Chapter 8: What Emma Heard

Two weeks into the ballroom job, Nathan came home late enough to find Emma eating dinner with his mother.

“You said seven,” Emma told him.

“I did. I’m sorry.”

“It’s eight-thirty.”

“The window measurements took longer than we expected.”

His mother rose from the table and gave him a look that suggested he should explain himself after Emma went upstairs. Nathan thanked her for staying, warmed his dinner, and listened while Emma described a science assignment in as few words as possible.

The next evening, he made it home by six. Emma was at the kitchen table with her jewelry box and a sheet of paper covered in notes.

“School?” he asked.

“Questions.”

“For me?”

“For Victoria.”

Nathan set down his keys. “What kind of questions?”

“About running hotels. We have to interview someone with a job we don’t know much about.”

“You know I make cabinets.”

“That’s why I can’t interview you.”

He pulled out a chair. “Have you asked Victoria?”

“No. I haven’t seen her.”

Nathan heard the answer she had chosen not to give. Victoria had visited their workshop and their dinner table. Then he had asked for distance, and Emma had lost that connection too.

“You can call her,” he said. “If she has time, I’m sure she’ll answer.”

Emma turned the box in her hands. “Would it be strange?”

“Not if you want to talk to her.”

“What if she thinks I’m trying to make you talk?”

“Are you?”

“I need the interview.” Emma looked at him. “I also want to ask if she’s okay.”

Nathan took out his phone and wrote to Victoria that Emma had a school assignment. He made it clear that a call was entirely up to her. Victoria replied that she would be happy to speak with Emma the following evening.

Emma spent half an hour improving her questions. She wanted to know how Victoria chose hotel managers, what happened when guests complained, and whether she ever had to clean a room herself.

“She might ask why you chose that last one,” Nathan said.

“Then I’ll tell her people should know how their place works.”

Victoria called at the agreed time. Nathan put the phone on speaker, then went to the sink to wash dishes while Emma interviewed her.

“I have cleaned a room,” Victoria said. “Not often enough to be fast at it.”

“Why did you do it?”

“One of our housekeepers showed me how much work our schedule expected in a day. I thought I understood until I tried.”

“Did you change the schedule?”

“Yes. It took longer to get agreement than it should have.”

Emma wrote that down. Nathan kept washing a plate that was already clean.

At the end of the interview, Emma thanked her. There was a brief silence.

“Is the jewelry box finished?” Victoria asked.

“It has a star on it. I made the clasp work too.”

“I’d love to see it sometime.”

Emma looked across the room at Nathan. “I’d like that.”

After the call, she placed the phone beside his wet hands.

“She answered all my questions,” Emma said. “Even the one about money.”

“What did she say?”

“That having more money doesn’t mean you get to stop paying attention to what a job costs someone.”

Nathan dried his hands. He could imagine Victoria choosing those words carefully for Emma.

Later, while he checked the ballroom drawings, Emma came into his workroom.

“Can I tell you something without you deciding I’m being a kid?”

“Yes.”

“I was scared after Mom died that something would happen to you too. Grandma says lots of kids think that, but it felt real.”

Nathan closed the drawings.

“When Victoria started coming here,” Emma continued, “I liked it. Then the picture came out and you stopped laughing at your phone. You got home from her office and said she wouldn’t visit.”

“I know.”

“I thought she might disappear, and nobody would tell me why.”

Nathan pulled out the chair beside him. Emma sat.

“I should have talked to you sooner,” he said. “Victoria and I disagreed. I asked for time because I was having trouble with the attention, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do next.”

“Is that still true?”

“I know I miss her. I’m still working out how to be with her when other people have opinions about it.”

Emma leaned over the drawings. “You could ask what she wants.”

“I could.”

“And then listen to the answer.”

Nathan put his arm around her. “You sound like your mother.”

“She taught me some useful things.”

The next day, Victoria went to the hotel where the ballroom was being restored. She had avoided the project floor since removing herself from the selection, though the contract had been awarded and construction was underway. The general manager had asked her to inspect guest access while the main corridor was partly closed.

From the corridor, she could see Nathan and Luis fitting a temporary template around one of the tall windows. Nathan spotted her. He stepped down from the work platform and crossed the room.

“Emma said the interview went well,” he said.

“She asked better questions than most people on our board.”

“I believe it.”

They stood beside a stack of wrapped panels. The room smelled faintly of cut wood and plaster dust.

“I’m glad you called her,” Victoria said.

“She asked me to.”

“I know.” She hesitated. “Nathan, I meant what I said in my office. I care about you, but I can’t keep trying to guess when you want me close.”

“You shouldn’t have to.” He looked at her. “Could we have dinner next week? Just the two of us. I want to talk about what happens after this project.”

“Yes,” she said. “Call me with a day.”

He had to get back to the work platform; she had the corridor inspection to finish. They parted without touching. For Nathan, the invitation still felt like a step toward her, made with his own feet.

That afternoon, the project manager sent him a draft of the program for the ballroom’s reopening dinner. He read the contractor acknowledgments once, then searched the document.

Cole Woodcraft was missing.