Chapter 1 - Fifty Cents and a Missing Father
On the coldest Friday before Christmas, eight-year-old Lily Hart had fifty cents, a newspaper clipping, and no adult she trusted.
Snow had turned the sidewalks of Pittsburgh gray. Lily sat in the corner booth of Mae’s Diner with a plate of mashed potatoes she had been stretching for almost an hour. Her brown coat was too thin, one sleeve torn at the elbow, and her sneakers had newspaper stuffed inside because the soles leaked.
Mae Donnelly, the sixty-seven-year-old waitress who had slipped Lily the food, leaned over the table. “Sweetheart, where is your mother?”
Lily looked at the Christmas lights reflected in the window.
“She went to sleep Tuesday.”
Mae’s smile disappeared. “At home?”
Lily nodded. “I tried waking her. She was cold.”
Mae sat down hard.
Lily reached into her pocket and unfolded a newspaper clipping until the paper nearly tore. The photograph showed Nathan Cole, founder of Cole Aerospace, stepping from a black car beneath a headline about a billion-dollar merger.
“My mama said if something ever happened, I should find him.”
Mae stared at the picture. “You know this man?”
“He’s my dad.”
Nathan Cole was one of the richest men in Pennsylvania. Lily lived in a condemned apartment over a pawnshop.
Mae did not laugh.
Instead she called the police about Lily’s mother and gave Lily hot chocolate while officers went to the apartment. An hour later, a detective returned with the kind of face adults wore when they wanted children not to understand.
Lily understood anyway.
Her mother, Sarah Hart, was dead.
The detective wanted to take Lily to emergency foster care. Lily panicked.
“No. Mama said find him.”
“Find who?”
“My dad.”
The detective glanced at the clipping.
Mae whispered, “At least call the number.”
Cole Aerospace’s corporate switchboard refused to connect them. Mae tried twice. Then the diner manager ordered Lily out after discovering Mae had given away food.
“You can’t throw a kid into the snow,” Mae snapped.
“I can throw you both out.”
So Mae quit.
They walked three blocks through falling snow to an old bus terminal. Beside the entrance stood a payphone with a handwritten sign: LOCAL CALL — 50¢.
Lily pressed her two quarters into the slot.
Mae had found a number buried in Sarah’s belongings: a private office line handwritten beside Nathan Cole’s name.
The phone rang.
Once.
Twice.
A man answered.
“Cole.”
Lily forgot every sentence she had practiced.
“Hello?”
Silence.
Then the man’s voice softened. “Who is this?”
“My name is Lily Hart.”
On the other end, Nathan stopped breathing.
Lily continued, “My mama said you’re my father.”
A chair scraped loudly through the receiver.
“What did you say?”
“My mama is Sarah.”
Nathan’s voice changed completely.
“Sarah Hart?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
Lily looked at Mae.
“She died.”
The silence that followed frightened Lily more than shouting.
Then Nathan said, “Where are you?”
“At the bus station.”
“Do not move.”
“I only have fifty cents.”
“You don’t need another cent. Stay exactly where you are.”
A woman’s voice suddenly sounded behind Nathan.
“Nathan, who are you talking to?”
Lily heard him answer.
“My daughter.”
Then the line went dead.
Twenty minutes later, three black SUVs stopped outside the terminal.
Nathan Cole stepped from the middle one without a coat.
Lily recognized him immediately.
But the elegant blonde woman climbing out behind him looked at Lily with something that was not surprise.
It was fear.
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And when Lily held up the newspaper clipping, the woman whispered under her breath:
“Sarah was supposed to have destroyed that.”
