He Hid Me for Twelve Years, Now the City Knows My Name novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Put My Name In It

Kate gives the reporter her name, Pete stands beside her, and Lorna brings soup and begs her to say she's a friend. At dawn Harrison is sitting on her stoop.

The reporter held her phone between us and pressed record.

"Ms. Malloy, for the record. Your name, your age, what you do."

"Kate Malloy. I'm thirty-one. I'm a pediatric physical therapist at Lakeshore Children's Rehab."

"And you've been with Harrison Ashdown for twelve years."

"Since I was nineteen. I was pouring coffee at his hotel."

"Nobody's ever seen you together."

"That was his choice for twelve years," I said. "Tonight it was mine to say it."

She lowered the phone an inch.

"What do you want from him?"

"I want to hear him say it where people can hear."

"That's all?"

"It would be a start," I said.

She thanked me and went down the steps into the sleet.

I stood in the doorway until she was out of sight.

My hands began to shake, now that nobody was looking.

I was still climbing the stairs when a truck pulled up outside, too fast, and a door slammed.

My brother took the steps two at a time.

Pete Malloy had grease on his forearms and his Cubs cap on backwards, because he had come straight from the garage's back office.

"I saw my sister on my phone," he said. "Holding some lady's fur coat."

"It was a very good coat."

"Kate."

"I know."

He pulled me into his chest and held on, smelling of motor oil and cold air.

"Twelve years and I never once met the guy," he said. "I figured he had a reason."

"He did," I said. "He had several."

Pete made scrambled eggs in my kitchen at one in the morning, because it was the only thing he knew how to do for a crisis.

He burned the first batch.

I ate the second batch standing up.

The buzzer rang at ten past one.

Lorna came up the stairs with a thermos in one hand and a tote bag in the other, still in her gala dress and a camel coat.

"I brought soup and a plan," she said. "You can have either. Preferably both."

She hugged me hard, her blonde hair cold against my cheek.

Lorna had been my friend for ten years.

She had held my hair back at my father's wake and driven me to the airport when Harrison forgot the date.

"I tried to get to you," she said. "My car was stuck on Lake Shore. I'm so sorry, Kate."

"You're here now."

She sat at my table and poured the soup into a mug.

It was chicken and rice, with the lemon she knew I liked.

"Okay," she said. "The plan. In the morning, Harrison's office puts out one line. Ms. Malloy is a dear friend of the family. Nobody's lying, and the whole thing dies by Monday."

I put the mug down.

"A friend of the family is what he told them."

"It's what we can live with."

"I can't."

Pete leaned in the kitchen doorway with his arms folded, watching her.

"Kate," Lorna said gently. "You know what his mother is like. If she reads the word girlfriend in a headline, she'll pull his shares by Monday. I've been holding that wall up for years."

"You've said that for years."

"Because it's true."

"I've asked him four times to take me to meet her," I said. "Twice at Christmas."

"And he wanted to. I was there every time."

That was true.

She had been there every time.

Her phone lit up on the table, with one letter on the screen.

She turned it face down.

"Work," she said. "The night desk is losing its mind."

She stayed another hour and was funny about it.

She did a voice of the woman in gold, ending with "be careful, sweetheart," until even Pete laughed.

At three she kissed the top of my head.

"Sleep," she said. "Don't answer anyone. I'll fix the morning."

I locked the door after her.

Pete took the couch, and I took my bed, and I did not sleep.

At six I gave up on sleep and went down to the entryway for the cold air.

The storm door was fogged from the cold.

On the other side of it sat a man on my front stoop, his tuxedo jacket soaked through, one shoe untied.

The black Maybach was parked crooked at the curb with the door still open.

Harrison lifted his head, and his eyes were red.

"I'm not asking you to let me in," he said through the glass. "Just let me say it to your face first. Then you can shut the door."

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