“I was helping Tommy!” the girl protested through tears.
Daniel stiffened. “How does she know his name?”
Lisa hesitated. “I work here. Maybe she saw it on the door—”
“No,” Sophie interrupted. “We used to play at Miss Rose’s daycare.”
Daniel’s chest tightened. “My son has never been to daycare.”
“Yes, he did,” Sophie insisted. “Twice a week. He liked hide-and-seek.”
Daniel slowly turned to Lisa.
“We’re leaving,” she repeated, pulling her daughter away.
They disappeared down the hall, leaving Daniel holding the cheap bottle — and a new, unsettling doubt.
That afternoon he called the nanny, Grace.
“I want the truth. Did you take Tommy to daycare?”
A long silence.
“…Yes,” she admitted finally. “Only twice a week. He was lonely, sir. It was a small place in Eastbrook. He seemed happy there.”
Eastbrook was one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
Daniel hung up, anger rising — at the lie, at himself, at the realization he’d been too absent to notice.
He looked through the glass at Tommy.
Five days.
If his son had found joy in a modest daycare, who was he to judge?
“I don’t care where you were happy,” he whispered, holding Tommy’s hand. “I just want you here.”
That night, Daniel fell asleep in the chair.