Page 64 of Bronson

It’s the very same ring I saw her eyeing in the window the day fate had destined we meet.

Watching her eyeing the ring from the sidewalk, I had a gut feeling she was planning to steal from me. Maybe not that day, but one day soon. I decided to keep an eye on her.

Then, she stepped in the door.

I made myself scarce, hiding in the shadows. The way she touched that butterfly so lovingly, it was almost a shame to have to catch her.

But no one steals from a Bachman and gets away from it. A smile creeps on my face, remembering that day. I check the time on the clock. Eight o’clock. I haven’t slept this late since I was a child.

Contentment travels through my limbs.

My gaze drifts to the brass clock on my nightstand—the one she stole the day we met and returned on her first morning working for me.

She still moves it around when she’s irritated with me. Never far. Never anywhere I can’t find it. Her favorite hiding place is beside the coffee, where she knows I’ll discover it before I’ve had enough caffeine to properly lecture her.

It has become our private joke. A reminder of the first thing she ever willingly returned to me.

Now, I have work to do. I get dressed and go to Mary’s house.

Five hours later, I return home. I’m covered in butter, brown sugar, and pineapple.

If I’m going to be subjected to a tacky luau, I’m at least going to do it properly.

I shower again, scrubbing the scent of pineapple from my skin. I shrug into what I assume is John’s classiest Hawaiian shirt (is there such a thing?) that I’ve borrowed, then call down to my driver to pick up Mary and help me load the car.

Dressed in a pink floral sundress, Mary sits beside me, happily chatting about Paige. She has a thousand questions, and I know the answers to most of them. What information I couldn’t get from my associates, Jane, or Ingrid, I got from Paige herself.

Paige loves the colors of the sunset—but her favorites are the ones that are pink and purple, not yellow and red. She longs to take a photography class. All the childhood stories she told to the woman in 204 were fake, as I had suspected. She was an only child, often left alone. But managed to have friends in school and make good grades. She was something of a bookworm growing up, her favorite story being Alice in Wonderland.

She’s broken one bone, a pinky, after a tumble down the front stairs as a child. She’d been alone that day and ran down to the neighbor she knew to be a nurse. The woman set the finger, and gave her a warm, homemade blueberry muffin with butter. Dried her tears with a soft kitchen towel. That memory was the reason she’d pursued her medical training. And to blame for her love of baked goods.

Her parents never noticed the finger.

She hadn’t had a proper Christmas growing up. According to Jane, every year on December first, Paige begins to go around to local shops and beg for donations for the home. Year after year, the amount of donated food has increased, leading up to last year, their biggest feast yet. They’d had a full turkey dinner with all the trimmings.

She loves heights but is afraid of spiders. Her favorite colors are pink and red. She worries about her height, her weight, the size of her perfect ass.

She’s annoyed that her hair won’t hold a curl. She’s obsessed with having her nails done.

She has a heart of gold. And a temper of fire.

She loves with a passion unmatched.

But I don’t share those last few things with Mary.

We pull up to the home.

I’d called ahead, and a couple of the male nurses meet us outside to help unload. Their eyes grow wide when they see the number of pineapple upside down cakes Mary and I have baked this morning. We haul boxes and boxes of fresh pineapples. One fruit for every member of the family and staff. Whether they can eat them or not, I have no idea.

In my arms I hold the box I carefully packed that afternoon. Small ceramic pink pigs. Stuffed with cash. To help them pay for their medicines. Or, for Iris’s neighbor, the man in room 305, gambling debts.

Paige refuses to let me pay for things for her ‘family,’ saying it needs to come from money she’s earned. I respect her. So, I have to get creative. Hence, the cash-bellied pigs.

We’re ushered into the big multipurpose room I’d heard Ingrid call Paigey’s party room. Cheerful Hawaiian music plays. There are patrons in wheelchairs, strumming on ukuleles. Craft stations are spread throughout the room. You can make your own lei out of pink and purple tissue paper flowers. There’s a buffet set up with pulled pork, potato salad, and rolls. An empty table awaits our cakes.

There’s Paige.

She wears a yellow sundress. There’s a bright red flower tucked behind her ear. A smile stretches across her face as she laughs at a joke made by one of the patients.