EMMA'S POV

I didn't give the driver my aunt's address. I gave him the one place my body seemed to remember on its own.

"Riverside and Fourth," I said. "You can leave me at the bookstore."

By the time he pulled over, the sky had gone from gray to bruised purple. Hollis Books was dark, a hand-lettered *Closed Early – Weather* sign taped crooked inside the glass. Mom used to buy me one paperback here every time I had a bad week. Then we'd walk down to the bench by the water and she'd read the first page out loud in silly voices until I laughed, whether I wanted to or not.

I left my suitcase under the bookstore's awning and walked toward the river.

The bench was still there. So was the rain, cold and steady, soaking through my coat in about a minute. I didn't care. I pulled the brass key out of my pocket and turned it over in my palm. Water ran into the grooves.

It didn't open anything anymore. The house belonged to strangers. The letter was ash. Her locket was hanging on Sophia's throat in a bar somewhere, catching the light while people clapped.

*My sweet girl.* That was all I could remember of the first line. I'd read that letter maybe a hundred times, and now I couldn't reconstruct the second sentence.

That was when I started crying. Not the quiet kind. The kind that bent me forward with my fist pressed against my mouth, the key biting into my knuckles.

I wanted to be closer to the water, where she used to stand and point out the herons. I stepped off the path toward the old stone stairs that led down to the bank.

"Don't take another step. The river has covered the stairs."

The voice came from behind me, low and firm, the kind of voice that expected to be obeyed.

I froze with one foot hovering. Below me, where four or five stone steps should have been, there was only brown water, moving fast and swallowing everything past the second stair. I hadn't even noticed.

I turned.

A man sat in a black wheelchair at the top of the paved ramp that ran alongside the stairs. He wore a dark coat, collar turned up, and rain had beaded across the armrests. There was a soft click as he set the brake.

"It rose about a foot in the last hour," he said. "Those steps are slick even when they're dry."

I wiped my face with my sleeve, which did nothing. "I wasn't... I wasn't going to jump, if that's what you're thinking."

"I wasn't thinking anything. I was thinking about the current." He held out a long black umbrella, handle first. "There's a covered porch right behind me. Get out of the rain."

I backed up the ramp to solid ground, but I didn't take the umbrella.

"I'm fine. Thank you."

I knew how this went. Ryan once drove forty minutes to bring me soup when I had the flu, and for two years after that, every argument ended with *Remember who took care of you when you were sick?* Kindness always came with a bill.

The man didn't push. He didn't ask why my eyes were swollen or why a woman in work clothes was crying at a river during a storm. He just glanced at the water.

"It's going to keep rising until at least ten," he said. "You can stand out here and watch, but you'll be standing in it soon."

Then he released the brake and turned the chair, moving up the slope with steady, practiced pushes. He didn't look back to see if I was following.

Something about that made it easier.

I caught up and took the umbrella from where he'd left it across his knees. "Okay."

"You don't have to tell me why you're crying," he said, eyes on the path. "Just get out of the rain."

The porch belonged to an old brick building right on the riverfront, the kind I'd walked past a thousand times without wondering about. A warm yellow light hung over the door. The entrance had a wide, smooth ramp and a glass door that slid open on its own when he rolled up to it. I'd never noticed any of that either.

He gestured to a wicker chair under the overhang. "Sit. I'll be a minute."

---

He came back with a ceramic mug balanced on a tray across his lap and set it on the small table in front of me. The tea was too hot to drink. I held it anyway, letting it thaw my good hand.

"Is there someone you'd like to call?" he asked. "A friend. Family."

I thought about Jenna's frantic texts. About my aunt, who'd ask a hundred questions about Ryan. About Sophia, who used to be the person I'd call.

"No," I said. "There's no one I need tonight."

He nodded like that was a reasonable answer and started sorting through a folder of papers on the other side of the table.

When I lifted the mug, I saw what it had been sitting on. A sheet of drafting paper, one corner folded, damp ring now printed in the middle. It was a site sketch. Riverside Commercial District, Phase Two. I recognized the shape of the street immediately, the bookstore, the bakery, the frame shop with the green door. Someone had circled Hollis Books in red pencil.

I didn't mean to say anything. It just came out.

"That walkway's going to block the ramp."

He stopped turning pages. "Which walkway?"

"This one." I touched the dotted line that cut across the front of the bookstore. "The new pedestrian path runs right over their side entrance. That's the only accessible door they have. The front has three steps."

He was quiet for a moment. "How do you know that?"

"I used to come here every week." I swallowed. "And last year I pulled foot traffic numbers for this whole block for a pitch at work. If you build it like this, you're not just blocking a door. You're rerouting people away from the storefronts toward the river. Hollis, the bakery, probably the frame shop. They'd lose most of their walk-in customers within a year."

I braced for the polite smile. The *interesting*, the subject change.

Instead, he slid the drawing closer to me and handed me the red pencil.

"Show me where it should go."

I stared at the pencil. Then I took it and sketched a line along the back of the lots, where an old service alley ran, and explained the drainage, the loading zones, why the bakery's morning deliveries would be a problem. He asked short questions. Good ones. He didn't once glance at my bandaged hand or my ruined mascara.

When I finally set the pencil down, I laughed, a little shaky.

"Sorry. You're the first person tonight who's asked me what I know instead of what's wrong with me."

He looked at me for a long second. "It seems like the more useful question."

---

The rain eased to a drizzle. He picked up his phone.

"Let me get you a car. You shouldn't be walking in this."

"My suitcase is still under the bookstore's awning," I said. "Could the car stop there first?"

"Of course."

"It's Emma, by the way," I said. "I never told you."

"Daniel."

Headlights swept across the porch. A long black sedan pulled up to the curb in front of the building, glossy even under the streetlight. I assumed it was his ride and started to stand to get out of the way.

But it wasn't a driver who stepped out. It was a woman in a tailored navy suit, holding a leather folder against the rain as she hurried up the ramp. She didn't even look at me. She bent beside Daniel's chair and opened the folder in front of him, already uncapping a silver pen and pressing it into his hand.

"Mr. Mercer, the board is waiting. Shall I tell them you're ready to discuss the Brightlane proposal?"

The cover page was facing me. Heavy cream stock, a sharp navy logo across the top.

MERCER PROPERTIES.

I knew that logo. It had been taped above Ryan's desk for six months. He'd practiced his pitch in our kitchen at midnight, rehearsing to the refrigerator. *If I can get ten minutes alone with the Mercer chairman,* he'd told me over and over, *just one meeting, Brightlane stops being a startup. We're in the real market.*

I froze in place.

Brightlane was Ryan's company.

And the man who had just handed me hot tea was the man Ryan had spent months begging for ten minutes with.

Daniel looked up from the documents and saw me staring at the cover.

"Emma," he said slowly, "do you know Brightlane?"

My fingers closed around my mother's key.

"Unfortunately," I said. "I know its owner better than anyone."