“I know she was in a bad car accident. Chronic pain. Trouble walking. He takes care of her.”
“That’s the headline, honey. The article is worse.” Rina leans back on the stool. “Ada was a marathon runner. Competitive. Ran track in college, trained every morning, it was her whole identity. She and Saylor lived on a small property outside Wollongong—south of Sydney. Beautiful area. She ran a little hobby farm, raised Saylor on her own. He stuck around even after he was of age. He was twenty-two when they got into the accident.”
“They? I thoughtAdawas in a car accident. Saylor never mentioned he got hurt.”
“Because he didn’t. Miraculously. But hewasdriving. He was okay, but Ada was thrown through the front windshield. The poor thing crumpled like a piece of paper. Saylor said when he came to, he saw his mother’s body by the side of the road and thought for certain she was dead.”
“And the other car?”
“Walked away, unscathed. Everyone was okay, except for Ada.”
I place my hand over my heart and exhale with measured control like I’m trying to cool a hot beverage. “This all happened in Australia? Then how did they get here?”
“About a year after the accident, some doctor—or someone posing as a doctor—sold them on an experimental procedure. He told them it could restore her mobility and stop the pain. Saylor believed it. He sold everything. Their house, the farm equipment, a truck. They put every dollar they had into this treatment. They wrote a check, and moved to the United States.”
My stomach drops. “And? It didn’t work.”
“It didn’t work because they didn’t do it. It was a scam. The procedure didn’t exist. The money was gone. They had nothing—no house, no savings, no way to get home. Saylor somehow scraped together enough for a rent-controlled apartment that would accept cash payments. He thought if he could just get Ada to the right doctors…” Rina trails off. “He was twenty-two, barely a man. He moved his disabled mother to a foreign country with no money, no contacts, no plan. Just the hope that someone in this city could help her.”
“And that’s when he found you.”
“Actually, that’s when Taio found him. Bartending, barely making rent, taking extra shifts as a bouncer. Taio recognized the hustle—a good-looking kid working himself to death for very little pay—and brought him to me. A little more money changed everything. He could afford to fix up their apartment, he got Ada into pain therapy, got her medication. But nothing will ever absolve the guilt…” Rina shakes her head. “He blames himself for the scam. He blames himself for selling the farm. He blames himself for the fact that his mother lives on the fourth floor and can barely make it to the street some days. Every dollar he makes goes to her. He keeps nothing for himself.”
I’m not eating anymore. The bánh mì sits on its paper wrapping, untouched, growing cold. I’m thinking about Saylor in my foyer sayingI’m kind of her problem and her solution. I’m thinking about him fixing my mother’s staircase while his own mother can’t walk up them. I’m thinking about the Rolex hewouldn’t keep because forty thousand dollars felt like someone else’s money when his mother needs help that probably costs four times that.
Is that honorable? Or martyrdom?
“There’s hope though,” Rina adds. “A new experimental treatment, but I vetted this lead myself. A Dr. Yassa—Mount Sinai’s new walking billboard for medical advancement in neurosurgery.” Rina rolls her eyes. “Does it ever bother you how saving lives has to be commercialized?”
“It gets donor attention,” I say. “You know how this game works.”
Rina knows money. I know money. We’re friends because more often than we’ll admit, we detest it. Not because money doesn’t open doors. It’s just that once you walk through, it traps you in small, stuffy spaces, locking you into a facade that’s hard to walk away from.
“The experimental treatment. The one at Mount Sinai with Dr. Yassa. How hopeful is it on a scale of throwing darts in the dark, to shooting fish in a barrel?”
“That’s a weird scale, Celeste, but I guess somewhere in the middle? Some case studies had remarkable results. But it’s expensive, insurance won’t cover it. And there’s risk. And even if there wasn’t, Saylor just doesn’t have the money.” She looks at me with an expression I recognize—the one she wears when she’s placed all the pieces on the table and is waiting to see what you build. “He won’t accept help. You know that by now.”
Oh, do I. I know it the way I know the thread count of Egyptian cotton by touch—instinctively, completely, without needing to be told.
I pick up the sandwich. Take another bite. Chew slowly because it’s lost its luster as my appetite fades. I say nothing, getting lost in my own thoughts.
There’s a primal urge deep in my gut to help Saylor, whether or not he likes it. But some things need to sit before they become decisions. Forcing my way into this puzzle of tragedy and completing it my way is what a boss would do. Do I want to be Saylor’s boss…or something else?
The studio door opens without a knock, which means it’s either Margot or someone who has confused my workspace with a public park.
Ugh.It’s neither.
Greg walks in like he owns the room. Which, technically, by the parasitic math of our divorce settlement, he partially does. He’s wearing a navy suit—Brioni, obviously, because Greg has never met a designer label he didn’t want to be seen in—and carrying a tablet with the screen angled toward me like a weapon.
“Celeste. We need to talk about the Q3 projections.”
Rina doesn’t move from her stool. She doesn’t greet Greg. She sips her coffee with the unhurried calm of a woman who has ranked this man on her personal threat assessment and found him somewhere between “mosquito” and “inconvenience.”
“I’m in a meeting, Greg.”
“It’s Rina.Hi, Rina.” He barely glances in her direction. “And you’re eating a sandwich.”
“I’m in a meeting where I’m eating a sandwich. Which, last I checked, is still my prerogative in my own office.”
