STEPHANIE WAS STILL TALKING. AND talking. And talking.
“It’s November! We should know who the Belle is by now. It’s not your fault—I’m not saying that. You’re totally doing your best, Holly, with this Belle situation. I mean, I know Da—Copperfield said that it might be this girl in the white dress at that charity thing—but why would he think that? That’s a pretty big assumption, really, just because ‘Ethan was acting strange’ when he saw her? What constitutes strange, anyway? Maybe he wasn’t even reacting to her. Maybe he had a piece of pork that didn’t agree with him. Maybe he didn’t get a good night’s sleep the night before. Maybe he was just tired. He’s seventeen, I mean, when I was seventeen I didn’t have a love of my life. Most people don’t fall in real love before they’re seventeen, I mean real love, I mean, the love of your life kind of love. Well, I guess some people do, but some of us don’t even find that ever. Boz is worried, I can tell.”
Obviously. I’d been sifting for the Belle for weeks, and we still had no clue who she was. I’d even been in Ethan’s mind specifically looking for the girl in the white dress, and I hadn’t found a trace of her.
“It’s just so frustrating!” Stephanie burst out, and then flopped down into her chair.
“What’s going on with you?” I asked. “Did something happen?”
She bit her lip. Today she was wearing a pastel-pink dress that had Boston terriers printed all over it, and a purple cardigan.
She looks like a unicorn just threw up on her, said my Inner Yvonne.
She also looks upset, I thought.
“We will figure out the Belle, okay?” I said. “That’s what we do. It can’t always be perfect. We’re trying to match up someone’s life with a template that was written in 1843. It’s not going to be an exact match. It never really is, but every year we make it work.”
“But how?”
“We make compromises and find substitutions. We—okay, so forgive me if I sound like Boz when I say this, but—we keep ourselves true to the spirit of A Christmas Carol. That’s the beauty of it, right? Each Scrooge is different, and they all have completely different experiences and different significant people in their lives who affect those experiences. But in the end they all get to be a part of the same inspiring story.”
She sighed. “You’re right. That is beautiful.”
“So the Belle might not even be a romantic thing,” I said. “It isn’t always. It could just be a friend.” Mine was, I didn’t say out loud. And thinking about Ro now put a lump in my throat every time. Talk about seeing the wonderful life I could have lived.
The trouble was, Ethan didn’t have any close friends. For a guy as sharp and twisted and hilarious as I knew he could be, he was completely isolated from real relationships with people his own age.
Except me. I smiled.
“Now do you want to tell me what’s really bothering you?” I asked Stephanie.
Her slump got even slumpier. “It’s personal. Not exactly appropriate workplace conversation.”
I stood up. “Get your jacket. I’m taking you to an early lunch. My treat.”
Her eyes widened behind her glasses. “Your treat?”
“You don’t have to act all shocked. I’m your boss, right? I can take you to lunch.” I checked my purse, and I had exactly sixty-eight dollars left for the month, which would just about cover a nice lunch for two in Manhattan. I didn’t have anything better to spend it on. “Just don’t tell Grant and Marty,” I said.
An hour later we were finishing up our meal at a place called Vintry on Stone Street, where Stephanie had just wolfed down a mozzarella and tomato panini, and I was still picking at the truffle mushroom cavatelli. It was amazing. Sometimes, in this un-life I lived now, I forgot about the way food can comfort you, the way the world seems like it can’t be that bad if it can afford you this simple pleasure.
I ordered dessert. Because chocolate.
Stephanie seemed like she’d finally relaxed a smidge. So I said, “Now tell me what’s up with you. Maybe I can help.” I couldn’t believe I was doing this—asking Little Dorrit to talk more than she usually did—but I was feeling good lately, better than I had in years, as a matter of fact. Ethan’s presence in my life had brightened my outlook on the world considerably.
“Come on,” I ordered. “Spill it. Tell me what’s wrong.”
She hesitated. But then she said, “Grant asked me out.”
I blinked at her. “What? When?”
She bit her lip again. “This morning. After the meeting.”
“Only this morning? God, how long have you worked at the company? I thought Grant was going to ask you out on day one. Well, he and Marty both.”
“But that’s the problem,” she said.
“You don’t like Grant?”
