The Colonel's Daughter Is Gone novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Name on the Building

Lydia walks into her father's tower with Hattie. The scholarship is real, Hattie accepts it in front of the whole floor, and at home Rodney has already seen a photo of her at her father's door.

The staff car was waiting at the curb at seven the next morning.

Rodney had left before dawn, and he had left orders.

The sergeant at the wheel was twenty-six, with a notebook open on his knee.

"Ma'am, the Colonel wants a list of everywhere you go today," he said.

"Then write it down," I said. "Midtown. Holcomb and Partners."

He looked up at me.

He looked at Hattie in the back seat in her denim jacket, and he looked at the pen in his hand.

"Ma'am, I think I left my pen in the motor pool."

He put the notebook in the glove box and pulled out into traffic.

The brass letters over the tower doors had been polished that morning.

HOLCOMB & PARTNERS.

I had walked out of those doors at twenty-four with one suitcase, and my father had not stopped me.

Hattie stared up at the name.

"It's bigger than the pictures," she said.

"You've seen pictures?"

"Mom, I've seen everything. I'm his granddaughter."

The lobby was full of people in dark suits who all stopped walking at once.

At the center of the marble floor stood a tall old man in a charcoal three-piece suit, leaning on a cane he clearly hated.

His hair was white now.

His mouth was the one I saw in the mirror.

"You're late," my father said. "By nineteen years and four hours. I've been here since six."

I couldn't answer him.

Hattie let go of my arm and crossed the floor in front of every lawyer in the building.

She put both arms around him, cane and all.

"Hi, Grandpa," she said.

His face broke.

He held her with one hand and hid his eyes with the other, and the whole lobby pretended to look at the ceiling.

I felt anger rise up in me, hot and sudden.

"You wrote to my daughter," I said.

"She wrote first," my father said. "She found my address in your old book."

"Mom, I'm sorry," Hattie said. "I was going to tell you. I didn't know how."

I looked at the two of them, and I was furious, and I was glad.

Both things were true.

"We're going to talk about this," I said. "Later."

"Of course," my father said, wiping his face. "Upstairs. There's a man in London who has been waiting since the sun came up over there."

The conference room on the fortieth floor had a screen that covered one wall.

A man filled it, in a rumpled gray suit, with ink on his cuff and a stack of papers at his elbow.

"Mrs. Rainey," he said. "Cedric Somerville, London office. I'm the partner your father has been shouting at since March."

"Mr. Somerville," I said.

"Your daughter's portfolio reached the Architectural Association's admissions panel on the second of April," he said. "I carried it there myself."

I went very still.

He had known about my daughter's work since March, and so had my father, and nobody in either of their offices had picked up a phone to tell me.

I let it sit in my chest.

He slid a letter across his desk and held it up to the camera.

"Hattie Rainey, you have been awarded a full scholarship, tuition and housing, starting in September," he said. "You have until tomorrow to accept."

Hattie read it with both hands over her mouth.

Behind us, half the floor had come to the glass doors to watch.

Hattie turned to me, and I nodded once.

She faced the screen. "I accept," she said, and someone out in the hallway started clapping.

"Good," my father said. "Now for Columbia."

He picked up a thick folder with the Rainey name on the tab.

"Their dean has been a golfing partner of your husband's for years," he said. "He's about to learn what Rodney really signed him up for."

"What did he sign?" Hattie asked.

"A seat that was never his to give away," my father said. "My people will send a letter this afternoon. Their lawyers will have it by Friday."

"Send it today," I said.

My father looked at me, and for the first time in nineteen years he smiled.

"That's my daughter," he said.

We were back in Brooklyn by dark.

The porch light was on at the house.

Through the front window I could see Rodney sitting at the kitchen table with his dress jacket still buttoned.

Alana was standing behind his chair, holding her phone.

On the table in front of him, face up, was a photograph.

It showed me walking into my father's building, with Hattie beside me.

Rodney didn't look up when I came in.

"Sit down, Lydia," he said. "You've been to see your father."

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