Darla took floors 1 through three. Hadley took four. The fourth floor smelled like peppermint. It always did. 90 years of candy had soaked into the brick, and no amount of cleaning ever got it out.
Hadley parked the stroller in the doorway of the corner office where the brass plate read Jude Tolbert. From there, she could see May every time she lifted her head, and she lifted it constantly.
“Wipe the desk, look up, empty the trash, look up, warm a bottle in the breakroom, come back, look up.”
“Still here,” she whispered. “Good girl.”
She did not know that someone else was looking too. Across the hall in the glass-walled conference room, the lights were off. Jude Tolbert had been sitting in the dark since 4:52. His mother was expecting him for dinner in Sequoia Hills. She had expected him for four Christmases now. Every year he said he’d try. Every year he ended up here in a chair by the window with the city lights coming on below him like they were happening to somebody else.
He heard the baby before he saw her. A laugh high and sudden like a bell somebody dropped. He sat up. Through the glass, he saw the stroller, the cleaning cart, the young woman in a gray uniform. His hand went to his phone. There were rules about this. Building security was one button away.
Then the woman began to sing softly, off-key. Rudolph with the words half mumbled while she polished his table in long, careful strokes. Every few seconds, she turned toward the doorway and smiled at the stroller like it was the only thing in the building worth seeing. Jude set the phone face down on the table. He told himself it wasn’t his business. He didn’t look away.
