Chapter 7: There Is Only One of You in This World
Amanda's POV
I didn't catch what he said.
I stood there staring at him for a full two seconds before my brain caught up. And then I became aware of how close he was standing.
The kind of scent that didn't announce itself — quiet, expensive, and impossible to ignore — and at this proximity it reached me in a way I wasn't quite prepared for.
I took half a step back. My shoulders met the doorframe.
"Mr. Morrison," I said. "You're standing a little too close."
Charles glanced down at me, seemed to register it, and stepped back. His expression didn't shift, but I caught the brief pause before he moved.
"Sorry."
He said it once, then reset. When he spoke again, his voice had returned to that even, measured register. "I was asking how you knew Ethan needed a new colored pencil."
The question landed, and I understood. I turned it back on him.
"Mr. Morrison, how much time do you actually spend with Ethan in a given day?"
Charles went quiet. Not a brief hesitation — a real silence, the kind that settles when someone is confronted with an answer they've always known but never let themselves look at directly.
"Very little," he said. "Work, travel. Almost none."
"Then there's your answer," I said. "A child is like a young plant. You can put him in the best soil, give him the best light, give him everything money can buy to help him grow — but if you never come yourself, he won't grow toward you."
Charles's brow drew in slightly. "I've hired the best specialists for him. My mother Madeline visits regularly to spend time with him—"
"That's not the same thing."
I said it without heat, but I didn't soften it either.
"A father and a mother are irreplaceable to a child. It doesn't matter who else is there — specialists, grandmothers, money. None of it substitutes."
I held his gaze and finished the thought.
"You're his father. He only gets one."
Charles didn't answer. He stood where he was, and whatever exhaustion he'd been carrying seemed to press down a little harder, pressed there by those last words. He didn't argue. But I could see it had landed somewhere — some place he didn't often let himself go.
He opened his mouth, about to say something, when a voice cut in from down the hall.
"Mr. Morrison." His assistant was moving toward us quickly, voice tight. "The emergency conference call from Las Vegas has been holding for twenty minutes. We need you on immediately."
Charles closed his mouth. He looked toward the assistant, then back at me.
"Take good care of Ethan," he said.
Then he turned to go.
"Wait."
He stopped and looked back, a faint flicker of surprise in his expression.
"If it's possible," I said, "when you come back tonight — would you go sit with Ethan for a little while? Even if he's already asleep. Just sit by his bed. That's all."
The assistant's brow tightened. "Ma'am, Mr. Morrison's schedule today—"
"I will."
Charles's voice was quiet but unambiguous, and it stopped the assistant cold. He looked at me and gave a single nod.
I smiled at him and raised a hand in a small wave. "Goodbye then, Mr. Morrison."
He held my gaze for a moment, said nothing, and walked away with the assistant. I watched his figure disappear around the turn of the hallway, then slowly lowered my hand and let out the breath I'd apparently been holding the entire time.
I turned around and nearly startled out of my skin.
Ethan was standing in the doorway. I hadn't heard him at all. He was just there, very still, holding the red pencil in both hands, watching me.
I steadied myself and walked over. I crouched down in front of him until we were eye to eye.
"My name's Amanda," I said. "I'm here to keep you company."
He didn't speak. He watched me with those quiet, level eyes.
"Besides your dad, and Heidi, and Madeline," I said, "there's now one more person in this house who's here for you."
I didn't reach out to ruffle his hair or pull him into a hug. I just stayed crouched there and held his gaze.
A lot of people who care for children like Ethan move carefully around them — softening every footstep, lowering every voice, looking at them with a kind of aching tenderness that's really closer to pity, as though a direct look might shatter something. But children are perceptive.
They know exactly what kind of eyes you're using on them, even when they don't say so. I looked at Ethan the way I'd look at anyone. And I believed he'd give me the same in return.
After a moment, Ethan turned and walked back to the table. He sat down and picked up where he'd left off — his sun, the fourth one now, then a fifth, until the page was nearly covered.
I sat down beside him and didn't say anything. I just stayed.
That afternoon, Shirley sent a message.
Emma met with Mrs.Carter today. Both are doing well. Emma's happy.
There was a photo attached — Emma on a sofa, both hands wrapped around a bowl of soup, my mother Lyra Carter sitting beside her, their heads tilted close together. Emma was smiling so wide her eyes had gone to crescents.
I stared at it for a long time.
The apartment was one Charles had arranged — city center, good light. For someone who had spent seven years in the outskirts and never once thought she'd end up living downtown, just the fact of that address was enough to stop me for a moment.
I was sitting on the carpet in Ethan's room with the phone screen casting light across the back of my hand, and I felt something in my chest slowly ease.
Three years. After three years, Emma could go to a good school. She could study whatever she wanted — dance, piano, painting — not because she had any particular gift for them, but because she'd have the right to try. Every child deserves that. I just hadn't been able to give it to her before.
After three years, my mother wouldn't need to work night shifts to cover the bills. She could live somewhere with real sunlight, go down to the park in the mornings, and have nothing pressing on her. Three years. Just three years. I could hold on that long.
I turned the phone face-down on the carpet and looked up. Ethan was bent over his drawing, filling in his sun with focused concentration. The red had gone outside the lines; he glanced at it, then carried on with complete seriousness.
A small laugh slipped out before I could catch it.
When dinner came around, I stood up and smoothed the wrinkles from my clothes, then went to find Ethan.
"Come on, Ethan. Time to eat."
Footsteps in the hallway. I looked up to find Heidi coming from the far end, her pace unhurried, wearing a smile I recognized — the smile of someone who knew something and was enjoying it.
"Well, Amanda," she said. "Sounds like you had quite a day."
I looked at her and waited.
"Don't think a few pretty words will sort everything out," she said. "Charles nodding along doesn't mean much. Whether you stay or go — that's Madeline's call to make."
She let that settle for a beat.
"She's here. She wants to meet you. Go on — she's waiting in the dining room."
My stomach sank.
Madeline Bennett. Charles's mother. The matriarch of the Morrison family. In some sense, the reason I was standing here at all — she had been the one to set this whole arrangement in motion. But just because she'd set it in motion didn't mean she'd accept me without question.
I looked down at Ethan. He was tilting his head back to look up at me, his expression serious, something unreadable moving through his eyes.
I took a slow breath.
I hadn't come this far to be turned away now.
I held out my hand.
"Let's go, Ethan," I said. "Dinner."
