“That’s like something she would do,” Ellie said.
“I’m glad I could help,” Dalton said. “And thank you for the pizza. It hit the spot. Do either of you want that last piece?” They did not, and so it was his.
Twenty minutes later, standing outside on the sidewalk, they said their goodbyes. Ellie and Mia were heading to the hospital to visit their grandfather. Ellie would return to the city after that to keep looking for Matt. Besides searching on her own, she planned to show his photo to local businesses. “If you give me your phone, I can put my number in your contacts,” Ellie said. “Then if you spot Matt, you can call me right away.”
Ahem. “I don’t have my phone on me. Forgot it at home.”
“Let me write down my number.” Ellie dug through her purse until she found a pen and scrap of paper. She jotted down her name and the number. “If you lose it, Matt knows it by heart. You can just ask him.”
Dalton stared down at the numbers written in blue ink. “I won’t lose it.” He put the number in the front pocket of his backpack and zippered it shut.
They were still in front of the pizzeria when a taxi pulled up and an elderly couple got out. “Perfect timing,” Mia said. Ellie grabbed his shoulders as if she were about to give him a hug, thought better of it, and just gave his arms a quick squeeze. “Did you want to share a cab?”
“No, I’m good,” Dalton said. “I’ll be walking.” And then they were done. The two sisters climbed into the cab. He gave a wave as the cab pulled away and smiled when he saw Ellie’s hand flutter through the open window.
Once again, he lacked a purpose. He had nothing to do and nowhere to be. So much of being without a home meant that he was also without a job, family, and friends. Not only that, but he lacked access and money to do the kinds of activities he loved. Basically, he was without all the things that made up what he thought of as his life. Each day had been stripped down to the basics: food, water, and shelter. Well, it could be worse. He had a stomach full of pizza and had spent time with some nice people. A good turn of events.
He stared for a minute at the Bellemont and then impulsively trotted across the street and walked through the door into the restaurant. Inside, it was like another world. Dim lighting, the sounds of soft techno music pulsing from every direction. He couldn’t help but notice that the air-conditioning was about a million times better than in the pizza place. Dalton felt his lungs swell in happiness. Once inside, he knew why he’d felt compelled to go there. He wanted to get a closer look at that girl.
“Can I help you?” a man asked from behind the desk.
“I’m just looking for a friend.” Dalton gave him a friendly smile, the one that usually worked on almost everyone, but not this time. The man’s face was as impassive as a statue’s.
“I assure you, your friend is not here.”
“Maybe I can take a quick look?” He smiled again. This time, he was rewarded with a glare. What a grouch.
“I’m sorry, but you must leave immediately. We have a strict dress code, and you are not in compliance.”
Apparently his unshowered state and gross-looking backpack weren’t passing muster. “I understand,” Dalton said. “I’ll come by another time. Thanks.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Her first two days had been incredible! Greta mentally ticked off all the things that had happened in the space of about forty-eight hours. First of all, she’d been filmed by a professional crew for footage that hundreds of thousands of people would see. Then, she’d viewed New York by limousine; gone to a classy restaurant with Cece, Katrina, and Vance; and gotten to eat something called steak Gatsby. If all that wasn’t enough, Cece Vanderhaven, whom she’d idolized from afar, absolutely adored her! Greta wasn’t sure what she had done to earn her affection, but it was clear to everyone she was the new favorite.
She was riding so high on positive endorphins that even a look from a scruffy, good-looking guy eating in the pizza place across the street gave her an electrical jolt. It had happened in an instant. Like a camera going in for a close-up, their eyes had locked, and when he’d smiled at her—bam! She felt like there was nothing she couldn’t do. This girl was on fire.
The rest of the summer could only get better.
During the limo ride back to Cece’s, everyone was talking about Greta and how well she did. Vance and Katrina were so excited, they could barely contain themselves. The back of the vehicle had an L-shaped seat configuration, so there was plenty of space for all of them to stretch out, but they wanted to stay crammed together, each one taking turns hugging her.
