Pretty Baby novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Front Page

"I'm from a long way away," I told Mabel, and my voice only shook a little.

She nodded.

"Daddy says it's okay to miss people," she said. "He says it's okay to miss them out loud."

"He's right."

"Do you miss someone?"

I looked at the comma behind her ear, and I thought, you're the only one.

"Very much," I said.

The bathroom door opened, and Stefan came out in a towel with his hair wet.

He saw his daughter on my lap, and me in a bedsheet, and he stopped.

"Mabel," he said, very carefully. "Go find Nanny."

"Lydia's from far away," she announced, and went.

He closed the door behind her and leaned on it.

"I have a six-year-old and no lock that works," he said.

"I like her," I said. "I really like her."

Something moved across his face, quick and private.

"So do I," he said.

The morning after that, the world found out who I was.

I woke to a dozen missed calls from my booker and a text from a number I didn't know.

It said, "Check the Tribune."

The front page of the Tribune's business section had a photograph of me at the gala, mid-sentence, with my mouth open.

The headline said, "THE ESCORT AND THE HEIR."

Below it, in smaller type, was a line that made my stomach turn.

"Hartwell fiancée accused of stealing from her own mother."

I read the first paragraph standing in the kitchen in Stefan's shirt.

A "family friend" had told the paper that Lydia Kaufman cleaned out her mother's savings.

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