Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the Kitchen
The kitchen was vast, marble-topped, and sterile—a showroom designed by an interior architect who had never cooked a meal in her life. Elise had tried to warm it up with copper pots and a rustic wooden island, but after her death, Nathaniel had ordered everything scrubbed, polished, and stripped of personal clutter.
Now, the kitchen smelled of something entirely forbidden in this house: burnt butter and garlic.
Jo set Theo down in a high chair that hadn't been used in a year. She moved with quiet efficiency, slicing crusty bread and pouring warm chicken broth into two mismatched bowls she must have found in the back of the pantry.
Milo climbed onto a stool next to his brother, watching her every move. "Are you going to leave tomorrow?" he asked suddenly, his voice small and hollow.
Jo paused, knife in hand. She looked over her shoulder at the doorway where Nathaniel stood half-hidden in the shadow of the pantry arch.
"Not unless your father fires me," Jo said clearly, her eyes locking onto the shadows. "And even then, I live right down the street. I know how to climb the back fence if you run out of toast."
A tiny, wet sound escaped Milo—a sound Nathaniel hadn't heard in over a year.
It was a laugh.
Nathaniel stepped into the light. "You don't have permission to encourage my sons to scale perimeter walls, Miss Marsh."
"Permission notes are for school trips, Mr. Cole," she replied, ladling broth into the bowls. "At five years old, a boy needs to know his house has an escape route in case the adults break down. Eat, boys."
Nathaniel sat at the end of the massive oak table—a place he hadn't occupied since Elise used to sit across from him planning weekend trips they would never take. He watched Jo wipe Theo's chin with a napkin that wasn't starched.
"Why did you take this job?" Nathaniel asked abruptly. "The agency listed you as a corporate office cleaner. You have references from law firms. Why come here to scrub baseboards for a man everyone in the city calls a tyrant?"
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Jo didn't look up from buttering a piece of bread. "Because law firms don't cry in the copy room, Mr. Cole. And because fourteen months ago, my sister died in a hospital bed while I held her hand, and the doctor told me the exact same sentence they told you: We did everything we can. I know what it looks like when a family tries to outrun an empty room. You're not a tyrant. You're just terrified that if you stop moving, you'll have to feel the floor drop out."
The silence that followed was heavy, thick with truths neither of them was supposed to speak aloud. Nathaniel opened his mouth to dismiss her—to write a check so large she would vanish by morning—but the words died in his throat. Because for the first time since the accident, someone had looked past the billionaire, past the cold glass towers of Cole Industries, and seen the shivering boy left behind in the dark.
