Page 9 of The Billionaire's Masquerade Ball

Chapter 4

Cynder zipped her coat up to her chin and pulled her hat down low as she picked her way through the cemetery. She had a blanket tucked under her arm and a sandwich in the other. Though it was noon, the grass crunched under her feet, still stiff with frost. Since her father died, she had spent every Friday lunch that she could at his graveside, but the winter weather might put a stop to it. The air held the promise of snow.

When she reached the black marble headstone, something Gail had picked out and that her father would have hated, Cynder spread out the blanket next to it. The headstone sheltered her a bit from the wind’s bite, but her eyes were already watering from the cold. She stuffed her fingers into the pocket of her coat. It was too cold to eat, even with gloves.

“Hey, Dad,” Cynder said. It made her feel better somehow, to come here and talk out loud, even if it wasn’t logical.

Fridays had been their standing lunch date for the past few years. They met either in his office with sandwiches or went out for a quick lunch. It was their way of keeping in touch and checking in. It was too easy to work together, but never really talk about real life. The one rule was that they couldn’t talk business. Today she was going to break that rule, though without her father actually being there, the rules could probably be broken.

“This is the biggest event I’ve ever planned and I don’t even get to see it all. We’re using almost every single vendor from our list and then more that Gail found. I don’t know them well enough to trust them. I did about ninety percent of the planning, but that other ten percent is what I’m worried about. Too many unknowns. I think this is going to be a disaster.”

Cynder swallowed, feeling the tears as they began to course down her cheeks. With her hands in the pockets of her coat, she didn’t even attempt to wipe them away.

“I can’t decide if I want everything to go down in flames. I hate for our reputation to drop. You built this company so well! But it’s not our reputation anymore, is it? When you left Looking Glass to Gail, it stopped being ours. It’s now hers, so I guess I shouldn’t care.”

She was really sobbing now. Leaning her head forward against her knees, Cynder shuddered against the cold. A few minutes later her tears subsided. She wiped her wet cheek with her gloved fingers, then traced the front of the headstone.

“It just feels like…all I have left of you is almost gone,” she said. Her voice was barely a whisper, the wind whipping away her words. Not that it mattered. She knew that her dad wasn’t there anymore, not really. The other constant besides Friday lunches had been church on Sunday. She believed her father was in heaven, not stuck in the coffin below, but something about coming here still felt important to her.

Another gust of wind almost took her breath away. Cynder glanced up and noticed a man standing at a grave site twenty feet away. He hadn’t been there when she arrived. For a moment, she froze, feeling exposed and embarrassed by her graveside picnic. But he had his back to her. His shoulders shook. Was he crying? Her heart clenched like a fist in her chest.

Cynder could see fresh carnations in front of a simple headstone and a stuffed pink bear at the other. She wished she could say or do something, but knew better than to try and comfort a stranger. Cynder preferred to mourn alone. Maybe he did too.

When he turned to go, his gaze swept right over her, unseeing. She watched his face, which was achingly handsome. Though he looked to be in his thirties, he had a boyishness to his face, countered by a neatly-clipped beard, barely more than a five o’clock shadow. Thick brown hair fell over his forehead and he pushed it away from his eyes as he walked.

Even from this distance, she could see that his cheeks were wet with tears. As Cynder watched him, an invisible thread stretched between them, drawing her tightly to him. It wasn’t because he was attractive, though he was. It was the pull of shared grief.

She didn’t know who he had lost, but she felt bound to him nonetheless. He knew what it felt like to get up in the morning, feeling the empty space carved out where someone you loved used to be. He had the same emptiness she felt inside of him. Looking at his face, Cynder sensed that his grief ran deep, deeper even than hers. Loss soaked through him, seeping outward from his slumped shoulders to the hooded sadness in his eyes.

Compassion spread its warmth through Cynder’s chest. She fought the urge to cross the distance between them and wrap her arms around his waist. He seemed so lost, so cold, so alone. If she had to describe him in a word, she would have said he was thin. Not physically, but deeper. He seemed like a cardboard cutout of a real man, pressed down by the weight of loss.

Cynder’s sadness deepened as she watched him move toward a black BMW. He glanced back toward the cemetery once more and then he disappeared inside the car.

Cynder didn’t know why, but she waited until his car was out of sight to pack up her blanket. She left the sandwich against the marble headstone. Her father would have probably appreciated it more than flowers anyway.

Curiosity made her walk by the graves where the man had left the flowers and stuffed bear. Reading the headstones brought her to tears again, as if his losses were now her own. Unlike her father’s big, shiny, ostentatious marble, these markers were simple stone. The way they should be, Cynder thought.

The larger headstone read:

Sarah Smith

November 14, 1982 – May 22, 2003

beloved wife and mother

The smaller one was even more heartbreaking:

Ryder Smith

May 22, 2003

precious daughter

Cynder felt the tears tracking over her cheeks as she looked down at the carnations and the tiny, pink bear. Was this his wife and child? Sister and niece? The depth of pain stretched across his face made her think that this had been his wife and daughter.

They had died fourteen years ago. This surprised Cynder. The grief on his face had looked so raw and fresh. Not that you ever recover from loss, but even after six months, she could feel her own grief lightening ever so slightly. For that man to look the way he did after so many years … the compassion she felt for him only deepened.

While the loss of her father still tore at her, she couldn’t imagine losing your spouse or your child. She wondered about the baby. Had Ryder lived a few minutes? A few hours? Or had the mother been in a car accident while pregnant, killing them both in one fell swoop? She shuddered from the cold and from the thoughts racing through her mind.

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