Chapter 3 - Finding Clara
It took two hours of tracking through district records to find Clara Vance. She wasn't at the school; she had been assigned to clean the district annex downtown—a grueling twelve-hour shift that started at dawn.
Nathan drove his town car through the gray afternoon drizzle, pulling up to a weathered brick municipal building on the industrial side of town.
Clara was standing near the loading dock, holding a heavy trash bag, her shoulders slumped beneath an oversized gray janitorial smock. When she saw Nathan step out of the car in his expensive suit, she instinctively shrank back, wiping her hands on her trousers.
“Mr... Mr. Reed?” she asked, her voice cracking. “Principal Caldwell called the union hall twenty minutes ago. He said... he said I’m fired. He said you ruined everything.”
Nathan walked over, stopping a few feet away so as not to intimidate her. He looked at her face—the tired eyes, the faint resemblance to the little girl he remembered from the neighborhood decades ago.
“You aren't fired, Clara,” Nathan said softly. “Caldwell is. And so is the superintendent.”
Clara stared at him, tears welling in her eyes. “What? But... how am I going to pay rent? How are we going to survive?”
“You won't have to worry about rent ever again,” Nathan replied firmly. “And neither will Lily. I’ve established a permanent trust through the foundation for every family affected by that administration’s abuse of power. Starting tomorrow, you have a position as the head facilities coordinator for the entire district—with full benefits, a real salary, and zero midnight shifts.”
Clara covered her mouth with her hands, letting out a ragged sob as the crushing weight of years of poverty and fear finally began to lift from her shoulders.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why would you do all this for us?”
May you like
Nathan looked past her toward the rainy horizon, thinking of a little girl with a ragged stuffed rabbit, a librarian named Mrs. Holloway who had once slipped him crackers, and the promise he had made to himself long ago that if he ever gained power, he would use it to shield the helpless.
“Because,” Nathan said quietly, “someone should have protected you and your mother twenty-five years ago. And nobody did. Today, I get to change that.”
