since I was born.”
His dark eyes blinked as though he were contemplating her outburst. Soft, sooty lashes, too pretty
for a man, guarded those dark eyes that saw so much in her when the rest of the world merely looked
through her. “Do you remember when I told you about the time I went to the circus?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me a memory from your childhood, a time that you were happy.”
She stilled. Images of hardship and empty, faded memories skated through her mind. “I don’t have
any.”
“There has to be something,” he said quietly, waiting for her to offer up some vivid recollection of
happier times.
She wanted to give him that. Needed to ease his mind before that sympathetic look in his eyes
turned to pity. Should she make something up? He’d know if she were lying.
The truth was, the only happiness she ever felt was linked to him. The first time she slept on a real
bed, the first time she ever properly bathed, her first fulfilling meal, all things most people took for granted she had never known until meeting him.
Then she thought of something. “When I was little . . .” she said quietly. “I must have been very
young. I could walk and I was talking, so I guess I was around four or five. We were standing in a
field, or it looked like a field to me at the time. I don’t really remember what buildings were around. I just remember the sky.”
His head cocked. “Why the sky?”
“It was a faded blue I’d never seen before, dull and cold. I’d never seen it like that before. The air
had a strange metallic scent to it, not like the tang of rain or the heaviness before a storm. This was different, lighter. Pearl was there, but she must have been preoccupied because I only recall her
presence, nothing about what she was doing.
“There was this unfamiliar current, like a soft whisper that gets your attention faster than any
scream. I looked up and the sky was swabbed with white cotton. The clouds were soft but
impenetrable, and there was an eddy of gray just above us. I thought if I found a branch long enough I
could pop those bloated gray billows. And then something amazing happened.”
“What?”
“Soft, drifting flakes began to fall from the sky. It was like God was sprinkling the world with sifted sugar. What I saw as ominous suddenly became enchanted. I watched them fall, each one taking a
slow journey down to Earth, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. It wasn’t rain. It wasn’t ash. It
smelled pure and looked so pretty. I should’ve been scared, but I wasn’t. When one landed on my arm
I gasped. Ice in the shape of a star. I called my mom, but it melted before she saw.
“I was too young to conceive how something so small and delicate could amount to something
so . . . consuming. I realized, over time, that snow was like a blanket of white death for people without shelter, but in that moment it was just magic being sprinkled from the sky.”
They were silent for a long moment. “You’ve never left the city.” It was a statement. He knew she
hadn’t other than their short trips to his country home. “I want to show you things, Evelyn. I want to
see that look in your eyes like when you saw your first snowfall. I want to be there for all your firsts.”
“You have been,” she whispered.
He nodded. “I want to be there for all of them. There are so many more.”
“I haven’t done much. I could never stray far because Pearl always pulled me back. She was the
anchor I carried. It’s scary letting her go. Sad, like a balloon cut from its string. I’m afraid I’ll just float away.”
His fingers twined with hers. “I won’t let you.”
She snuggled into his side. The movie was over and neither of them seemed to care. He had a nick
on his knuckle from the fall. She lifted his strong hand and kissed it. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
She thought about the snow. It was the first peaceful memory she’d had in days. After several quiet
minutes, Lucian asked, “If you could go anywhere, see anything, what would you want to see?”
Her world had always been so small, the mote in the eye of a giant. Lucian’s world was limitless.
He was the giant.
She wanted to experience everything, but never dared to hope for more than she was due. Perhaps
she was owed something great. “I’d like to see the ocean.”
He smiled. “Then that’s where we’ll start. I think we need to get away for a while. Your lessons will
be here when you return.”
For the first time she agreed with him. Her lessons would be there. She could take a break and
return to her education. “What about your job?”
“That’s the glory of being the boss. I can leave whenever I want. Tomorrow, after the funeral, we’ll