I expected there to be a catch.
People had rarely been kind to me without eventually asking for something in return.
But Richard never did.
Each morning, before I started work, he would find me.
“How are you today, Nora? Do you need anything?”
“I’m fine,” I always replied.
He never seemed convinced, but he respected the answer.
Richard hired a nanny named Ruth, although she often had little to do because he loved spending time with Emily himself.
I sometimes found him crawling across the carpet while she rode on his back, both of them pretending to be lions.
Other times, he sat beside her tiny table, drinking imaginary tea from a plastic cup while she decorated his gray hair with pink ribbons.
For such a serious man, he looked ridiculous.
But seeing them together slowly changed the way I saw him.
One afternoon, after finishing my errands, I sat in the kitchen for a few minutes to rest my aching feet.
Richard appeared with a cup of tea and placed it in front of me.
“I’m supposed to be taking care of you,” I said.
“Then consider this my rebellion.”
Over time, I stopped thinking of him as a wealthy man taking pity on me.
He became simply Richard—gentle, lonely, and unexpectedly kind.
Then one day, my phone rang.
I stepped into the pantry to answer.
It was my landlord.
“I’ve given you enough time.”
“Please,” I whispered when he told me what I already feared. “Most of my first wages went toward hospital bills and overdue payments. I can give you part of the rent now and the rest next month.”
“You said that before.”
