Page 247 of Ashes of Sin and Stardust

Then the team didn’t like the marketing campaign and wanted to do mailers and billboards instead of what we’d been doing for the past few weeks. I found myself snapping at a few of the other members, because instead of making progress on any of the topics on the agenda, now I was having to defend the fact that my experience and my history of financial improvement was more important than my minimal public-school education.

On my way home I went by one of the hotels for a surprise inspection, only to find that the manager wasn’t there, and had been handing off his shifts to one of the assistant managers but still clocking his hours. I fired him, promoted the assistant, and then had to request an IT specialist to go back through the security footage over the past month to calculate his shifts worked before Friday so his final paycheck could be adjusted.

I went by the grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner and got a phone call from one of the caregivers. One of the girls had written a note, left her cell phone, and made a run for it, eager to make her own way in the world with no help.

To be honest, I’d expected that one. She’d always been stubborn and struggled with self-sabotage, but I wished she’d let us help. I told Rick to call Jaime, who handled recording the status of the rescued girls.

And honestly, it was all in a day’s work. This was the normal shit I dealt with daily, and it was what I expected every day when I woke up. But my mood wasn’t normally this bad. Every single little thing that happened seemed to remind me that I was just a very well marketed, very lucky, very mean bully, who should still be working at Waffle House and living out of my car.

I sat in my car for a few minutes when I got home, wondering what Alice had in store for me. She’d been asleep when I left, and I’d kept an eye on my texts all day to make sure she didn’t drop from yesterday’s intense session, but honestly, she was usually fine. Just like she’d warned me, she felt level-headed, sweet, balanced, and grounded after our play. As long as I responded to her text messages every few hours, she was happy and didn’t feel neglected or ignored.

I scrolled through our most recent texts. An onslaught of memes, a screenshot of a schoolgirl skirt she wanted to know if I liked, and a few gifs of girls doing happy dances filled my screen.

I was about to get out of my car to go inside, when another text came through from her:Oh also, I forgot earlier but I just remembered. Thank you for leaving me coffee this morning :)

Shit. I hadn’t gotten coffee at the grocery store.

I debated turning around and going back out to the store to get some, but it was getting late, I was tired and pissed off, and I still had to cook. So I gathered my shit and went in the house, making a note on my calendar to get more tomorrow.

Inside, I set my stuff down and Alice popped out of nowhere, throwing her arms around my leg and clinging to me, keeping me from being able to walk. I stared down at her, waiting for her to get off me so I could move.

She looked up at me and smiled. “Hi Sir.”

“Hi Alice.”

“So I did a thing, please don’t be mad.”

I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath.For fuck’s sake, all I want right now is twenty minutes of no drama and no bratting and maybe a fucking drink.

I opened my eyes. She was still smiling. “Can it wait? I’m really tired.”

“Sure!” She jumped up and took the grocery bag from the floor by my feet. “I’ll put these away.”

“Thank you.” I removed my shoes and went to the couch, putting my sore feet up on the ottoman and rubbing my temples.

Home. Relax. Try not to think about the bullshit.But it was pretty fucking hard, because pretty much everything happening today made me feel like a failure.

Alice came in a few minutes later and plopped down on the couch beside me, eager to start talking my ear off. “Your TV appearance is confirmed. And you got a few more invitations to dinner from local restaurants today, I set them all up for you. And you got a letter in the mail,” she said, extracting an envelope from her back pocket. “It’s, like, an actual letter. Not a bill or a piece of junk or something. It’s handwritten and I held it up to the light, and there is notebook paper inside. I didn’t open it though.”

I recognized the handwriting on the front of the letter. It was not a letter I wanted to open right now, but why the hell wait? The day had already gone to shit. I unfolded the page and glanced through it quickly. Alice was laying on the ground on her stomach, scrolling on her phone and still talking nonstop.

Dear Mister Weston, I never formally apologized to you for the events back in August nearly seven years ago...

“The police came by today. Sam was there with them. He said to tell you things are basically halted completely. Which made me really mad, but I guess we could always call Lindsay and ask her to blackmail him or something. Can she do that? I feel like she would do that.”

...This is all to say, I wanted to thank you for everything you did. You gave me back my daughter and, for the few years I got to enjoy her, she was the light of my life. I know now that my actions and words hurt you deeply, and I’m very sorry...

“Also I was wondering, there’s this exhibit at the science museum and it’s only going to be here for a weekend, and it’s this cool display where they’re going to be displaying space junk, and have some of the famous telescopes they’ve used to–”

“Alice, I really need, like, twenty minutes, little bug. I have a headache, nothing has gone right today, and I’m exhausted.”

She shut up and didn’t make another sound. I was staring straight ahead as I tucked the letter into my pocket. I’d read the rest later. Remembering my past failures wasn’t going to improve my mood today.

Alice climbed to her feet and stood in front of me, her head cocked to one side, no expression on her face.

“Are you mad at me?”

“I swear to God, I am not mad at you a single drop.”

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