Vance said, “I had my doubts about working you into the schedule, Greta, but I have to admit, you’re the best thing that ever happened to Cece’s World.” He and Katrina high-fived each other and beamed with delight.
“You were epic,” Cece told her, blowing a kiss. “Everything went so well.”
“Unbelievably well,” Katrina said, fist pumping in the air. “You’re officially my new favorite person, Greta.”
“Oh, thank you,” she said, trying to be modest. “I just did my best.”
“Your best rocks,” Vance said. “Your best is the kind of best that changes lives.”
“Well, I’m not sure I was that good.” Greta felt herself blush; she wasn’t used to such over-the-top compliments. Her stay in New York was turning out to be exceptional. “That’s nice of you to say, though.”
When they got back to Cece’s place, Vance opened a bottle of champagne, and they all toasted: “To Greta Hansen!” Glasses clinked, and there was drinking and laughing and so many smiles. It was crazy the way they piled on the praise. Greta was the answer to their prayers. The new star of Cece’s World. A natural at promotion. Cece kept saying Greta was fabulous, the best cousin ever. That she had waited so long to meet her, and now they’d be friends for life.
Greta almost turned down the champagne because she’d thought she wouldn’t care for it. She came to find out that what she didn’t like was cheap champagne. The good stuff went down just fine.
After a dinner of Chinese delivery, Katrina and Vance called it a night. Vance leaned over to give Cece a kiss on the cheek. “You know I love you, right, Cece?”
“Of course,” she said, her fingers trailing over his cheek. “I love you too, Vance.”
“And that will never change, no matter what, right?”
Cece smiled in agreement and gave Katrina a goodbye hug as well.
After they left, Nanny and Brenna joined them and asked if they were interested in playing Jenga. “I’d love to,” Cece said. “Greta, are you in?”
“Sure, why not?” They sat around the dining room table, playing Jenga like anyone else, famous or not.
Brenna seemed less pensive tonight, happy to be playing a game with her big sister. In between moves, Cece told them how well the day had gone. “Greta was epic. Absolutely epic!” she said. “Everyone loved her!”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Greta said bashfully.
After the second game, Nanny opted out, so Greta did too, watching the two sisters tease each other and laugh as they played. When Nanny got up to go into the kitchen, she waited a few minutes, then excused herself and followed her.
She walked in to find Nanny cleaning up from dinner. Earlier, they’d put their plates and silverware in the sink and the glasses on the counter. When Greta had started to rinse them off, Katrina had stopped her, saying, “Don’t worry about it, Greta. Someone will be along to take care of the washing.”
Greta could see that with most of the staff gone, that someone was Nanny. “Can I help?” she asked, startling her.
“I’ve got it, thanks.” Nanny rinsed the dishes and then opened the dishwasher to place each one inside. She hummed a little as she worked. When she realized Greta was still in the room, she paused and asked, “Is there something I can help you find?”
“No, I was just wondering . . .” Something had nagged at her since she’d first met Cece that morning. Some
thing about her cousin just seemed off.
“Wondering what?” Nanny asked, wiping her hands on a dishtowel.
“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, or say anything to Cece because I wouldn’t want her to think badly of me. I’d never want to hurt her feelings.” She paused, wondering how to say this without coming off the wrong way, then decided there was no diplomatic way to ask this kind of question.
“Yes?” Nanny prompted.
“Cece is wonderful. Really warm and caring, but she’s not how I thought she’d be. Something about her . . .”
“Seems different from what you expected?” Nanny finished.
In the other room, Cece and Brenna giggled, the kind of right-from-the-gut laughter done with only people you love and trust.
“Sort of,” Greta said, although there was nothing sort of about it. Cece had acted completely different from the video clips she’d seen online.
“You’re wondering why that is.”
