Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO GAVE HIM THE COMPASS
Daniel had barely stepped away from the stage when Ava intercepted him.
Not aggressively.
Not publicly.
She simply appeared beside the hallway leading toward the hotel’s coatroom and said, “Mr. Mercer?”
Daniel stopped.
Lily nearly walked into his leg.
Up close, Ava could see that the compass was even more unmistakable.
The tiny dent beneath the hinge.
The faded line along one side.
The crescent scratch.
Her chest tightened.
Daniel offered the careful smile of a man accustomed to being approached by people who possessed far more money than he did.
“Ms. Hawthorne. I hope I didn’t embarrass your foundation up there.”
“You didn’t.”
Lily tugged at his sleeve.
“Daddy, I liked the tiny cakes.”
Daniel smiled down at her.
“You liked six tiny cakes.”
“Five.”
“You hid one in a napkin.”
Lily considered that.
“Then six.”
Ava would have laughed under any other circumstance.
Instead, her eyes returned to the necklace.
“Where did you get that compass?”
Daniel’s smile faded.
His hand rose automatically to the pendant.
“This?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Ava had spent eight years learning to control her face in boardrooms.
She failed completely.
“It belonged to my husband.”
Daniel stared at her.
The noises from the ballroom suddenly seemed very far away.
“I’m sorry?”
“My husband, Nathan Hawthorne.”
Daniel looked down at the compass, then back at Ava.
“That’s impossible.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean—”
He stopped.
Lily looked between the adults.
“Daddy?”
“It’s okay, bug.”
But his voice said the opposite.
Ava lowered hers.
“My husband wore that compass almost every day for fourteen years. I gave it to him when we were twenty-seven. The scratch near the top happened in a cabin outside Aspen.”
Daniel turned the pendant over.
His thumb traced the mark.
For the first time, something close to fear entered his expression.
“My wife gave this to me.”
Ava’s heart seemed to stop.
“Emily?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“About four months before she died.”
Daniel glanced toward Lily, then toward the ballroom.
“Can we not do this here?”
Ava nodded immediately.
Her assistant, Claire, led them to a private sitting room off the hotel library.
Lily curled into a velvet chair with a small box of crayons Claire found at the reception desk.
Daniel remained standing.
Ava did too.
Neither seemed capable of pretending this was a normal conversation.
Daniel removed the compass.
“I had never seen it until Emily got sick.”
“What did she tell you?”
“Not much.”
“Please.”
Something in Ava’s voice softened him.
Daniel sat.
“She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. By the time we knew, it had already spread.”
Ava closed her eyes briefly.
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
Daniel stared at the pendant in his palm.
“A few weeks after she started treatment, she gave me this. She said somebody had given it to her during the worst night of his life.”
Ava’s fingers curled against her knee.
“Did she say his name?”
“No.”
“Nothing?”
Daniel thought.
“She said he was hurt. Badly.”
Ava felt cold.
“Nathan died in a car accident.”
Daniel looked at her sharply.
“Where?”
“Independence Pass.”
His face changed.
“Eight years ago?”
“Yes.”
Daniel leaned back slowly.
Emily had been a nurse.
Ava remembered that from the background summary Claire had whispered earlier.
“What hospital did Emily work at?” Ava asked.
“She spent a few years at a small emergency clinic near Leadville before we moved to Denver.”
The room tilted.
Leadville was less than an hour from the stretch of mountain road where Nathan had died.
Ava heard herself ask, “Did she ever work the night of November seventeenth?”
Daniel rubbed both hands over his face.
“I don’t know.”
Lily looked up from her drawing.
“Mommy had a red coat there.”
Daniel turned.
“What, sweetheart?”
“At the snow hospital.”
His expression tightened.
“What snow hospital?”
Lily shrugged.
“The picture.”
Ava looked at Daniel.
“What picture?”
Daniel looked genuinely confused.
Lily slid out of the chair.
“In Mommy’s box.”
“What box, Lil?”
“The sewing one.”
Daniel stared at his daughter.
After Emily died, there had been dozens of boxes he couldn’t bring himself to sort.
Clothes.
Receipts.
Christmas decorations.
Small pieces of a life that had ended without permission.
Lily returned to her drawing as if she had not just shifted the entire room.
Daniel turned back to Ava.
“There’s a wooden sewing box in my closet. Emily kept some photographs in it.”
“Could we see it?”
He hesitated.
Ava understood why.
She was a stranger.
A famous stranger with money, staff, influence and an impossible claim about his dead wife’s necklace.
“If you’d rather I didn’t come to your home—”
“No.”
Daniel stood.
“I want to know too.”
Forty minutes later, Ava Hawthorne stood inside a modest bungalow in west Denver while Daniel opened the closet he had avoided for nearly three years.
Lily sat cross-legged on the bed.
“That one.”
She pointed.
Daniel took down a cedar sewing box.
Its brass clasp resisted.
Then it opened.
Inside were spools of thread, buttons, Lily’s hospital bracelet from birth, and several envelopes of photographs.
Daniel handed them to Ava one at a time.
Christmas.
A beach trip.
Emily holding newborn Lily.
Then Lily suddenly said, “Red coat.”
Daniel froze.
The photograph was old and slightly faded.
Emily looked at least five years younger, standing outside a small mountain clinic in a red winter coat.
Snow covered the parking lot.
Beside her stood two nurses.
And in the window behind them was a date written on a paper notice.
NOVEMBER 18.
Ava’s pulse pounded.
One day after Nathan’s crash.
Daniel turned the photograph over.
There was handwriting.
Emily’s handwriting.
He read it aloud.
“Worst night of my career. The man from the pass survived until morning.”
Ava stopped breathing.
Nathan’s death certificate said he had died at the scene.
Daniel’s fingers shook.
There was one more sentence.
“He made me promise I would find his wife.”
Ava looked up.
Daniel stared back at her.
May you like
And beneath Emily’s handwriting, written in a different hand, was one name.
AVA.
