Chapter 9: The Face on the Drawing
Lily came downstairs at seven fifteen in her pajamas with Mr.
Buttons under one arm and a very specific expression on her face — the expression of a child who has made a decision and is prepared to execute it.
She climbed into the chair beside Adrian, set Mr.
Buttons on the table facing him, and folded her hands.
"Okay," she said.
"I have questions."
Sarah, at the counter, turned away just quickly enough.
"Okay," Adrian said.
"Why did you live across the street?"
"Because I was afraid that if bad people knew about you, they might try to use you to hurt me.
And I didn't want you to get hurt."
Lily considered this.
"Did it work?"
"Not as well as I thought it would."
"That's what Mama said." She tilted her head.
"Do you know how to make pancakes?"
The shift was so abrupt that Adrian took a moment to catch up.
"I — yes.
I think so."
"Mama burns them."
"I do not," Sarah said from the counter, not turning around.
"She does," Lily said, in a confidential tone.
"Can you make them not burned?"
"I can try."
"Okay." Lily picked up Mr.
Buttons and held him out.
"This is Mr.
Buttons.
He already knows about you because I told him.
You can shake his hand."
Adrian shook the bear's paw with full seriousness.
Lily watched this with the evaluating look of someone checking a box.
Then she nodded, apparently satisfied, and climbed down from the chair.
"I'll get the flour."
Sarah turned from the counter.
Her eyes were bright.
"She's been practicing that speech," she said quietly.
"The questions.
She wrote them on a piece of paper last night."
"How many were on the paper?"
"Eleven." Sarah smiled.
"She only asked two.
I think you passed something."
Adrian stood and moved to the counter beside her.
She didn't step away.
"I want to do this right," he said.
"I don't know exactly what that looks like yet.
But I want to learn."
"You made a good start," Sarah said.
"You shook the bear's hand."
Lily reappeared in the doorway with a bag of flour, a look of total focus, and a dusting of white already on her pajama sleeve.
"Okay," she announced.
"I found it.
Also I dropped some.
That's okay though."
"That's okay," Adrian agreed.
He moved to the stove.
Lily climbed back onto her chair and positioned Mr.
Buttons to watch.
Sarah leaned against the counter with her coffee, and the morning light came through the yellow curtains and lay across the kitchen floor in long, quiet stripes.
Later — after the pancakes, after Lily declared them acceptable and then ate three — Adrian's phone buzzed once.
Agent Wren.
A single line.
*Volkov formally charged.
All four counts.
His attorney is already asking for a continuance.
It won't help him.*
He set the phone face-down on the table.
Lily was drawing again.
A new picture, this one at the kitchen table with a crayon she'd retrieved from somewhere.
He watched her work without looking over her shoulder, respecting whatever it was.
She finished, pushed it across the table to him.
The same family as before.
The woman with yellow hair.
The small girl in the red dress.
The man with the dark hair and the face.
But this time there were four figures.
The fourth was small and brown and button-eyed, standing beside the girl.
"That's Mr.
Buttons," Lily said.
"He's part of the family too.
I decided."
Adrian looked at the drawing for a long moment.
He thought about the identical Mr.
Buttons in his private safe — the replacement he'd bought three years ago in a moment of weakness, the one he'd never told anyone about, the one that had sat in the dark for a thousand days as a quiet proof that he had always loved her, even when he hadn't known how to show it.
"Can I keep this one?" he said.
Lily looked at him with her mother's serious eyes.
"You can keep all of them," she said.
"I made a lot."
---
*Some fathers protect from a distance because they don't know how to come closer.
Some daughters leave the door open anyway, and draw the face from memory, and wait.*
May you like
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Share your thoughts in the comments.*
