Chapter 3 - THE WATCH IN THE RABBIT
Blaire lowered Fiona onto a bench.
“What did you take from Daddy?”
Fiona looked suddenly worried.
“The clock.”
“Sweetheart, show Mommy.”
Fiona turned the stuffed rabbit over.
There was a tiny zipper beneath its faded cotton tail.
Blaire had forgotten the pocket even existed.
Fiona worked the zipper open and pushed two fingers inside.
Something silver dropped into Blaire’s palm.
Her father’s watch.
For several seconds, she could not speak.
The television still showed David wearing it in an old photograph.
But the real watch was here.
Heavy.
Cold.
Familiar.
Blaire ran her thumb across the dent beside the crown.
Her father had made that mark while repairing a boiler when she was eleven.
He had refused to replace the case.
“Scars mean something worked for a living,” he used to say.
Blaire turned it over.
The engraving remained.
FOR BLAIRE — KEEP YOUR OWN TIME. DAD.
Her throat closed.
Luca read it without touching the watch.
His jaw hardened.
“That’s not ambiguous.”
Fiona looked between the adults.
“Am I in trouble?”
Blaire immediately knelt.
“No, baby.”
“I took it.”
“I heard you.”
“Daddy had it in his desk.”
Blaire brushed Fiona’s hair away from her forehead.
“Why did you take it?”
Fiona’s answer was simple.
“Grandpa gave it to you.”
Blaire pressed her lips together.
Sometimes children reduced years of manipulation into one sentence adults had somehow learned to complicate.
Luca crouched a few feet away.
“Fiona?”
She looked at him.
“Did your dad know you took it?”
She shook her head.
“I put Bunny on it.”
That explained at least one thing.
David was not only searching for Blaire.
He was searching for something Blaire did not even know she possessed.
Mara spoke quietly.
“If he discovered the watch was missing after you left, he may assume you took it.”
“He already accused me of taking everything else.”
“What else?” Luca asked.
Blaire stood.
She put the watch into the inside pocket of her coat.
“My work.”
Luca said nothing.
Blaire was tired of saying things in fragments.
Tired of protecting David from the sound of what he had done.
“When Fiona was one, I started a support program for mothers who had suddenly lost housing. Women leaving marriages. Women whose partners died. Women who got sick. It started with twelve folding chairs in the basement of a church.”
Luca listened.
“We called it Second Start.”
His expression changed.
“I know that name.”
“You should.”
Blaire looked toward the television.
“David renamed it Vance Community Partners after donors became interested.”
Mara’s eyebrows lifted slightly.
Blaire continued.
“At first I didn’t care about the name. We were helping people. That was what mattered.”
She laughed softly, without humor.
“Then the articles started.”
David smiling with volunteers.
David handing out coats.
David sitting beside families Blaire had known for years.
Her name appeared less.
Then not at all.
“He told me donors preferred one clear face.”
Luca’s gaze sharpened.
“His.”
“Yes.”
“And you agreed?”
That question might have hurt coming from someone else.
But Luca did not sound accusatory.
He sounded like he wanted the truth.
“I agreed to step back when Fiona was born.”
“How long?”
“Twelve weeks.”
“And after?”
“Every time I tried to come back, something had changed. New schedule. New staff. New passwords. Meetings I wasn’t told about.”
She looked down.
“I kept telling myself the program mattered more than my title.”
Luca was quiet for a moment.
“David told our foundation he started the organization after watching his father struggle to raise three children alone.”
Blaire looked at him.
“David’s father owned four car dealerships.”
Mara turned away as though hiding a reaction.
Luca did not.
“He told us the watch came from that period.”
Blaire pulled it out again.
“Apparently my father had a much more exciting life after he died.”
Fiona tugged Blaire’s sleeve.
“Can we go now?”
That was the moment Blaire remembered that this was not a boardroom.
Her daughter was hungry.
Tired.
Confused.
And somewhere inside the airport, David was looking for them.
“Yes.”
Luca stood.
“My townhouse is fifteen minutes away.”
Blaire immediately started shaking her head.
“You don’t have to stay there,” he said. “Mara can take you to Queens afterward. But Fiona needs food, and we need to make sure David isn’t waiting at your cousin’s building before we send you there.”
Blaire hated that it made sense.
She also hated how tired she was.
“An hour.”
Luca nodded.
“An hour.”
Twenty minutes later, Fiona was sitting at a kitchen island in a quiet Manhattan townhouse eating buttered toast while wearing one of Luca’s oversized napkins like a cape.
The house surprised Blaire.
She had expected glass.
Marble.
Something cold.
Instead there were old books, family photographs, worn leather chairs, and a dent in one kitchen cabinet that clearly had not been repaired.
A boy of about eight appeared in the doorway holding a soccer ball.
He stopped when he saw them.
Luca looked over.
“Theo.”
The boy’s eyes went to Fiona.
“Who’s that?”
“Fiona.”
Fiona waved.
Theo waved back.
Luca turned to Blaire.
“My nephew.”
Theo corrected him.
“You forgot the important part.”
Luca sighed.
“He lives here.”
“And I beat him at chess.”
“Occasionally.”
“Yesterday.”
Luca ignored him.
For the first time, Blaire saw something other than billionaire or stranger.
Family.
Messy, ordinary family.
Theo sat beside Fiona and began explaining why toast tasted better cut diagonally.
Mara entered carrying Blaire’s suitcase.
“No sign of Vance near the service exit.”
Blaire exhaled.
Then Luca placed a magazine on the island.
David’s photograph covered the front.
The same watch was visible.
But Blaire noticed something else this time.
Behind David stood a mural.
Yellow houses.
Blue windows.
A woman holding a little girl beneath an umbrella.
Blaire stared.
She had painted that mural herself in the church basement four years ago.
Luca noticed her face.
“What now?”
“That mural.”
“What about it?”
“I painted it.”
Luca looked at the magazine.
The caption beneath the image read:
DAVID VANCE AT THE ORIGINAL COMMUNITY CENTER HE FOUNDED IN 2021.
Blaire felt heat rise into her face.
“He didn’t just take the program.”
Her eyes moved from the mural to the watch.
“He took the story.”
Theo and Fiona were laughing softly over their toast.
Luca lowered his voice.
“How much of the story was yours?”
Blaire reached for the magazine.
She turned three pages.
There was David standing beside an old blue donation cart.
Another photograph.
A winter coat drive.
Another.
A handwritten slogan painted across a wall.
PEOPLE NEED A HAND BEFORE THEY NEED A LECTURE.
Blaire stopped.
Her eyes filled.
“My father used to say that.”
Luca stared at the page.
David had used the same sentence during his interview with Sterling Foundation trustees.
Luca remembered because it was the sentence that had convinced him David understood dignity.
Now he knew the truth.
It had never belonged to David.
Blaire closed the magazine.
“I want to go to Queens.”
Luca nodded.
“No argument.”
Mara stepped closer.
“One thing first.”
She placed a folded program from tomorrow night’s gala on the counter.
Luca’s name was printed at the top.
DAVID VANCE — RECIPIENT OF THE STERLING FAMILY IMPACT AWARD.
Blaire stared at it.
Then Mara turned the program over.
Someone had written a note beside David’s scheduled speech.
HE PLANS TO TELL THE WATCH STORY ONSTAGE.
Blaire looked at Luca.
Luca looked at her father’s watch in her hand.
May you like
Tomorrow night, David Vance planned to stand in front of hundreds of people and build his future with one more piece of Blaire’s life.
And suddenly, Blaire did not want to disappear anymore.
