Chapter 2 - The Constellation Map
The silence of the garden was no longer oppressive; it was expectant.
Sky hesitated for a fraction of a second before taking her first step onto the Hawthorne estate. She walked with a light, careful tread, as though afraid the manicured grass might shatter under her feet. Miss Doway, standing twenty yards back near the catering table, lowered her clipboard, her stern features momentarily softening into utter disbelief.
Nova rolled her chair forward until she stopped three feet from Sky. For a moment, neither girl spoke. They simply observed each other—the daughter of a titan of industry, dressed in tailor-made silk and wool, and a girl from the lower flats wearing clothes that had clearly belonged to someone else first.
"I’m Nova," the birthday girl said, breaking the silence.
"I know. I’m Sky." The visitor extended the brown paper bag. "It’s not expensive. We don't have much money right now. But I didn't want you to have to eat the cake by yourself."
Nova took the bag with two hands. Her fingers, often stiff from her neuromuscular condition, worked carefully at the folded creases. Inside lay an intricate, three-dimensional construction made entirely of discarded cardboard, wire twist-ties, and sheets of dark blue paper covered in meticulous white ink.
Grant leaned in slightly, his breath hitching.
It was an accurate celestial globe. Each constellation was painstakingly mapped out with tiny punctured pinholes, and through the center ran a small wooden skewer that allowed the globe to rotate within a cardboard ring. Attached to the bottom was a small glass baby-food jar filled with smooth, river-polished quartz pebbles.
"If you hold a flashlight under the bottom," Sky explained, her cheeks flushing pink, "it projects the stars onto the ceiling. And the rocks... if you leave them on the windowsill in the sun, they glow green in the dark for about twenty minutes. I found them by the river."
Nova lifted the fragile paper sphere into the sunlight. Her eyes, which had been dull with disappointment all morning, suddenly caught fire. A radiant, genuine smile spread across her face—a smile Grant had not seen since his wife Marin had passed away three years earlier.
"You made the southern hemisphere too," Nova whispered, pointing a trembling finger at the bottom curve. "Centaurus. The Southern Cross. Nobody ever draws the southern sky right."
"The library had an atlas," Sky said, kicking the toe of her worn sneaker against the dirt. "I traced it using tracing paper from my art class. It took three weeks."
"It's the best thing I've ever seen," Nova declared fiercely. She looked up at her father. "Dad, can we cut the cake now? Please?"
"Yes," Grant choked out, his throat burning. "Yes, star girl. Right now."
He signaled Juny, who immediately sprang into action, wheeling Nova toward the central pavilion while Sky walked side by side with the chair, chatting easily about the moons of Jupiter.
Grant stood frozen for a moment, watching them. A heavy stone had lifted from his chest, replaced by an unfamiliar warmth. But as he turned to follow them toward the pavilion, his eyes caught something hanging from Sky's neck.
Tucked beneath the frayed collar of her denim jacket was a worn lanyard with a plastic hospital badge peeking out. It wasn't an employee pass; it was a pink dependent-care visitor card from the Seattle County General Immunology Ward. Written in faded marker across the corner was a patient name: *Ramirez, Elena.*
Grant stopped dead.
*Ramirez.*
Before he could process the name, his personal phone buzzed violently in his breast pocket. It wasn't the party chat or the caterers. It was his chief of private security, Marcus Vance—no relation to the board member, but a former federal agent who kept Grant’s life secure.
"Mr. Hawthorne," Marcus’s voice crackled through the encrypted line. "You have a vehicle parked four hundred yards south of your lower perimeter gate. Black Lincoln Navigator. Tinted glass, plates registered to a shell company."
Grant turned his back to the children, his voice dropping to a sharp murmur. "Whose shell company?"
"Vance Holdings. Julian Vance’s personal asset firm," Marcus said coldly. "Sir, that car has been sitting there since ten o'clock this morning. Long before the girl walked up your driveway."
Grant felt the blood drain from his face, replaced by ice. Julian Vance was his primary rival on the board of Hawthorne Biotech. He was the man who had been aggressively lobbying to sell off the company's experimental rare-disease division—the very division Grant had founded to find a cure for children like Nova.
"Are you telling me the girl is an operative?" Grant whispered, glancing back toward the pavilion where Sky was giggling as Nova handed her a towering slice of star-frosted cake.
May you like
"No, sir," Marcus answered grimly. "The girl is just a kid. But Vance knew she was coming. He’s waiting for something. And sir? Two local news vans just pulled onto Mercer Street."
***
