Chapter 6: Odessa's Floor

On Friday I went back to my real job, and my real job had cake.

It was a sheet cake from the grocery store on Fleet Street, white frosting, with KESTREL piped across it in blue.

"Odessa," I said.

"Don't look at me. The analysts did it." She cut herself the corner piece. "I just paid for it."

Her firm had the ninth floor of a glass building in Harbor East, all windows and water and people who talked too fast.

Six years ago she'd hired me off my father's floor after one lunch.

"You're wasted on trucks," she'd said then. "Come buy broken things with me."

Now she pointed her plastic fork at my face.

"How's the cheek?"

"Fine."

"Liar. Eat cake."

I ate cake.

One of the analysts, a kid two years out of school, asked me what Note Two would cost us.

"Nothing," I said. "My father's going to hand it to me on August first."

"Will he know he's doing it?"

"Not until August second."

They laughed, and I laughed too, and for a minute I forgot to listen for footsteps.

At eleven the receptionist knocked on the glass of the conference room.

She looked apologetic.

"Two women for Ms. Cromwell. They say they're family."

Odessa didn't look up from her cake. "Are they?"

"Technically," I said.

"Send them in," Odessa said. "I want to see this."

Marigold came in first, in a cream suit with a gold chain belt and sunglasses on her head.

Berenice came behind her with a folder.

Marigold looked around the room, at the cake, at the blue letters, and something went tight around her mouth.

"Cute," she said.

"Hello, Marigold. Aunt Berenice."

Berenice set the folder in front of Odessa, not me.

"Ms. Gaffney. This is a demand from Cromwell Group."

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