Touching Down(34)

“A booster,” I breathed, feeling so many emotions all at once that I couldn’t sort through them to decide which was the most dominant.

Overwhelmed, grateful, surprised . . . even sadness, though in a lesser degree. Sadness because, as grand as this gift was and as good and as decent of a spot as I knew it had come from, it was one I wouldn’t get much, if any, use from.

“Mr. Turner guessed you wouldn’t want to navigate through New York City traffic on your first day here, so we arranged to have Jeremy here drive you and your daughter to your destination. If that is acceptable to you?”

While he went around to the trunk to pull out the booster seat, Charlie leapt into the backseat like she was diving into a ball pit. “This is awesome!”

After I’d wheeled the suitcases back toward the trunk, the man exchanged the booster seat for the luggage. “Jeremy will drive you to the address Mr. Turner gave us, and I will meet you all there to pick him up. Is there anything else I can do for you right now, Miss Hale?”

The booster seat in my hand, the brand-new, fancy car purring in front of me, my daughter’s future secured and settled on—I couldn’t imagine anything else in the world I needed right then.

“Thank you for everything.” I smiled before ducking into the back with Charlie and getting her booster situated.

She was playing with buttons and mirrors and lights—there felt like there were a hundred of them—and squealing over every last one.

“First Mercedes?” The driver, Jeremy, glanced back at us in the rearview mirror before pulling away from the car.

Charlie and I exchanged a look. She didn’t know what a Mercedes was and I hoped she never grew up to care about those types of things, but she did know this was different from the old car we’d been puttering around in, sometimes chanting positive words when it took a few tries to start.

“Yes,” I answered finally. “My first.”

“You sure are lucky, ma’am.”

Relaxing into the backseat, I looked at Charlie. She was swinging her legs, clutching her football, and staring out the window at the big wide world of New York City, her new home. She already looked like she belonged here.

“Yeah, I really am.”





“IS THIS A mansion?” Charlie reached across the seat and gave me a little shake when the car rolled to a stop. The traffic would take some time getting used to. It had taken us close to an hour to go fifteen miles.

“What do you mean?” I asked absently, scrolling through the email my doctor in Portland had sent me with a list of neurologists in New York City who specialized in Huntington’s. There were a lot, which was awesome, except I knew none of them could change my prognosis.

“Man. Sion.” Charlie turned my head, so I was looking out the window she was gaping out of.

I gaped with her. I thought we’d stopped at another endless traffic light, but we hadn’t. We’d stopped in front of a house.

Or as Charlie liked to call it—a Man. Sion.

“Well, is it?” Charlie rolled her window down and stuck her head out as far as it would go, inspecting the structure before us.

“Yes, this is a mansion,” I answered, leaning toward the driver. “Did we make a wrong turn?”

Jeremy gave me a funny look. “Nope. We’re here.”

“We’re here?” I repeated. “Where’s here?”

Tapping the navigation screen with the address on it, he read, “Fifteen-twelve Legacy Lane.” Then he opened the door and stepped out.

“Oh my gosh. This is it? This is where we get to live?” Charlie had her seat belt undone and was shoving out of the door before I’d regained muscle memory.

I double-checked that the address Grant had texted me a couple of days ago was the same one listed on the car’s navigation, was the same one hanging above the wide double doors at the front of the house. It was.

“Is this . . .?” I managed as I slid out the same door Charlie had.

She was busy sprinting around, checking out the different flower beds dotted around the property.

“Grant Turner’s estate? Yeah, it sure is.” Jeremy was lifting our luggage out of the trunk but paused a moment to inspect the place. “Not too bad for playing football, right?”

I smiled but didn’t answer—I was still trying to recover from the car, the mansion, and that Grant had brought us here instead of to a house he’d rented for us. Hell, I was still trying to catch up on the last couple of weeks and all that had happened. Moving from Oregon to Texas to New York. Telling Grant that he had a child, introducing them, admitting the reason why, agreeing to move up here with him. Life was going too fast, and it made me panic. I didn’t have my eighties to look forward to the way most of my peers had—I had years left in my hourglass. Months of actual enjoyable life where I was still mostly in control of my body and mind.