“Yes. I mean, she’s terrific. Just not what I expected. I’m not trying to be critical. I’m just wondering about the difference between her public persona and how she is in private.”
“It’s okay,” Nanny said. “I know what you’re saying. Cece is a lovely girl and a wonderful person, but she’s not the same as she was before.”
“Before?”
Nanny craned her neck, listening to the laughter in the next room before answering. “No one in the family talks about it, so I’d appreciate your keeping this in confidence.”
“Of course.”
“Just between us, about four years ago, Brenna and Cece were in the family pool, the one up on the roof.” She pointed upward, and Greta nodded, remembering having read about it. “They don’t use it anymore, not since the accident.”
“The accident?”
“I had off that day, but the rest of the staff was here, and Mrs. Vanderhaven was home. She didn’t think anything of letting the girls go swimming on their own. Cece was nineteen at the time and an excellent swimmer, and she was very protective of her little sister. Always has been since the day she was born. Brenna was only four, but she’d had swimming lessons and was pretty good in the water. Besides, she was wearing those water wings, the inflatable ones, the kind that slide up your upper arms?” She indicated, gripping her own arm where a water wing would sit.
“I know the kind.”
She leaned back against the counter and sighed. “No one knows for sure what happened. All they know is that Brenna came running down the stairs, screaming. No one understood a word she was saying. She was hysterical. One of the maids followed her back up to the pool, and they found Cece floating facedown.”
Oh my. Even knowing that Cece was alive and fine and laughing in the next room, Greta found the story harrowing. Poor Brenna—having to go for help all on her own. “So what happened?”
“They pulled her out of the pool. Someone did CPR, and they called 911.”
“I never heard anything about this.” If this had made the news, she would have remembered. She’d been on high alert for all things Vanderhaven for years.
“No, it was all kept very hush-hush. The doctors and nurses knew to keep it confidential. The Vanderhavens have donated a lot of money to that hospital,” Nanny explained. “Cece only spent one night at the hospital. They never did find out what caused her to become unconscious. They ruled out a stroke. She had no history of seizures. They just couldn’t figure it out. To this day, it’s a mystery.”
“Wow, how awful.”
Nanny nodded in agreement. “Physically, she was declared to be in perfect health and released. The only issue that seemed troubling was that she couldn’t remember what had happened in the pool, and Brenna couldn’t explain it either. But that didn’t seem important compared to Cece’s life. The whole household was overjoyed when Cece came home. We’d all been sick with worry. The household staff loves these two girls like you wouldn’t believe. You’d think they’d be spoiled brats, but that’s not the case at all.”
“So she was fine when she came home.”
She nodded. “Fine enough. Just quiet, or at least that’s what we thought. But after a while, everyone started to notice things. She’d been going to the university but had to drop out because she lost interest. She wasn’t the same after that. She’s impulsive now and just blurts things out. Her personality is different. I actually love the way she is, but it upsets her parents that she’s not as career-oriented as she was before. We were all instructed not to talk about it, so you didn’t hear about it from me.”
“I understand.”
Nanny said, “It was shortly after the accident that Cece’s World was born. Her parents created the company to give her something to focus on and so she’d have her own source of revenue. It made her happy at first. They’d bring all the designs around, and she’d get to pick which ones would have her label on them. She got to narrow down the fragrances and pick the one that would be her signature perfume.”
“Let Me In,” Greta said, recalling the name.
“That’s the one.” She nodded. “Cece enjoyed all the hubbub. She liked reading the comments on her posts and getting hair and makeup done for filming and trying on all the new clothes. It was all so much fun at first, but it’s going on three years now, and she’s gotten very tired of it. Katrina and Vance do a good job of getting her to go along with everything they need her to do, but frankly, it breaks my heart when she begs not to have to do a scene, and they whisk her off for a shoot. I feel like telling them to just leave her alone.” In the other room, the laughter had died down, and now the sisters were talking in hushed tones. Every now and then, they heard Brenna giggle. Nanny sighed. “It’s not up to me, of course. I just work here.”
