A Present Nobody Authorized

"I have a Christmas gift for you, mister."

I kept reading the report in my hand.

"Leave it downstairs."

"But then you won't know it's from me."

The voice was too small to belong in my study.

I looked up.

A little girl stood just inside the door, holding a red box against her stomach. Blonde curls escaped from beneath a Santa hat that had slipped over one eyebrow. Her velvet dress was red too, with a cream ribbon tied around the waist and a hem that dipped lower on one side.

She couldn't have been more than four.

Two armed men stood outside my door. Neither appeared inclined to explain her presence.

"Who let you in?" I asked.

"Nobody. I knocked."

"I didn't hear you."

"You were talking on your phone."

She had waited. Apparently that settled the matter.

I put down the report.

"How did you get upstairs?"

She looked behind her, then back at me.

"The stairs."

One of my guards found something fascinating on the opposite wall.

"And who are you?"

"Maisie Hayes. I'm four."

She held up four fingers, checked them, and nodded.

"Who are you?"

For a moment, I simply stared at her.

My name was Gabriel Marchetti. Men who owed me money avoided saying it. Men who wanted my territory practiced saying it without fear. In certain neighborhoods of Chicago, people lowered their voices when my car passed.

"Gabriel," I said.

"That's a good name."

"Is it?"

"It's in the Christmas story."

She crossed my Persian rug before I could decide what to do with that and set the box beside my untouched whiskey.

The wrapping paper had been secured with enough tape to survive a flood. A gold ribbon circled the middle. One end was frayed.

"This one's yours."

"Why?"

"Because it's Christmas."

"Not until tomorrow."

"Mommy works tomorrow. We do some things early."

She said it without complaint, as though she were explaining why it rained.

I glanced toward the door again.

"Where is your mother?"

"Getting clean sheets."

That explained the dress. Staff had been allowed to bring their children downstairs while the kitchen prepared an early holiday meal. Mrs. Porter had asked me weeks ago. I had signed whatever needed signing and forgotten about it.

"Does your mother know you're here?"

Maisie began straightening the ribbon on my gift.

"She knows I'm in the house."

"That wasn't my question."

"No."

At least she was honest.

I pressed the intercom. "Find Mrs. Porter. Tell her Maisie Hayes is in my study."

Maisie's hands dropped to her sides.

"Am I in trouble?"

"That depends. Did you steal anything on the way up?"

She frowned at me.

"I brought things."

The guard outside coughed into his fist.

I leaned back in my chair. "So you did."

Her attention moved to the silver photograph frame beside my lamp. It faced me, so she could only see its back.

"Is that your family?"

"Yes."

"Can I see?"

"No."

She accepted that more easily than most adults accepted a refusal from me. Instead, she studied the room: the dark shelves, the closed curtains, the fireplace that nobody had lit.

"You don't have any Christmas things."

"I noticed."

"You can put mine here."

She pointed to the empty space beside the photograph.

It had not always been empty. Four years earlier, my brother had left a wooden reindeer there, wearing one of my father's expensive cuff links as a bell. I had told him to get his ridiculous toys out of my office.

He had taken it away.

I couldn't remember what he had done with it.

Maisie touched the gold ribbon again.

"Please don't be sad anymore."

My hand stopped on the arm of the chair.

"Who told you I was sad?"

"Nobody."

"Then why would you say that?"

"You have a sad face."

"Perhaps this is just my face."

She considered that possibility with insulting seriousness.

"Mommy has a tired face," she said. "Mr. Caleb has a grumpy face. Yours is sad."

Caleb Stone, who had once dragged a wounded man out of a burning car without dropping his cigarette, would be delighted by that assessment.

"Does Mr. Caleb know you call him grumpy?"

"I gave him two caramels."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"He didn't say thank you until I reminded him."

I felt the unfamiliar pull of a smile.

Then running footsteps sounded in the hallway.

"Maisie!"

Nora Hayes appeared in the doorway with a folded pillowcase still clutched in one hand.

I recognized her immediately. She had worked in my house for three years. Quiet, efficient, never late. When my father had been dying, she was the only housekeeper he hadn't managed to drive from his room.

Now her face had gone so pale that I stood.

She moved between her daughter and my desk.

"Mr. Marchetti, I'm so sorry. Mrs. Porter said she could wait in the staff sitting room. I only left her for two minutes."

"Eleven," Maisie said.

Nora closed her eyes.

"We talked about wandering off."

"I didn't wander. I came here."

"Maisie."

The child lowered her head.

Nora put the pillowcase under her arm and reached for the box.

I laid my hand on it first.

She froze.

I removed my hand slowly. "It's a gift. I'd like to keep it."

"She shouldn't have disturbed you."

"She hasn't."

That was not entirely true. I had been undisturbed for four years, and she had managed to change that in five minutes.

"I'll take her home," Nora said. "I can finish my shift tomorrow before breakfast. You won't lose any hours."

She had already worked out the cost of this mistake. Lost wages. A missed bus. A child carried through the cold.

"Finish your shift today," I said. "Let her eat with the others."

Nora stared at me.

"You're not fired."

Her mouth tightened. She hadn't asked, but both of us knew what she had been afraid to say.

"Thank you, sir."

Maisie tugged her hand free just long enough to pat my present.

"Mine's special. The guards got candy."

"A sound investment," I said.

"Mommy said I couldn't eat all of it."

Nora made a small, helpless sound that might have become a laugh in another room.

I looked toward my guards. "I hope nobody else got upstairs with a caramel."

"No, sir," one said quickly.

Maisie took her mother's hand.

At the door, she stopped.

"Promise you'll open it?"

There were promises I made every day without thinking. Contracts. Assurances. Threats dressed as guarantees.

For some reason, this one required more care.

"I promise."

She nodded, satisfied, and followed Nora down the hall.

I remained standing until their footsteps faded.

Then Caleb entered carrying a paper cup and wearing the expression Maisie had described with such accuracy.

"Your visitors are getting younger," he said.

"Your security is getting cheaper. Two caramels?"

"Three. She negotiated."

He placed the coffee beside my whiskey and glanced at the box.

"Let me check that."

"She weighs thirty pounds."

"That isn't how explosives work."

He was right, which was irritating. He checked the package while I stood at the window, watching staff cross the courtyard beneath the first drifting snowflakes.

"It's clean," he said. "She made the rounds with Mrs. Porter before she came up. Nobody from outside touched it."

He withdrew to take a call.

I sat down and began peeling away the tape.

Under the lid lay a wooden star, painted red. One point had broken and been glued back slightly crooked. Beside it were a brass key and a folded piece of blue wool.

I picked up the star first.

On the back, in uneven black letters, someone had written GABREL.

I would have to tell her she had missed an I.

Then I touched the wool.

Thick blue yarn. A narrow white stripe at the edge. One corner repaired with black thread by someone who had never learned to sew properly.

The room went quiet in a way it hadn't been quiet before.

I knew that repair.

I had made it at a kitchen table while my brother complained that I was ruining the only thing our mother had ever knitted for him.

Four years ago, Luca had vanished wearing that scarf.

And now a piece of it lay in a little girl's Christmas present.