The toys were still in my hands when I saw her. Barefoot on the cold marble, in her wrinkled yellow dress, picking dry dog food out of the bowl with fingers that wouldn't stop shaking.

The meeting was worth four hundred million dollars. Richard Sterling walked out of it at two-forty in the afternoon.

His chief financial officer, Gerald, half-rose from his leather executive chair, his face pale with sudden panic. "Richard. We're eleven minutes from closing this acquisition. If you walk out that door right now, they are going to pull the offer."

"I know what we are," Richard said, his voice entirely devoid of hesitation.

He took his tailored cashmere coat off the back of the heavy oak door and left his board of directors sitting around a polished mahogany table that cost more than most of their houses. He didn't care about the merger. He didn't care about the offshore accounts. He had felt a sudden, inexplicable tightness in his chest for the last hour, an instinct honed from his darker, earlier years on the streets of Chicago that told him he needed to be home.

He made three stops on the drive back to the estate. He bought a stuffed white unicorn with a shimmering silver horn. He bought a professional-grade paint set with forty-two vibrant colors. He bought a box of tiny, hand-carved wooden animals—a fox, a bear, an elephant no bigger than Sophie's thumbnail. And finally, a soft pink sweater with fluffy white clouds on it, because his six-year-old daughter had told him once, from the back seat of his car on a dreary gray Tuesday, that clouds looked like sheep that had forgotten where they were going.

He kept the pink sweater resting on the passenger seat for the entire drive, glancing at it whenever the traffic stalled.

The heavy iron gates of his estate opened silently. Gravel crunched under the thick tires of his SUV. The late afternoon light came filtering down through the ancient oak trees in long, golden bars, exactly the way it always did in October. Richard Sterling told himself he was an incredibly lucky man. He had told himself that lie for three years, ever since his first wife died. Some days, he almost managed to believe it.

Usually, Sophie shouted his name before his coat was even off his shoulders in the foyer. She would scream "Daddy" in two sharp, joyful syllables, loud enough to echo and fill the whole east wing of the massive house.

That evening, the house was entirely quiet.

The white marble floors shone with pristine perfection. The crystal chandeliers glowed with a warm, artificial light. The air smelled faintly of lemon wood polish and cold, untouchable money. There was no music playing from her tablet in the den. There was no small voice asking whether he had brought gummy bears in his pockets.

"Sophie?" Richard called out, stepping out of his shoes.

Nothing.

He walked slowly toward the kitchen, his brow furrowing.

The shopping bags slipped out of his hands and hit the floor before his brain could even fully process why.

His daughter was sitting on the cold floor in front of the dog's stainless steel bowl.

She was barefoot. Her yellow dress was wrinkled and stained into harsh folds. Her dark hair was tangled in a matted knot on one side, where she had obviously slept on it and no one had bothered to brush it out. Silent, heavy tears ran down her pale cheeks as she picked dry, brown kibble from the dog's bowl with violently shaking fingers and pushed it quickly into her mouth.

For one agonizing second, his body completely refused to move.

Then, he ran.

"Sophie!"

She flinched.

His own child flinched away from him. Her narrow shoulders shot up, her chin tucked down, her thin arms coming up instinctively over her head to shield her face. It was a defensive reflex that had been learned somewhere recently, and learned incredibly well.

He dropped heavily to his knees beside her. His knee came down hard on a scatter of brown pellets, grinding them to dust into the expensive marble.

"Sweetheart. What are you doing?" he choked out, reaching for her trembling hands.