Chapter 4

By the time I pushed through the staff door, Milo already had a hand on my daughter's cut branch.

A staffer had walked Ellie back there to settle her down. She still had the little scissors in one hand, the branch in the other. That was where Milo found her.

"Mom said if I bring it back, Uncle Caleb will stay with us," he cried. "She said your mom is trying to steal him." Ellie held on.

Nora screamed before Ellie even moved. "Milo, get away from her! Don't let her cut you too!"

The rack folded sideways with a metal screech. The glass vase shattered. Then the haze machine went over with it.

White smoke spilled low across the floor—thick, sweet, mixing with the floral spray. Stage fog. It swallowed shoes, then knees.

I'd warned the gala team twice about heavy fragrance near Ellie. Nora knew. Now she stood in the middle of it, holding Milo, crying like she didn't.

Ellie has asthma. Mild, the doctors always said. Mild, until it isn't.

She was on the floor, and she couldn't get air. Her hand was reaching for the blue inhaler—it had slid from her bag and skidded across the floor, closer to Caleb's feet than to hers.

I tried to get to her. Two staffers were still between us from the aisle, and the fallen rack blocked the path behind the curtain. I could see her. I couldn't reach her.

Caleb could. He was three steps away.

He saw her. I saw the exact second he understood—real fear, quick and naked. He saw the inhaler by his own foot. He saw her open hand, not reaching it.

Then Nora sobbed, "Caleb, Milo's shaking. He thinks she wanted to hurt him."

Milo coughed once. Ellie coughed twice and couldn't pull the next breath in.

"Caleb!" I screamed. "Her inhaler!"

Caleb bent down. For one second, I thought he was reaching for Ellie's inhaler.

He was. His fingers closed around the blue plastic.

I felt relief so sharp it almost hurt.

Then Milo coughed behind him, and Nora screamed, "Caleb, he's shaking!"

Caleb looked at the inhaler in his hand. Then at Milo.

"Ellie, Mommy's here," he said.

His hand curled around the inhaler. The blue plastic disappeared into the inside pocket of his coat, the pocket he used whenever he needed both hands free.

I don't think he understood what he had done.

That was the worst part.

Once Milo cried, Ellie became background.

Caleb got both arms under Milo. He pulled his jacket over the boy's face and shouldered toward the green EXIT sign, Nora holding onto his sleeve.

Ellie watched him go.

She didn't scream. She didn't call Daddy. She watched the man who had written DAD on another boy's tree carry that boy out through the smoke.

Her hand stopped reaching for the inhaler.

"Ellie!" I shoved past the staffer hard enough to knock him into the curtain. Someone shouted my name. I didn't stop. I tore my sleeve open on the broken rack and didn't feel it, crawled under, and got to my daughter—but the inhaler was gone. He'd carried it out in his pocket. I'd watched him do it.

So I got her breathing the only other way I knew. I pulled her into my lap, tipped her forward. Small breaths, baby. I've got you. Small breaths.

The color was starting to drain from her lips. Against my chest, her fingers closed around the cut daddy branch.

"Mommy…"

"I'm here, baby."

"If he comes back with the pen…" She swallowed, and no air came with it. "Hide my leaf."

For six years I had answered for him. Just busy. Doesn't mean it. He loves you, baby.

Not this time.

"I will," I said, holding her so tightly my arms hurt. "I won't let him write on you again."

I carried her out through the loading door, past the valets, into the cold. She got her breath back in the car, slow, leaning on my shoulder—the taped tree still under her arm, one branch gone.

I made one call. I kept my voice flat, so it wouldn't shake.

"This is Ava Bennett," I said. "Hold every Roots & Wings grant under my approval. All of it. Effective tonight."

Behind me, through the ballroom windows, the banner still glowed. Every child deserves someone who shows up. He was still under it, holding another woman's son.

On my phone, the Roots & Wings line blinked once and changed to a single word.

Frozen.

By the time we reached the highway, I'd booked two seats on the first flight out in the morning.

The tickets were confirmed. The funding was frozen. For the first time all night, I let myself think it: we might actually get out.

Then Ellie's hand tightened on my sleeve.

"Mommy," she whispered. "My chest hurts again."

I reached back for her bag, for the inhaler pocket. I already knew—the way you know before your fingers get there.

The pocket was empty. I already knew. The one thing that opened her airway was zipped into my husband's coat, somewhere behind us.

Then my phone lit up on the dash. His name.

Caleb.

I answered. His first words were not "Is she breathing?"

They were, "Ava. You froze my foundation."

A beat.

"Where are you taking my daughter?"