Adrienne watched her daughter carefully in those first months, half-braced for the world to start its slow work of teaching Taylor to stop seeing so much.
But it didn’t, or at least not yet.
If anything, the girl grew surer of herself, having learned — in the only way a child can truly learn anything, by living it — that when she noticed someone in trouble and said so, good things happened.
She had knocked on a door and helped a crying woman.
She had taken a stranger’s hand and everyone had ended up happier.
In Taylor’s tidy understanding of the world, paying attention to people was simply what you did, and it worked, and there was no reason on earth to stop.
Marguerite, restored to the family and delighted to have someone small to spoil, sent books to the apartment constantly.
And whenever Corbin passed through the office and saw Taylor there, waiting for her mother at the end of a day, he would crouch down to her level, the way he had that first night, and ask her seriously:
“Do I need to follow you anywhere today, Taylor?”
And Taylor would consider the question with the gravity it deserved before answering.
“Not today, sir.” And then, every time: “But keep paying attention.”
Six months into the job, Adrienne sat at her own desk beside a window that looked out over the city skyline, and she rested her hand for a moment on the small nameplate at its edge — her name, engraved, permanent, hers.
For a year she had made her living erasing every trace of herself from rooms she was never allowed to belong in.
Now she had a place with her name on it, and a daughter who was learning that the world rewards those who refuse to look away, and a chair, at last, that had been set out for her.