Chapter 4 “Vivienne” "Just…Vivienne, tonight.”

The call came on a Wednesday, and Lucas almost didn't pick up because he didn't recognize the number.

"Is this Lucas Okon?" A crisp voice, all business. "I'm calling on behalf of Ms. Kingston. We have an event Friday evening — one of the bathrooms in the east wing has a fault, and given the number of guests expected, she'd prefer it handled by someone she's already had in the house. Can you come Friday afternoon, ahead of the event?"

Lucas sat down slowly on the edge of the mattress. Zuri was at the table, tongue between her teeth, coloring a giraffe purple for reasons known only to her.

"Friday afternoon," he repeated, doing the math already. Friday afternoon meant no one to watch Zuri — his neighbor Comfort, who sometimes helped, worked Fridays now. "What time would I be done?"

"She's asked that you stay through the evening, in case anything else comes up during the event. You'll be paid for the full day. Generously." A pause, like the woman on the phone was reading something off a note. "Ms. Kingston said to tell you it includes a meal, if that helps."

It helped more than the woman could know. A full day's pay, generous, plus he wouldn't have to feed himself that night, which meant more in the pot for Zuri. He said yes before he'd solved the childcare problem. He'd solve it. He always did.

He solved it by asking Comfort's daughter, sixteen and glad of the extra naira, to sit with Zuri for a few hours in the evening instead, and by promising Zuri a story about the giraffe when he got home, which satisfied her completely. Small people needed so little, really. Just to know you were coming back.

The Kingston house on Friday afternoon looked like something out of a film Lucas would never be invited to watch in a cinema like the ones in this part of town. Staff moved in careful, silent choreography — flowers arriving in buckets of ice water, long tables being dressed in white cloth, a string quartet setting up chairs in the garden like they were rehearsing for a wedding nobody told him about.

He found the bathroom, fixed the fault — a stuck valve, nothing that should have taken him more than twenty minutes — and then did what he always did afterward: made himself small and useful and out of the way, tucked into a corner near the kitchen entrance, waiting to be told he could go, or needed for something else.

He did not expect Vivienne to come find him herself.

"You're still here," she said, and there was something almost like surprise in it, though she was the one who'd asked him to stay.

"You said to stay in case something came up."

"I did say that." She looked, for a second, faintly embarrassed, which was not an expression he'd have guessed her face knew how to make. She was dressed for the evening already — dark green, simple, the kind of simple that cost more than complicated — and standing in a hallway with a plumber instead of greeting her guests.

"You should be out there," Lucas said carefully. "With your—" he gestured vaguely at the noise of the gathering evening, the clink of glasses starting up somewhere beyond the doors.

"My wolves," Vivienne said, and something dry and tired moved behind her eyes. "Yes. I should."

She didn't move.

Lucas didn't know what made him say the next thing. Maybe it was the exhaustion under her makeup that he recognized the shape of, because he wore the same shape most days. Maybe it was that nobody in this house had looked at him like he was a person all evening, and she just had.

"You don't want to go out there," he said. Not a question.

Vivienne let out a breath that was almost a laugh, almost not. "Is it that obvious?"

"You've got the same face my daughter makes before she has to eat something she doesn't like."

That surprised a real laugh out of her — short, unguarded, gone almost as fast as it came, like she wasn't used to letting it out in front of people and had caught herself. "That's a terrible thing to say to your employer."

"Probably," Lucas agreed. "You want me to take it back?"

"No." She looked at him properly then, the way she had the very first day, like she was trying to read something written in a language she almost knew. "Don't take it back."

There was a silence that went on a beat too long to be comfortable and not quite long enough to be anything else. Somewhere behind her, a voice called her name — a man's voice, smooth, faintly impatient — and Vivienne's shoulders did something small and defeated, the mask sliding back into place like a door closing.

"That's my cousin," she said. "I should—"

"Go," Lucas said gently. "I'll be around if you need anything."

She hesitated at the corner, half-turned already toward the noise and the glittering room and the family that wore knives for smiles. "Lucas."

"Ma'am?"

"Vivienne," she corrected, quiet enough that only he could hear it. "Just — tonight. Vivienne."

Then she was gone, swallowed into the light and the music, and Lucas stood alone in the hallway with his toolbox at his feet, feeling something unfamiliar move in his chest — something he hadn't let himself feel in two years, small and unwelcome and impossible to name.

He thought of Zuri at home, waiting for her giraffe story.

He thought he should probably be more careful than this.

He wasn't, tonight, entirely sure that he wanted to be.