I sat back down, giving her space. The sounds of the office filtered in around us. I heard Nalani wrapping up her orientation speech, someone laughing in the break room, the distant wail of a siren passing on the street below.
"I looked up your foundation online," Evie said. "After… after that day."
Interesting. "And what did you find?"
"I saw stuff about the health clinics, the scholarships, and the education programs." She was reciting from memory, I realized. She'd done her research. "The thing you did last year, with the mobile mammogram unit? That was in the news. You helped find cancer in like, a hundred women who wouldn't have gotten checked otherwise."
"Eighty-seven," I said. "But who's counting?"
The faintest smile flickered across her face. Gone before it fully formed.
"My mom used to do charity stuff." The words came out slower now. “Before she stopped coming to see me. She'd take me to these events and write checks and take pictures, and then we’d come home, and she’d complain about how boring it was. It was kind of boring, but I always wanted to know where the money went."
I kept my face neutral. Said nothing.
"But your foundation is different." Evie looked up. "You’re right there with the people you help. It’s not boring at all."
I smiled. She might not have employed the right words, but I knew exactly what she meant, and that was why I did what I did. I didn’t just want to throw checks at nameless causes and call that my charitable action of the month. I wanted to be involved, to actually see the faces of the people I’d chosen to help.
My parents didn’t understand my passion or where the urge came from. Sure, they made their fair share of donations, but I preferred to be an active part of the solution. And I didn’t think I was better than them for it.
"You have a point," I said. "At least we try to make sure we’re always present. But I want to be clear about something, Evie."
She straightened in the chair. Attentive. Ready to be tested.
"This isn't a photo opportunity. It's not a line on a college application. It's not something you can do for a week and then forget about when something more interesting comes along." I knew that wasn’t her angle, but it was something I always said to volunteers. I leaned forward, holding her gaze. "If you come here, you work. You learn. You show up even when it's hard or boring or uncomfortable. Can you do that?"
Evie nodded. "I can do that."
"It won't always be glamorous. Some days you'll be stuffing envelopes. Some days you'll be hauling boxes. Some days you'll sit in on meetings that go three hours long and feel like they accomplish nothing."
"That's okay."
"You'll meet people who've had lives very different from yours. People who might not like you at first, just because of where you come from. You'll have to earn their respect. It won't be handed to you."
"I know. I want to earn it."
I studied her for a long moment. The set of her jaw. The determined light in her eyes. The way her hands had unclenched in her lap, fingers relaxed now, like she'd found her footing.
She meant it. Kids were terrible liars, especially kids like Evie, who hadn't yet learned to pretend to be sincere. This was real.
"And your father? Does he know you're here?"
"He knows. He's not happy about it." She glanced toward the window, then back at me. "But he said I could come."
That must have been an interesting conversation, I thought. I could already picture Sebastian’s face, growing red as Evie insisted on coming here. It shouldn’t have filled me with so much joy, but it did. I relished the fact that he hadn’t succeeded in keeping her away from this.
"He's not that bad, you know. My dad. He just doesn't know how to..." She trailed off. "He's really good at business stuff. But people stuff is harder for him."
Sebastian Dubois is that bad, probably a lot worse if you dug deep enough. But I wasn’t about to tell this child what an absolute animal her father was. "I've noticed."
"He's trying, though. Since my mom left, he's been trying really hard. He just doesn't always know how."
Right. It mustn’t have been easy for him, being a single parent that is. But I didn’t feel bad for him. Any unsuspecting woman would feel empathetic toward him. The only person who deserved empathy here was Evie, and maybe Caroline. I didn’t like the way she’d left Evie, but I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Because what if Sebastian had forced her hand? He was powerful enough to do that. Only God knew what horrors that woman had endured at his hands to have her fleeing from New York a few months after the divorce.
She’d come back a few times. The media had had a field day with that, speculations about whether theITcouple would reunite. But one photograph capturing Caroline with an Arabian billionaire, and that conversation died quickly.