“I do like him!” she exclaimed miserably. “I like him so much. He’s so nice, and he’s so smart, and he’s nerdy—I know he’s nerdy, but I love nerdy—and he has these soulful eyes and this sweet smile and he’s . . . wonderful.”
O-kay. It made me a little uncomfortable trying to look at Grant through the sexy lens, but okay. “So . . . what’s the problem, again?”
“Marty.” The waitress arrived and set a milk chocolate crème brûlée in front of Stephanie, and the girl didn’t even pause—she just picked up the spoon and dug in. Not that I could blame her.
“Thank you,” I murmured to the waitress, and eyed my own dessert: profiteroles with vanilla ice cream and a warm chocolate sauce. “What about Marty?”
“Marty likes me, too, like you said, although he’s been a lot more up front about it. He asked me out months ago . . .”
That was so Marty.
“ . . . and I didn’t really know him very well then, and I wanted to focus on doing a good job for you, so I told him I didn’t want to date anyone at the company.” She sighed. “I rejected him.”
“And now you want to say yes to Grant, but you’ve already established that you’re against dating within the company.”
She shook her head. “It’s worse than that. Marty is Grant’s best friend. They hang out together all the time even when they’re not at work. They have this tabletop club that they put on with their other friends together every Wednesday. It’s so cute.” She took a huge spoonful of crème brûlée and swallowed. “What should I do?”
She should focus on what’s important here, said the Yvonne in my head. Her career. If she dates this silly Grant boy, it’s only going to end badly and make her look unprofessional. There’s no room for sentiment in business, and this is business. Intra-office romance is very ill advised.
I wanted to argue that “this silly Grant boy” happened to have a PhD in engineering at the ripe old age of twenty-three, which made him like a child genius or something, but I couldn’t argue with my Inner Yvonne. She always won.
Plus, her advice made sense if I looked at the situation from the point of view I was most familiar with, which was from the perspective of what was best for me. If Grant and Stephanie started dating, then Marty would probably be upset, and then things would get tense and awkward around the office, and all the tenseness and awkwardness would probably eventually break up Grant and Stephanie, which would make things even worse. It could wreck the dynamics of Team Lamp.
So what Yvonne said was the right answer: no, Stephanie should not date Grant.
But she liked him. A lot.
And I knew he liked her. He was more obtuse about it than Marty, but still. Whenever he was around Stephanie he’d start pumping out all these useless facts about things—quantum physics, something called SciShow on the internet, the theory of relativity. It was nerd flirting, showing his big impressive knowledge like a peacock flashing his pretty feathers.
It was kind of adorable. They’d be a cute couple. I could picture it.
And I was feeling optimistic about budding romances.
I put down my spoon. “You know what Boz always says?”
Her eyebrow bumps appeared. “Um, let’s see. ‘No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of it for anyone else’?”
“No, not that one. The other one. The one about love.”
“I don’t think I’ve heard that one.”
I paused here for dramatic effect. “A loving heart is the truest wisdom.”
I’d looked it up once. It was paraphrased from David Copperfield. Boz said it constantly.
Stephanie’s mouth opened, but she didn’t speak.
“Food for thought, that’s all.” I finished my dessert and caught the attention of the waitress. “Check, please?”
Back at the office, there was a kind of uproar going on when we returned, people from Dave’s team darting around the hallways shouting orders at one another like the place was on fire.
I suspected cupcakes were afoot. Too bad I’d eaten all that chocolate earlier.
I spotted Tox in the hall, just standing there watching the action all around her with an amused expression. Stephanie and I wandered over to her. I hadn’t seen Tox since that day she’d been in Dave’s office. She always made her own schedule. “Hey.”
“I’ve got grandpa in the basement,” she informed me.
“Huh?” said Stephanie.
“Ethan Senior.” Tox jerked her chin in a weird nod. “It took me a while to find him, too. He’s a wily little bugger.”
“Oh. Good job, Tox,” I said distractedly, watching some guy cross the hall with an armful of wires for some reason. “I knew you could do it. What’s going on here?”
“There’s been a tip on the Belle,” she said matter-of-factly. She smiled. “Everyone’s going insane. Apparently Dave thinks that the girl in the white dress is going to show up at this big Make-A-Wish ball tonight.”
