The Arrangement

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For Ethan

Prologue

“Daddy?”

Nat’s voice on the phone was small and tremulous. She hadn’t called her father daddy since she was a little girl. Hadn’t called him at all since she’d graduated from high school, since she’d moved to New York, since she’d started her new life. Their estrangement was not Nat’s fault; her dad had made his indifference clear when he’d abandoned his wife and ten-year-old daughter to start over in Nevada. Their relationship had dwindled to a few irregular e-mails, the occasional Christmas gift, an infrequent fifty-dollar bill tucked into a birthday card. There was a vast distance between Natalie and Andrew Murphy—emotionally and geographically—but she had nowhere else to turn.

“Natalie?” At least he knew it was her. Nat was his only child, as far as she was aware. Of course, her father could have built another family during their years apart, but those children would be babies. Or toddlers, maybe. They would not be calling him, in tears, from a police station. “Hold on a sec,” he said.

Her dad was in a bar, or a restaurant, possibly a casino. Through the phone, she could hear jovial voices, the clinking of glasses. Was that the dinging of a slot machine? Andrew Murphy had been living in Vegas for almost twelve years now. She wondered how often he’d thought about the little girl he’d left behind, so bruised and damaged, so shaped by her father’s desertion. Nat had refused to be defined by this one incident, to allow it to haunt her. But a psychologist would have a field day with her backstory, especially now. A mental-health professional might even blame Andrew for what his daughter had done. For the crime she had committed.

On her father’s end of the phone, a door slammed and the background noise ceased. Her dad was in a bathroom, or a storage closet, or a soundproof office. All she could hear now was the thudding of her own heart.

“It’s been a long time,” he said, sounding awkward, formal. “How are you?”

There was no time for small talk. “I’m in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“I’m at the Chelsea police precinct. In New York. I—I’ve been arrested.”

“Jesus Christ, Nat. For what?”

She opened her mouth, but the words wouldn’t come. How could she tell him what she had done? He was a stranger to her, and she to him. But she needed his help, needed his money . . . if he had any. Her mom could not afford to help her—that she knew. Her distant father was her only option. And he had to rescue her because, in a way, this was all his fault. If her dad had loved her, cared for her, been there for her, Nat would have made different choices.