Chapter 2 - The Cactus on the Window
The drive across the bridge to Somerville felt like piloting a boat through a bowl of milk. The storm had arrived early, a ferocious monster off the Massachusetts coast that the radio meteorologists were already calling historic and catastrophic. The phrase catastrophic whiteout bounced off her windshield as the wiper blades fought a losing war against the heavy, slushy sleet. Her banker's box sat in the passenger seat like an unwelcome passenger, rattling whenever the tires hit a pothole.
Her third-floor apartment was freezing when she walked in. The radiator in the corner hammered like an angry pipesmith, but the window frame was warped and let in a persistent, icy draft that smelled of salt water and diesel fumes. Hazel dropped her keys on the counter, kicked off her damp leather boots, and left the cardboard box unopened on the linoleum floor.
She stood in front of the open freezer, eating mint chocolate chip ice cream straight from the carton with an oversized metal tablespoon. She didn't turn on the lights. She just watched the streetlights outside flicker and sway against forty-mile-per-hour gusts. The humiliation came in waves—first a hot, prickly burn in her chest, followed by a dull, aching exhaustion that settled into her bones. Six years of eighty-hour weeks, skipped holidays, and canceled dinners, all summarized in a four-minute conversation with a man who couldn't even bother to give her a reason.
By eight o’clock, she was still sitting on her sofa wearing her wool coat. The storm had begun rattling the glass panes violently. She closed her eyes and let her mind wander through the empty desks at the firm, counting the files she had left unfinished, the color-coded spreadsheets, the—
Her eyes snapped wide open.
""Gerald.""
A cold spike of adrenaline punched straight through her chest. Gerald wasn’t a spreadsheet or an expense report. Gerald was a small, slightly lopsided barrel cactus in a chipped ceramic pot glazed in ocean blue.
Her father had given it to her on a crisp September morning sixteen years ago, right outside her freshman dormitory at Boston College. He had taped a yellow sticky note to the pot with a message written in his terrible, looping handwriting: Like you, kid. Tough on the outside, needs almost nothing to survive. Lives forever.
Her father had been a quiet high school math teacher who saved every spare dollar in a credit union passbook so Hazel wouldn't graduate with debt. When he died of heart failure three winters ago, Gerald was the one thing Hazel refused to let out of her sight. During his final days in hospice, Gerald had sat on the dashboard of her rusted Honda, keeping vigil in the hospital parking garage.
And right now, Gerald was sitting on the wide marble windowsill of the twenty-second floor at Sterling & Hart Financial, completely alone in a building slated for total shutdown.
""No,"" Hazel muttered aloud to the empty apartment. ""No, I am not leaving him there.""
She didn't stop to rationalize the absurdity of driving back into a certified state of emergency for an eight-dollar succulent. Rational thought had been stripped away the moment Adrien Sterling handed her a pink slip. Gerald was her father's memory, the tangible proof that someone had believed she was strong.
She grabbed her heavy parka, zipped it up to her chin, and rushed down the wooden stairs. Outside, the world was a howling white vacuum. The snow was already knee-deep on the sidewalk, drifting high against parked bumpers. Her car engine groaned twice before turning over, the tires spinning wildly in the slush before catching asphalt.
The three-mile drive downtown was a nightmare of abandoned sedans and flashing yellow emergency lights. Twice, her rear axle broke loose, sliding sideways toward the concrete barriers of Interstate 93 before she gently steered into the skid. The skyline of Boston was entirely erased, reduced to a faint, ghostly gray smudge against the roaring dark.
When she finally pulled into the underground ramp of the Sterling building, the tires squealed on the salt-slicked concrete. The massive roll-up metal gate was half-down, but the pedestrian security door opened with a heavy mechanical clunk.
Frank Delgado was sitting behind the circular reception console, wearing a heavy navy security sweater over his uniform shirt. An old transistor radio on the desk was crackling with emergency broadcast warnings.
""Miss Quinn?"" Frank peered over his thick bifocals, his eyes wide with disbelief. ""Sweetheart, are you insane? The mayor just ordered a total travel ban fifteen minutes ago.""
""I left something upstairs, Frank. Something I can't replace.""
Frank stared at her, taking in her snow-crusted hair, her red-tipped nose, and the desperate intensity in her eyes. He had worked that desk for nearly two decades; he knew a person on the edge when he saw one. He sighed, pulling a blue visitor ledger across the marble surface.
""Sign your name. Guest pass only. But you listen to me, Hazel: take the service run, grab whatever it is, and come straight down. The building's secondary grid has been surging since seven, and the emergency generators are acting erratic. You have ten minutes before I come looking for you myself.""
""Ten minutes. I promise.""
She bolted toward the elevator bank, clutching the temporary visitor badge in her gloved fist. The car ascended quickly, the quiet hum of the cables vibrating through the soles of her boots.
When the doors parted on the twenty-second floor, the audit department was drowning in eerie twilight. The janitorial safety lights cast long, skeletal shadows across the rows of empty cubicles. Her desk had already been stripped of its personal touches. Her crooked plaque was gone. The nameplate on the cloth partition had been ripped down, leaving behind a ragged patch of velcro.
But there, perched on the deep windowsill beside the far glass wall, was the blue ceramic pot.
Hazel walked toward it, her heart thumping against her ribs. Outside the double-paned window, the storm was a violent hurricane of white fury, slamming against the glass with a low, predatory rumble. She reached out, her bare fingers curling around the cold, glazed ceramic.
""Hey, buddy,"" she whispered, her voice cracking slightly in the empty hall. ""I didn't leave you. I've got you.""
Holding the small cactus tight against her chest, she turned and marched back to the elevator bank. She pushed the call button, listening to the heavy chimes echo down the shaft. The digital display blinked: 32... 28... 24... 22.
A soft ding announced its arrival. The brushed steel doors slid open.
May you like
Hazel stepped forward, then froze instantly in her tracks.
Standing inside the car, his overcoat unbuttoned, his tie loosened by precisely half an inch, and his face pale with raw exhaustion, was Adrien Sterling.
