Adrian swallowed. A sinking feeling he couldn’t explain spread through his stomach, and he stepped into the room and took a closer look around. There was a neatly put-together desk and a comfortable-looking office chair. The room’s closet was left open, its door removed entirely. It was outfitted with filing cabinets, likely where Sterling kept his business records. A tall potted plant—some tree-like thing with waxy-looking leaves—stood in the corner. But it was the collage hung on the wall facing the desk that Adrian’s eyes were drawntonext.
Picture upon picture had been slotted together, some old and fading, featuring a teenage Sterling and a small, female child, while others were newer and showed Sterling closer to his current age. The young girl in them aged as he did, and Adrian followed the progression of time thanks to herapparentage.
In one photo, the tiny girl with blond pigtails with a too-big, bright pink backpack and a gap-toothed smile stood next to a young Sterling, silent pride on his lips. In another, Sterling and a skinny pre-teen girl whose hair fell to her elbows and whose grin was contagious—hands on her hips to tame some of the billowing graduation robes she wore—stood before a sign that read Parkdale Elementary School. Not all that far from that photo, Sterling, a little older and a little more haggard, stood at the side of a young woman who flashed the camera a big thumbs up with one hand while clutching her high school diploma withanother.
Adrian recognizedherface.
Clarissa.
Heart pounding against his ribs for reasons Adrian couldn’t quite pin, he watched their story unfold. Sterling, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, carried a cardboard box to the open door of an apartment building. The shot was framed over Clarissa’s shoulder—she was shooting a selfie, and she winked at the camera as the picture was taken. In another, Sterling, in one of his fine suits, buried his head in his hands in obvious embarrassment as Clarissa stood by his side with her usual brand of zany confidence outside The Shepherd. There was a bottle of Knob Creek in her hand, and she held it out toward the camera as if to declare, “see whatI’vegot?”
There were rumors around the club that Sterling and Clarissa were dating. For a while, Adrian had believed them. He’d seen the way Sterling and Clarissa got along firsthand, and he knew that there had to be something between them. But now that he’d seen this, heunderstood.
Sterling and Clarissa weren’t a couple. If Sterling was almost forty, he was a little too young to be Clarissa’s father, but by the looks of the photographs, he might as well have been. All his life he’d been by Clarissa’s side, watching her grow, accompanying her to all the biggest events in her life, sharing in her successes, and likely helping her through herfailures.
In all of the pictures, Adrian never saw another parental figure. He knew that it was possible that Sterling had simply chosen photos with only him and Clarissa present, but Adrian’s heart told him that wasn’t the case. The pride in Sterling’s eyes was paternal. There had been no one else in Clarissa’s life—no one there to celebrate and commiseratewithher.
Sterlingwasit.
And by the looks of Sterling’s office, Clarissa was all hehad,too.
Adrian tore himself away from the photo collage to look at the hand-drawn images on the wall. Most were done in crayon, the kind of abstract, blobby pictures that young children drew. But one, close to Sterling’s desk, showed advanced craftsmanship. He set his fillet knife and paper clip down on the desk toexamineit.
The drawing was far from perfect—the lines wobbled and there was something off with the proportions—but there was heart in it that couldn’t be ignored. A few indistinct bottles of liquor and a set of fuzzy handcuffs were placed together on the page, and beneath, in bubbly handwriting, was amessage.
Happy 5th anniversary to TheShepherd!
You did it! So proudofyou.
Love, your littlesister
PS: all my friends think you’re the coolest but I still think you’regross:P
There was a coffee stain ringing the bottom right corner, and the paper had faded and gone brittle with age, but time only made the drawing more special. The Shepherd’s fifth anniversary had been twelve years ago. Even after all this time, Sterling kept mementos from Clarissawithhim.
The strange, alien tightness in Adrian’s chestreturned.
Sterling wasn’t pretending to be a wholesome man. He hadn’t suddenly changed his tune just because Adrian was pregnant, and he wasn’t trying to trap Adrian into a relationship via the baby. The nice guy act that had driven Adrian up the wall was genuine. All his life, even back in his teenage years, Sterling had been a family man—acting as a father to a girl who hadnothing.
And now that Adrian was pregnant, he was ready to step into that roleagain.
Distressed, Adrian rubbed a hand over his mouth and stepped back from the drawing. His thigh hit the corner of Sterling’s desk, and he winced as pain flooded his nerves from the site ofcontact.
Sterling hadn’t been trying to control him by telling him to calm down, Adrian realized. He’d been truly concerned for the life Adrianharbored.
“You know,” Sterling’s voice said from the doorway, “if this were a movie, this is the part where I’d have to kill you for finding out mysecret.”
Adrian jumped. Heart hammering, he clutched at his chest and turned to face Sterling, sure that his entire face had turned red. He hadn’t heard Sterling come home. “I’m sorry. Ididn’tmean—”
Sterling pointed at the filletknife.
Adrian reconsidered his sentence. “…Well, Ididmean to invade your privacy. I guess that’s the only reason why I’d pick a lock,isn’tit?”
Sterling stepped into the office and closed the door behind him. “Is that how you’ve been getting into my penthouse without a key? Lockpicking?”
“For someone with so much money, you really should consider investing in better security.” Adrian shrugged. His heart hadn’t left his throat just yet, but he was relieved to find that his mind was working just fine. “Pretty soon it’s not going to be just youlivinghere.”
“I know. But before I make any renovations, I have to decide whether I’ll be moving from here or not.” Sterling gestured to a small stack of papers on his desk—real estate listings. “The location isn’t what bothers me so much as the possibility of embarrassment. I don’t want my future son or daughter to have the nature of my business hanging over their head. There’s the exterior entrance, of course, but if word gets around school that they live above The Shepherd… well. I know how kidscanbe.”
