Chapter Eighteen
Jack
Jack slept better than he’d expected the night after Evie’s confession. It must’ve been the gin. He never usually drank the stuff, but it had hit the spot as he’d listened to the truth, the confession about her life. And this morning, it made him all the more determined to find the boy he’d been looking for.
As he drove out of the city and headed for his property in New Haven, in his mind Jack debated nature versus nurture. He was the son of Kent Churchill, an extraordinary and very successful, not to mention wealthy, businessman with a hunger Jack didn’t share. On the flip side, Jack had spent thirteen years under the watchful eye of Nicole, a woman who wasn’t related to him biologically yet a woman whose nurturing ways surely must have something to do with his empathy for Evie, his understanding for the boy he was looking for.
He pulled up outside his property. All the other times he’d come searching, it’d been for stints of an hour or two to no avail, but today, he wasn’t leaving until he’d scoured the streets for the boy he’d found on his porch that day and told to get lost. He wanted to put right what he’d done. He wanted to give this boy a chance just like Nicole had done for Evie. Of course, the boy could end up being bad news, but for once, Jack was determined to see past any rash pre-judgements and at least give the boy a go, if he ever found him.
Armed with a flask of hot coffee in his backpack, three sandwiches to cover him for the whole day and a bottle of water, Jack was thankful it wasn’t snowing now as he trudged the streets of New Haven looking in each and every doorway. He searched storefronts, looking for the face he knew he’d recognise, he caught the bus to the city wondering whether the boy would think it was better to head there. He caught a cab to a shelter where he thought he’d try his luck before he ran out of daylight, and when he asked around he realised how his description of the boy: jet-black hair, tanned complexion, blue eyes, sounded like half the boys in America. Deflated, he began to make his way back to his property.
A few blocks from home, he passed a local park. Acres upon acres of parkland with ample places to hide spread out before him, but with the day about to start drawing in, he decided it wasn’t even worth starting looking there today. It’d have to be another time. He was about to leave when he saw movement at the entrance: a gait he’d seen before as a figure moved away from him.
It was the boy. Jack was sure of it.
What he didn’t want was for this boy to bolt when he saw Jack coming towards him. So instead of rushing over, Jack hung back and followed the boy another two blocks until the boy crept down the side of the garage of a ramshackle property that looked even more dilapidated than his own.
Jack followed him. A twig snapped underfoot, already hardened from the frost that hadn’t cleared all day. Hearing the warning, the boy swung around suddenly, but not before he’d grabbed a weapon. He faced Jack, armed with a fence panel, nails protruding at threatening angles.
‘What the fuck do you want with me?’ the boy yelled.
Evie
‘Kenny, thank you so much.’ Evie took the rose one of the visitors to the shelter handed her when he arrived for breakfast that morning.
‘I didn’t steal it. It fell from a bouquet as a man in a suit took the flowers away from a florist and I even waited for him to stop and pick it up, but he didn’t. It was so beautiful, I had to rescue it.’ Kenny’s grubby face looked at her, awaiting approval.
‘Kenny, you are a kind man.’ Evie smiled as she went to find something from the kitchen that would serve as a vase.
‘Here, try this.’ Nicole handed her a tall glass, chipped at the top but suitable for the purpose.
Evie filled it with a little water, popped the rose in and leant in to smell the petals. She held it aloft behind the servery for Kenny to admire, and when he smiled she set it down near the cutlery stack where everyone coming inside could see it.
‘Did Jackson see you home safely last night?’ Nicole asked. Evie knew she was asking more than that.
‘Thank you, he did. He was a gentleman. Can I ask why you always call him Jackson when nobody else does?’
Nicole ran a dishcloth beneath the hot tap and squeezed it out ready to wash down tables. ‘I think he introduced himself as Jackson and so I kept using the name. Over the years he told me only his mother had ever called him by his full name, and I remember being really touched that he didn’t seem to mind me doing it too.’ She wiped the top of the servery, caught the spill of ketchup from the bacon sandwiches that had been served.
‘Have you heard from Kent since the other day?’
‘No, not a word. I think he’s as embarrassed as Jack, but he’d never admit it. That man always kept his cards close to his chest.’
Evie wondered whether Nicole, too, had more of a story to tell.
‘Two sausage sandwiches,’ Meg from the kitchen announced.
‘Thanks,’ Evie called in response. She collected the orders and delivered the first to Kenny, with a wink, the other to Mal, the man he was sitting with tonight. And when she returned to behind the servery to ask when the next round would be ready, she noticed Nicole’s face fall.
‘What’s up?’ Evie looked at Nicole and then followed her gaze, turning round to see what had got her attention. It was a man in a suit standing next to someone holding a clipboard.
‘Can I help you?’ Nicole was already on her way over.
Evie went out back to check on the upside-down puddings and helped dry the dishes while she was there. She thought about the closeness she and Jack had shared last night. When those photos had turned up at Nicole’s apartment, she’d been terrified and never would’ve predicted it would’ve led to her telling Jack everything. He’d moved from being the enemy to an ally, and again Evie felt as though her life here in New York was taking shape even more. It’d been hard to trust people for a long time before she arrived, and living on the streets she trusted nobody; but with first Nicole, then Bonnie, and now Lizzy and more recently, Jack, she was starting to realise how important friendships were. And they didn’t need to be established over a long time. Sometimes friendships simply clicked into place when you least expected.
‘Here you go, three sausage sandwiches.’ Meg put the plates onto the counter.
‘I’ll get these out there. Compliments to the chef.’ Evie grinned at the volunteer chef. She went out front and took the sandwiches to the nearest table, but her mind wasn’t on the banter she met with or the smiles from the regulars. She was concentrating on the men, walking around the room now, one with a tape measure measuring the doorways, the windows.
