Prologue

Four years ago…

He was holding my hand. The gesture should have felt comforting, but my family was never big on touching. Hugs and kisses were expressions we saw in other families. Normal families. So the feeling of Randolph Urban’s veiny wrinkled skin felt foreign on my fingertips. Still, I appreciated the gesture. My own sister hadn’t shed a tear at the funeral service. She was just like our parents, only they were no longer around to make sure our upper lips stayed stiff. They were the ones being lowered into the ground. They were the reason that Randolph Urban, their former boss and best friend, was sitting at my side in his lavish living room, squeezing my palm, while countless staff from the Dresden Chemical Corporation traipsed through his mansion at an elegant brunch honoring my dead parents.

“Your family isn’t gone. You still have all of us,” Urban said, his liver-spotted hand patting my unblemished fingers.

He nodded to the employees in the room as if I were “Joan from accounting.” I wasn’t a part of his corporate family. Not really. I was a girl with no parents, no grandparents, no aunts, no uncles, and no cousins. My father was an only child whose parents died young, and my mother ran away from a “bad situation” at age eighteen and never looked back. They met Randolph Urban at Princeton University, a teaching assistant ten years their senior. He was a friend, a colleague, and now quite possibly the only adult in the world who cared about us.

“I’m here to help you,” Urban continued. “I’ll always be here.”

Please stop talking. There were no words to make this better. My parents were decomposing as we spoke, and I wanted to go home. I wanted to forget the smell of the wet grassy earth as my sister threw a fistful of dirt on their caskets. It reminded me of baseball. It was March, and I found myself staring at side-by-side holes wondering if the Red Sox had started playing yet. I didn’t even like the sport, but now I feared baseball and death would be forever associated in my brain. What made me think of that?

“I want today to be over.” I pulled at the hem of my black funeral dress. My toes were squished into ballet flats, and my hair was slicked into a bun. I was styled by Keira. So far, that was my sister’s contribution to my well being—making sure I was properly dressed to grieve.

“It will get better some day.” His voice sounded as sad as my own.

“I’m not sure I want it to get better.”

“Me, neither.” He nodded, like he understood. Maybe he did, in his own way. “They were my best friends.”

“I’ve never had a best friend.” I wrung my hands tighter.

I moved too often. Already, I’d attended nine schools on four continents. Prior to Boston, my social life consisted solely of Dresden Kids, because we all knew we wouldn’t be there long enough to make the yearbook pictures. But Boston was supposed to be different. I was supposed to be normal, and for the first time, I’d made non-Dresden friends. Tyson Westbrook and Regina Villanueva let me sit at their lunch table. Tyson studied karate at the same studio, and Regina thought my international childhood was exciting. Now I was a sad little orphan.

What an awful word—orphan, orphan, orphan… Maybe I should develop a British accent in the lunch line? “Please, may I have some more?” At least then, I’d be saying what everyone was thinking.

“You’ll make friends.” Urban placed a heavy palm on my shoulder. “You’ll stay in Boston and lay down roots. This is your home now.”

Yeah, now it is. Because they’re dead. If my parents had lived, I’d be moving to Canada. All that talk of taking desk jobs in the corporate office lasted three months. Now I had to live with the fact that the last words I said to my parents were “I hate you.” I’d spent every night since staring at the shadows dancing on my ceiling, imagining that argument never happened. What if they never told me about Canada? Why did they have to tell me that night?

“I’m alone,” I whispered as I watched my sister shake hands with someone I didn’t recognize, her face looking as though she were consoling him.

“You’re not.” Urban moved his face closer to mine.

His pale blue-gray eyes bore into me, and for the first time I noticed how much they looked like my own, like the sky right after a storm lifts, the gray clouds brightening as the sun threatens to peek through. “You have me. I’m your family,” he reiterated. “Never forget that.”

I didn’t want him. I wanted my mom and dad.

A cough broke the heavy moment as high heels stopped in front of me. I peered up at Sophia Urban, Randolph’s granddaughter. “Never forget what?” she asked, sipping a bottle of Evian between her whitened teeth.

“I was telling Anastasia that she and Keira are our family now. We take care of each other.” He locked eyes with his granddaughter.

“Of course.” She glanced away, her voice monotone. “We’re all here for you.”

She didn’t roll her eyes, but it sounded like she wanted to.

My fists tightened, ready to punch her, but Urban wrapped his arm around my shoulders and tugged me toward him. I let him hug me, and oddly, I actually felt soothed from his touch.

“It’ll be okay,” he whispered.

And for some reason, in that moment, he reminded me of my dad.