Chapter 1 - The Two-Dollar Flower
The voice came through the glass like a stone dropped into still water.
""$2, mister. Buy this flower. It might make you happy.""
Dante Moretti looked up from the blueprints spread across his lap. He had been counting rooftops along Harrow Street, measuring how many would disappear under bulldozers within six weeks. He had not expected to be interrupted by anything smaller than a construction foreman.
A girl stood pressed against the window of the black Mercedes. She could not have been older than six. Her dark hair was tangled from the wind, and her sweater was two sizes too large and the color of ash. In both hands she held a crooked bouquet of yellow daisies, their stems wrapped in a torn piece of newspaper and tied with brown string. She tapped the glass again with the knuckle of one small finger.
""$2, mister. They are very fresh.""
In the driver's seat, Marco shifted his weight. He was fifty years old and had served the Moretti name since Dante's father ran the docks. His hand slid toward the door handle out of pure habit. A child alone at the window of this car, in this neighborhood, was something to be moved along quickly before any photograph could be taken.
Dante lifted one finger. Marco froze.
Dante Moretti was thirty-five years old. He had not smiled, not truly, since the week his mother died in a county hospital bed two winters ago. Men who worked for him knew the difference between the smooth, professional nod he gave at charity dinners and a smile. There had been no smile. Yet now, as he looked at the girl pressing her nose against his tinted window, the corner of his mouth lifted by perhaps a quarter of an inch.
He pressed the button on the armrest. The window hummed down. Cold Boston air poured into the car, carrying the smell of wet pavement and chimney smoke from the row houses across the street.
The girl did not step back. Up close, her eyes were enormous and the color of weak tea. There was a smudge of dirt on her left cheek. A yellow petal clung to her chin.
""$2,"" she repeated, as if he might not have heard the price the first two times.
""That is a very specific amount,"" Dante said. His voice came out quieter than he intended.
""Yes,"" she said with great seriousness. ""$2 buys a hot dog at the corner or one flower from me. I think my flower lasts longer.""
Behind her, across the broken sidewalk, a man watered a dying patch of grass. A woman carried a laundry basket on one hip. None of them looked at the black Mercedes. In Dorchester, people had learned not to look at cars that did not belong.
Dante reached inside his coat and pulled out a leather billfold. He did not take out a two-dollar bill. He took out a crisp twenty.
The girl's eyes grew wider. ""That is too much, mister.""
""Then I will take ten flowers.""
""I only have one bunch.""
""Then I will owe you nine more.""
She considered this with the gravity of a small judge. Then she pressed the whole bouquet into his gloved hand. ""Deal.""
Dante held the bouquet as if it were a document that might crumble if folded. The crumpled newspaper around the stems smelled faintly of damp earth and something sweeter underneath.
""What is your name?"" he asked.
The girl was already two steps back from the car, counting the twenty with her lips moving. She looked up without lowering the money. ""Sophie.""
""Sophie what?""
""Sophie who sells flowers."" She turned and ran down the broken sidewalk, her sweater flapping around her like a loose flag. Within six seconds she had disappeared around the corner of a boarded-up laundromat.
Dante remained very still. His fingers turned the stems once, then again. One daisy had already begun to bend its yellow head toward his wrist, as though tired of being carried.
Marco cleared his throat. ""Sir, do you want me to find her for the change?""
""No.""
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""Her guardian may come to complain about a stranger giving a child so much money.""
""Let her come,"" Dante murmured, his eyes lingering on the torn scrap of newspaper wrapped around the stems. It was a shredded headline from two years ago, bearing the word 'MALPRACTICE' right beside his family's crest.