“Cece and Brenna seem like they get along well.”
“There is a strong bond there,” Nanny said. “You’d think with the age difference, there wouldn’t be, that these two girls wouldn’t have much in common, but if anything, it’s just the opposite. I think it’s because their parents are gone so much. They can’t count on Mom and Dad, but they know they have each other.”
They couldn’t count on their mom and dad? That was just too sad and so unlike Greta’s family. She and her brother both knew that no matter what happened or where they were, their parents were just a phone call away. And even if there were hundreds of miles between them, her mom and dad would move heaven and earth to get to them if need be.
“Anyway,” Nanny said, wrapping up the conversation, “the rest of us love Cece the way she is, but her parents don’t want to let it get out, so you’ll need to keep this to yourself.”
“I will. I promise.”
“Not a word to anyone. Don’t tell a friend or a family member. Especially not your mother. Deborah would be mortified if her cousin knew. She likes the perfect front.”
“Okay,” Greta said, but secretly, she knew she’d tell her mother someday, probably after she returned home. How could she not?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dalton spent the day in search of homeless people. It wasn’t too hard to track them down. He found them in the train station and the subways, the parks, and the back alleys. And Times Square, of course. Few were quite as willing to talk to him as Matt. Meeting him first thing meant he either got lucky or else his gift of beef jerky was an effective tool in opening up a channel of communication.
The ones who were most willing to talk to him were men, all of them down on their luck. Some of them were hopeful things would get better. As one grizzled old man said, “It can’t get any worse, so it’s gotta get better.” He was the most optimistic. A lot of them felt beaten down. They were surviving but not living.
During their talks, some of the same things came up over and over again. They’d gotten to this point after losing a job. Or because of an addiction to drugs or alcohol. Or by aging out of foster care and having nowhere else to go. Some had health problems or mental illnesses that made it difficult to find jobs or impo
ssible to keep working. He kept hearing how they stayed afloat for a while but eventually became bankrupt, both financially and emotionally. And after that, they had nothing left to give. No energy left. They wandered like ghosts as other people looked past them, disregarding their very existence.
Several of them mentioned that they sometimes stayed in shelters, but only when necessary. Some didn’t like the rules; others said they didn’t think they were safe for them or their possessions. Funny thing: homeless people didn’t necessarily like to hang out with other random homeless people. “There are a lot of pissed-off people out there,” said one man.
One young guy named Trey had lived in an apartment in Brooklyn with his father. After his dad died unexpectedly, Trey couldn’t pay the rent. One day he’d come home to find the locks changed. “How did that make you feel?” Dalton asked, sounding like the kind of armchair psychologist he normally didn’t care for. He wasn’t asking just to fill the silence. He honestly wanted to know.
He shrugged. “I didn’t pay any rent for months, so I couldn’t say too much. The man needed his money. I didn’t have it. Lucky thing I left the window unlocked, so I could go up the fire escape and get my stuff out.” Trey had stayed with friends on and off, but one by one, his drinking made him unwelcome. “Being sober hasn’t worked out for me,” he said. “I keep going back to the bottle. I’ll probably have one in my hand when they find my dead body.”
He looked too young to have his fate decided for him. “Do you want to quit?”
Trey smirked. “Yeah, sure. I also want a mansion and a hot girlfriend and a million dollars. Sign me up for all of it.”
Midday, Dalton went to a park and spotted a couple who looked friendly and open to conversation. He found out that their names were Diego and Lauren, and that both were nineteen. They told him they’d met in foster care. When he first saw them, they were sitting under a tree, a tattered suitcase next to them. In front of Diego was a cardboard box lined with a plastic bag. The plastic bag was filled with ice and water bottles, which he was selling for two dollars each. Dalton started the conversation by becoming a customer. “I’ll take one of those,” he said, even though this purchase wasn’t technically in his budget.
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