Chapter 29: The Wall

I pulled the sheet to my chin and told Rory to come in.

He climbed onto the bed in his dinosaur pajamas with the loupe swinging from his neck.

He looked at Lachlan, who was awake now and trying to look respectable in his trousers.

"Why are you in Mama's bed?" Rory asked.

Lachlan opened his mouth and found nothing in it.

"Because I asked him to stay," I said.

Rory considered this.

"Okay," he said. "Can he make pancakes?"

"I can try."

"Mama burns them."

"I do not burn them."

"She burns them a little," Rory told his father, in a whisper that carried to the next floor.

Lachlan laughed so hard he had to put his face in the pillow.

Two weeks later, I stood on Fifth Avenue in front of a storefront with a paper sign over the glass.

The lease was signed and the walls were white.

Four of the sapphire's old buyers had each bought a painting instead.

I had paid the first year's rent in full from those sales.

Ansel stood beside me with a paper cup of coffee.

"It's smaller than the Merrick tower," he said.

"It's mine."

"It's yours," he agreed. "I like it better."

A ladder leaned against the front of the building.

Lachlan stood at the top of it, in his shirtsleeves, with a drill in his hand and a black metal sign under his arm.

He had measured the door that morning, and he had measured it twice.

"Higher," I called.

"It's at the same height as the door."

"That's the term."

"I remember the term," he said, and he drilled it into the stone.

The letters were plain, cut in brass.

LARKIN.

I stood on the pavement with my arms crossed and read my name over a door on Fifth Avenue until my eyes stung.

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