Chapter 2

"Take it off him! Hit him!" Zach shouted from behind the line, hopping on his toes. "Whatever happens, happens. I'll cover it."

The guards set their jaws and came in again.

In the middle of the shoving, one of them put a hand on Walter and threw him back.

His feet went out from under him and he hit the floor hard.

And the beautiful paper box he'd been holding against his chest all morning rolled out of his arms.

The lid came apart.

Inside was a princess cake, the kind you order weeks out — spun sugar, hand-shaped, the whole thing built like a small monument.

He'd been up before the sun to get it. He'd taken two buses downtown to the bakery everyone was lined up for and stood in the heat for three straight hours, just to bring home a limited-edition birthday cake for his five-year-old granddaughter.

He'd carried it the entire way with both arms around it, terrified something would jostle it.

Now it was on the floor and the sugar princess had snapped clean in half.

"My cake," he said. "Emma's cake."

The tears came before he could stop them, and he went down onto his hands to gather it up.

Zach saw him reach for it and laughed — a small, vicious sound.

Then he walked over fast, in those white sneakers, and got there before Walter's fingers did.

He put his whole weight down on the cake.

"No!"

Walter screamed it.

Zach didn't just step on it. He ground his heel into it, twisting, and looked down at the old man on the floor with something close to pleasure.

"You brought this garbage into our supermarket?

"A broke man's kid eats off the floor. That's where she belongs.

"Consider that my birthday present to the little brat."

Everything went red.

I came up off the counter with the scanner still in my hand, and two guards caught my arms and pinned them.

Walter grabbed the leg of my pants from the floor.

"Ethan. Don't."

His hands were shaking so badly he could barely work the phone out of his pocket.

"I'll call Claire. I'll have her come down here and tell us what on earth is going on."

He dialed his daughter and put it on speaker.

The ring went on and on.

Then it connected.

Claire's voice came out low and clipped, the way you talk when you've stepped out of a room you don't want to leave.

"Dad, what are you making a scene about now?

"I told you. I'm upstairs in the VIP room waiting on a venture investor worth more than this entire block.

"Do you have any idea what this financing means to me?

"Do not hand me a problem today."

Walter was crying openly by then.

"Claire, honey, just come downstairs and look.

"Ethan and I are standing in your supermarket, and a man who says he's your boyfriend put his hands on me.

"He crushed Emma's birthday cake under his shoe.

"And now your security wants to lock us in a room."

"That's enough."

She cut straight through him, and the disgust in it was unmistakable.

"What boyfriend? I'm working. I don't have time for this garbage."

"Claire, you—"

The line went dead.

Walter sat on the floor holding the phone out in front of him.

His own daughter's voice — bored, cold, done with him — seemed to go through him like cold water, and he started to shake.

Even the crowd couldn't stomach it.

"Did she seriously just hang up on her father?"

"He's getting beaten in her own store and she's annoyed with him?"

"Venture investor, sure. She's just a gold-digger who's ashamed of where she came from."

I looked at how gray Walter's face had gone.

And the last thread of hope I'd been holding onto for that marriage went dead with the call.