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“Ash,” the boy says again, and I’m starting to wonder if he has a stutter.

Natalie simply reroutes the conversation.

“Jamie, why don’t you take your blankey and Isaac and your tablet and find somewhere to sit that is comfy while me and Mr. Ashford work, okay?” she asks softly.

“Can I take my juice?” he asks with the smallest voice I’ve ever heard. I don’t know what it is, but something about it tugs at something in my chest. Like the highest chord on a guitar.

“Yes,” she says, handing him a little water bottle with characters on it out of her purse.

“Can I sit under the table?” he asks. She looks at me, then turns back to him.

“That’s fine,” she says.

“It’s a big table,” he says. “Like a fort.”

“It would make a good fort table,” she giggles. “But it’s Mr. Ashford’s table, so no fort making,” she scruffs his hair.

Then, the boy turns to me. “You should use it for forts. It’s big enough even for grown-ups. Even for you,” he says to me.

“Jamie,” Natalie cuts in.

“I’ve never built a fort before,” I tell him, and his eyes, tired as they look, grow wide in disbelief.

“Never?”

“Never,” I say, shaking my head.

“Never ever? Even when you were a kid?”

“Never, not even then,” I say. “But I did have a treehouse.”

“You had a treehouse!?” he gasps. “Mommy, he had a treehouse!”

“I bet he did,” Natalie says, staring at me oddly.

Jamie scrambles under the table. We don’t hear another peep out of him other than the slurping of his juice, the clicking of tablet buttons, and another whisper about the treehouse.

“A treehouse, huh?” Natalie says, taking a seat at the end of the table next to me. I offer a half-shrug because it’s all I have in response to such things. But she doesn’t seem to want to drop it. “Let me guess, big family?”

“I was an only child,” I say.

“Oh. Okay, yeah, that explains the treehouse,” she nods, clicking her pen in her hand.

“How so?”

“No offense, but an only child is usually spoiled more. So you had a treehouse, probably a trampoline, maybe a pool…”

“No trampoline, my parents had a pool, but it wasn’t for kids. I only had that treehouse because they liked there to be somewhere I could hide away when they had business parties. You know, the whole kids should be seen and not heard deal,” I state flatly. I suddenly feel exposed. I never give away information like that about my life, let alone childhood.

“Damn. You had that kind of rich upbringing,” she says.

“I had that kind of rich upbringing,” I say.

I expect her to say more or ask more. Considering there is a small child drinking apple juice at our feet, I think she will keep asking questions about my childhood. I’m surprised when she doesn’t. She pulls her things out of her bag and organizes them neatly on the table in front of us.

“So I looked up the Ambrose house, the one where the party will be held, and I noticed there is a Tuscan theme, despite most of the houses around it being modern minimalist. Which I personally find humorous for the word minimalist to be attached to any part of that area. Have you seen those estates? They don’t call it Billionaire Bunker for nothing⁠—”

“Mommy?” the voice from under the table asks.