace just stared. He was as tall as Matt, but lanky, with dark tousled hair and a face so pale it looked like he’d never seen the sun.
He wore baggy clothes that seemed too big for his frame and his hands were shoved into the pockets of an oversized jacket.
When the song ended, I turned to properly study the new boy. Our eyes met, locked, and that’s when everything went quiet.
My head was always full of noise. My brain jumped from idea to idea and even the smallest thing could distract me.
I needed to be doing two or three tasks at once to focus on a single chore, or I needed to be outdoors where there were lots of things going on.
Even better I needed people, lots of people, because people meant conversation and I loved to talk.
Ace took the noise away. For a few brief seconds, the world disappeared until it was just me and him in a bubble of calm. I felt a connection with him that I’d never felt with anyone before, and all I wanted to do was get him alone and unravel the mystery of his silence.
Paige pulled me back with a nudge. “Do you know him?”
“I’ve never seen him before.”
“Usually, in this house we greet guests with a ‘hello,’” Dad said in an admonishing tone before turning his megawatt smile on Ace. “Welcome to Riverstone. I’m sorry about Haley. She was raised by wolves. Sometimes I think we should send her back.”
“Dad.” Laughing, I gave him a playful shove. I loved Dad’s sense of humor, especially when his jokes were directed at me. “Last time you told someone I was raised by hyenas. Get your story straight.”
“Are you thirteen, too?” Paige asked Ace.
It was a strange question, but I understood where it had come from. Something about the way Ace carried himself made him seem much older than Matt and Rafael, older in some ways than Dad.
He nodded but kept staring at me, so I stared back.
He had the most interesting eyes I’d ever seen.
They were brown and green mixed together, like Matt’s favorite marble—the one I wasn’t allowed to touch.
He had a nice face, but serious, not like Rafael, who always tried to make us laugh.
I felt like I knew him, like he’d always been around.
I knew things about him that he didn’t need to say.
Rafael and Matt headed over to the counter and grabbed their sandwiches, as they did every day after school, seemingly oblivious to the fact that there was nothing for Ace. I took my plate over to him. Dad had cut my sandwich in half and the cheese was oozing from the center. “You can have mine.”
Ace shook his head. “Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”
He was lying. I could feel it. I could see it in his face. He was hungry in a way I couldn’t even begin to understand.
I held out the plate again. “I had a big lunch. Huge. Dad made burritos that were the size of the teddy bear Matt sleeps with at night. I probably won’t need to eat for days.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Matt shouted. “I don’t sleep with a teddy bear.”
Ace’s lips tugged at the corners and that hint of a smile softened his face. After a moment of hesitation, he took the plate. “Thank you.”
“Maybe we won’t have to send her back to the wolves after all,” Dad said, ruffling my hair. “I’ll whip up a new batch. Looks like we’ve got a load of hungry kids here this afternoon.” Dad walked over to Ace and held out his hand. “Dave Chapman. You can call me Dave.”
Dad had never told any of Matt’s friends to call him “Dave.” Only adults called him “Dave.” I didn’t understand why he thought Ace was different, but maybe he’d seen what I’d seen—a boy who was world-weary at the ripe old age of thirteen.
A flush of pleasure crept up Ace’s face and he shook Dad’s hand. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Dad laughed. “I see your grandmother’s handiwork already. She’s always been big into manners. Just don’t get on her bad side. I heard that when she became head nurse at the hospital, they gave her unlimited access to needles.”
Ace smiled and his face went from beautiful to breathtaking in a heartbeat, making me feel warm all over.
“You don’t need to make any more, Dad. I’m not that hungry,” Matt said piling his sandwiches on Ace’s plate. “Ace can have mine, too. You did make us a big lunch.”
I stared at him, wide-eyed in surprise. When had Matt ever not been hungry? Matt was always hungry. Mom said he was an eating machine. But he was also kind and generous, even to me, and I was, admittedly, a bit of a brat. It was why people liked Matt and why Mom called him her little gentleman.
“Well, I’m hungry.” Rafael stuffed one half of his sandwich in his mouth and blew out his cheeks, pretending to be a chipmunk as he walked away.
“I like the new boy,” I said to Paige after the boys had gone to play video games in the basement.
“He’s quiet,” she said. “Maybe he’s shy.”
“He’s hurting,” Dad said quietly.
“What do you mean?” I sat at the counter while Dad buttered another slice of bread. He knew that Matt and I were just being polite and if he didn’t feed us right away we’d be in the kitchen scrounging for unhealthy snacks as soon as our guests went home.
“I talked to his grandmother,” Dad said. “She was in the restaurant the other day. He’s had a hard life but it’s not my story to share. Just know he’s been through a lot. He needs love, and we have more than enough to give.”
That was Dad. He was a big man with a big heart and he loved people. He could see right through to a person’s soul.
If I’d known then that the love and friendship I gave Ace over the years would leave me with a broken heart, I might not have given him that sandwich. But I was only ten and Paige had brought her Barbies, so I didn’t think any more about it and went to play.
Ace became a permanent fixture in our house, and it wasn’t long before Paige and I got his story.
He had come to live with his grandmother after social services had taken him away from his parents.
Paige had heard her mother whisper “drugs” on the phone and something about Ace’s parents leaving him alone in their apartment for days at a time. Once she even heard the word “jail.”
I’d never known anyone whose family had been in trouble with the law, and it just added to the mystery that surrounded Matt’s new best friend who fit in with our family like he’d been there from the start.
Dad offered to have Ace come over after school when his grandmother was working, and Matt was happy to have someone other than his irritating little sister to play with when Rafael wasn’t around.
When Dad found out Ace hadn’t had much of a childhood, he took it upon himself to teach Ace how to fish, ride a bike, and catch a ball.
He even paid Ace to help us with our chores so he could earn some extra money.
When Matt was at baseball practice or hanging out with Rafael, Dad would give Ace and me cooking lessons and he and I would serenade Ace with Dad’s favorite songs from the ’50s and ’60s.
“You could sing this one for the talent competition,” Dad said to me one afternoon as we chopped onions to Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.” “It’s easy enough on the guitar. I could show you the chords.”
Ace and I didn’t usually talk much, and I’d figured he thought I was just an irritating kid, but he turned to me with interest. “I didn’t know you were going to compete.”