Grant and Marty came galloping up to me like two puppies with a tennis ball. “Ethan’s going to the ball! Dave got a copy of the guest list, and Ethan’s on it. So Dave wants to get the venue bugged ASAP, so they can record any interaction between Ethan and the white-dress girl. This might be it. This could be when the Belle moment actually happens. Or maybe it’s just when something starts between them. Either way, pretty cool.” Grant finished his little speech and then glanced at Stephanie. His ears went red. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she murmured.
“Hi,” said Marty loudly. “I think we’ve all said hi now.” He frowned. “Let’s go, Grant.”
I took Stephanie by the shoulders and steered her into my office.
“I need you to do me a favor. Go figure out exactly what surveillance is already on Ethan between now and this evening.”
She didn’t even ask me why. “You got it, Holly.”
I sank into my chair. This was terrible. Ethan going to a ball. A real dancing and bubbly drinks and tiny finger food sort of ball. With the girl in the white dress. He didn’t even like the girl in the white dress. He didn’t even know her. Not yet. He knew me. He liked me. Screw the Belle, I thought. Ethan is mine.
There was a knock, and Boz stuck his head in. “Hello, Havisham.”
“Hey, boss, what’s up?” I tried to sound cheerful.
“You heard our good news about tonight?”
“I heard.”
“To think that we might actually uncover this mysterious Belle. It’s so exciting.”
“Thrilling,” I agreed, my voice coming out a little strained. Crap.
He clucked his tongue. “Oh, don’t be down in the mouth because Dave is working on the Belle when that’s usually your job. It’s a special situation, I think, with this particular Belle in the present more than she belongs in the past. We’re just all pitching in to help each other this year. It shows real company unity.”
I nodded. “I was supposed to be sifting Ethan’s memory tonight, but I guess that’s not going to happen now. Maybe I can have the night off?”
“Of course. You have the night free. A group of the staff thought it might be fun, though, to come in tonight, maybe dress up a bit, play some music, and watch Dave’s feed of the ball. You should come. How often do you get to see a romance in the making?”
“I know, right?” I said. “I will consider that.”
“Wonderful. See you there,” he beamed, and pulled his head back out and closed the door.
I bent and put my head on my desk, facedown. It felt cool and steadying.
There was a knock on the door.
“Occupied,” I mumbled into the desk.
“It’s me.” Stephanie popped her head in. “We have surveillance on him at the school, but you knew that. It ends about a block from the school building. And of course we’re watching at his apartment.”
I couldn’t go to his apartment. I couldn’t call him and tell him to meet me. I’d have to make it to the school when it was getting out. There were seven blocks between Browning and Ethan’s apartment. I’d catch him there.
“Are you going to the thing?” Stephanie asked me. “The watching the feed thing?”
“Uh, maybe?” No, I was not. “You?” It’d be helpful if the staff was all distracted by setting up surveillance at the venue and having a little office party, instead of watching Ethan like a hawk. It would give me a chance to slip in unnoticed and grab him.
Stephanie shook her head. “Grant will be there. And Marty. It would be awkward.”
“A loving heart is the truest wisdom,” I reminded her.
She gave a dramatic sigh. “I’ll think about it.”
“Marty will be fine,” I said. “He’s a big boy.”
She nodded. “It’s not just Marty. I guess I’m just afraid if I said yes to going out with Grant, I’d be doing it for the wrong reasons. I’m emotional right now, so maybe I just want to be . . . comforted? Not alone.”
I got it. Not alone was good. “Why are you so emotional right now?” I asked.
She squeezed her eyes closed for a second, like she couldn’t believe she’d just said that. “Oh. It’s this thing with my dad. I can’t really talk about it right now. Do you need anything else? Coffee?” she guessed.
I sighed. “Coffee would be amazing.”
She pointed at me. “Coming right up.”
“You’re the best,” I said, and I actually meant it.
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” she said. “Oh. Wait. Thanks for lunch, by the way,” she said.
“Anytime,” I replied. Well. Anytime that it was totally convenient for me. I glanced up at the clock. It was almost two. Ethan got out of school around three.
“Actually, I have to go,” I said, jumping up and grabbing the Hoodie.
“Right now?”
“Boz gave me the rest of the day off,” I explained on my way to the elevator. “I’ve got some things I have to do.”
I had to go see about a boy.