I read the message again. And then I read it one more time. What on earth is she up to? Essie may not realize it, but I know perfectly well who she is. She’s the sister of Vaughn Floyd, the guy who lost his life when my brother fell asleep at the wheel. Suddenly finding myself the head of Callahan Corporation has afforded me some luxuries that I wouldn’t normally have had. Such as: keeping an eye on Essie all these years. Not me, personally, of course. I’ve got a few people—Arturo used to be one of them—who have kept an eye on her. I’m sure there were much more qualified applicants to the legal secretary job at M, G & H, but when I got word that Essie had applied, I made sure she was hired. Because while I was living thousands of miles away from the family I lost, Essie, as I found out later, was very close to her brother. They’d been living together in some shitty apartment, her waitressing at a little café, him working two jobs, one as a delivery truck driver the other as a bike mechanic. Neither of them were earning much. It wasn’t difficult to surmise that the two of them depended on each other. Had been from a young age. I frequently tried to imagine my own brother and I having a relationship like that and the idea of it seemed laughable.

It probably sounds psychotic that I’ve been keeping an eye on a woman like this, someone I don’t even know, but I couldn’t help myself.

That day, the day of the funerals, I saw her across the cemetery. We made eye contact and that was it. I felt like I was falling face first down a dark, bottomless hole and I was never going to climb the hell back out again. She hated me. I could see it so plainly on her face. She fucking hated me, and that awful expression she wore burned its way into my brain. I haven’t been able to shake it since. I made a decision that I was going to make her life better somehow right there and then. I was going to make sure she didn’t suffer any further if I could prevent it.

Much like staying here and running the business, it’s not something that I necessarily want to be doing, but I feel I have to. Perhaps because I wanted to apologize, even though I wasn’t the one who was driving. Perhaps it was because I could relate—we both lost our entire families that day.

I look back to the computer screen and hit reply.

Essie, 

Thank you for your due diligence. I’d be very pleased if you could bring the documents by for me to sign. Three years is a long time to have paperwork incomplete. 

I will be free tomorrow afternoon, should this suit you. 

Regards, 

A. Callahan. 

I hit send, and my fingertips feel like they’re sweating. What the hell is wrong with me? I shouldn’t be engaging with this girl. Not really. While my investigators have been keeping an eye on her, they’ve witnessed too many disturbing incidences to count. Binge drinking. Minor drug addiction. The guys that go in and out of her apartment haven’t exactly been stand up members of society. I stopped wanting to know about that part after a while. I had my guys monitor her, make sure she was safe, but I didn’t want to know every time she took a new guy home with her. It made me feel….I don’t know. It made me feel shitty, for some reason. The door knocks, thankfully drawing me away from thoughts of Essie fucking other guys. “Come in.”

It opens, and Bridget’s blonde head appears. “Morning, Mr. Callahan,” she says brightly, stepping into the room.

I minimize the open email on my desktop. “Hey.” I’ve stopped telling her that she can call me Aidan. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I do, she’s still going to refer to me as Mr. Callahan. Makes me feel like my fucking father.

The granddaughter of my father’s good friend and former colleague, Jens Nordahl, Bridget’s a rangy, eager-faced girl of twenty-two. I think Jens and his family are hoping she’ll be the one to make me settle down. I’m not even entirely sure what her official job title here is; if I had to guess I’d say she’s my executive assistant’s assistant. Seeing as I inherited Gloria, my father’s ancient E.A., it’s good to have some younger energy around.

And she does have a killer rack.

“How are you?” she asks. “Do you need any coffee?”

“No, I’m all set. Thank you, though.”

“Okay.” She looks mildly disappointed. “Are you hungry? Is there anything else I could get you?”

“I’m fine, Bridget. Thank you.”

She stands there smiling, waiting for some instruction, anything that she can do for me. She’s a good-looking girl with an elegantly featured face. Most men would give their right nut to be in the position where this young pretty thing is all but begging for the chance to service them. I could say, “Well, Bridge, actually, I’d like us to play a little game. It’s called Army. We’re gonna go over to that couch. I’m gonna sit down, and you’re blow the hell out of me,” and she’d be more than happy to oblige. With a mouth like hers, I get the feeling she’d be really good at Army. 

But she makes me uneasy. She’s my employee, and things would go badly if I started shitting where I eat. Plus I don’t want to hurt her. She’s so eager, so desperate to make me smile and compliment her, say something to prove that I actually do like her. She’s not a bad girl. She’ll meet some guy and make him very happy, but that guy isn’t going to be me. The only thing that makes me happy these days is Oxy.

“All right then,” she says finally. She wrings her hands together. “Oh! I knew there was another reason that I came in here. My dad wanted me to ask you if you were available this Friday. It’s my grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary and we’re having a surprise party for them. It’d be really great if you could be there.” She’s got that starry look in her eyes. “Can you imagine being married for fifty years? And they’ve always been so happy together.”

I smile. “That’s a wonderful accomplishment,” I say. “And certainly something to be celebrated. But to be perfectly honest, I can’t imagine being married at all.”

She looks crestfallen, like she’s secretly already been planning our wedding day. She recovers quickly, though. “Can I tell my father that you’ll be there? It really would mean a lot. To him, but also to my grandfather.”

I’ve had to do a lot of these sorts of things over the years—be there at events and functions, the ambassador for my dead family. Talk about the sorts of things my father or brother might, reminisce about other occasions and events that I wasn’t even there for. Just the sort of shit I’ll have to do at this fiftieth wedding anniversary surprise party.

“Of course,” I say. “I’ll be there.”

After Bridget leaves, I find the folder I keep within another folder on my desktop, and I open it. I named it backups, but that’s not what it is. It’s photographs and some basic information about Essie. I look at the pictures. In a way, there’s a part of me that feels as though I know her. These aren’t photos a hired PI took of her; they’re photos she put up on Facebook, though she deleted her account after a few months, not long after she started working at the law firm, actually. The first thought that occurred to me when I saw her profile picture was that she looked a lot like Hannah. In fact, they could be sisters. And of course, why the hell wouldn’t she look like Hannah? The universe is just that fucked. My brother kills Essie’s brother, and then Essie ends up looking like the spitting image of the girl both me and my brother fell in love with.

 If neither of us had met Hannah, would things have been different between Alex and me? They certainly would’ve turned out differently for Hannah. Back then, I hadn’t actually thought about Hannah in a while. Too painful. But seeing Essie brought back so many memories. If Alex were alive, I knew he’d say the same thing: That chick looks just like the girlfriend you stole from me.