Despite the shambles my life is in, I’m actually fairly good at organizing people. I think it goes back to my days as a drama kid. Theatrical productions have so many moving parts, you have to be able to order things or there’s no way the show will come together. I assign each of the temps a section of the room to work in and show them how to arrange the different categories of boxes so that they’re neatly sorted. By the time Amanda rejoins us, her hair rebraided and her shirt no longer inside out, almost everything is packed up again.

She falls into the chair next to me. “How did you do that?”

I hold up the paperclip butterfly I’m currently working on. “This? It was mostly Owen.”

As soon as I’d shown him how to link the paperclips together, he’d gone nuts, making me six necklaces and a crown for each of us. Now he seems to be trying to figure out how many paperclips he can slide onto one loop. 

He’s so smart. I don’t get why he doesn’t talk. His mom confirmed that he’s five years old, and every other five year old I’ve ever met was like a water fountain, just spewing words nonstop. They’ll take a simple thirty second story and turn it into a ten minute ordeal, where all the details are given out of order and repeated at least twice. But I can’t even get Owen to laugh. The closest I’ve gotten was one more of those adorable, dimple-y smiles. 

“Yes, Lissa,” Amanda deadpans, tearing my attention back to her. “I really want to know how you turned my parents’ stationary into a weird shaped flower.”

I stick my tongue out at her. “It’s a butterfly, and now you’ll never know.”

She sighs. “Seriously, though. How are you so good at this?”

“I think the real question is, how are you so bad at it?” I glance at her. “Didn’t you go to business school?”

She glowers at me. “Yes.”

“Don’t they teach you this stuff at business school?”

“They teach you how to run businesses,” she protests. “Not people.”

“Don’t businesses usually involve people?”

“I know. I know!” She buries her head in her hands. “I’m just not good at this part. I like the numbers. Maximizing profits, increasing overhead, using assets to their full potential.”

I know what some of those words mean. 

Amanda looks up at me miserably. “I really want to prove to my parents that I can do this. They’re so protective of this place, but I have so many ideas about how to improve it. I feel like they’re testing me with this event coordinator job, and now I’ll never get to show them what I can do because I’m incapable of getting a handful of teenagers to move some boxes around without it devolving into chaos.”

I pat her knee comfortingly. “Amanda, this was just one day. Nobody does a great job every day, all the time. You’re going to have plenty of time and chances to impress your parents.”

“Thanks,” she sniffs. “Would—would you mind sticking around, just for a little longer? We’ve got this wedding we’re trying to plan for and I’d appreciate having you here.”

“I will if you give me your wifi password.” I nod towards my laptop. “I’ve got to do some job hunting.”

She frowns. “You hate our wifi.”

“Because it sucks.” The Flintstones probably had more bandwidth. “Sadly, I couldn’t afford hotspot on my new phone plan, so sucky wifi it is.”

Three hours and two averted crises later, Amanda is back to her confident and put together self, and I’m back to having no clue what I’m doing. I’ve started applying for jobs completely at random. Dental assistant? Why not. Church sound technician? I can figure it out. 

Owen shows me the pen he’s finished putting back together after he took it apart. The kid’s impressive.

“Can you teach me to do that?” I prop my chin in my hand. “Then at least I could get a job at a pen assembly factory.”

He shrugs. There goes that glittering career.

I need to find something, and soon. My current ‘Save Aunt M’s House’ plan is to 1) get a new job, 2) make tons of money, and 3) impress my parents so much with my work ethic and savings account that they’ll agree to let me rent the place until I can buy it myself. It’s foolproof. Well, foolproof-ish. 

I don’t know if I’ll have time to find this miracle job and rack up said money before the house goes on the market. Enzo said that Jamie said he’s hoping to have everything finished by the end of the summer. It’s already mid-June. That’s a scarily small amount of time. 

As if he can sense that I’m starting to spiral, Owen puts his pen down and hops into my lap, nestling himself into my arms. The effect is immediate. I relax around him, laying my cheek against his impossibly soft hair. He’s like a human therapy dog. A therapy human. Or is that just a therapist?

The door to the ballroom bursts open, bringing with it a flood of noise. I jump up, sliding Owen off my lap. A harpist, two red-faced temps (one of them is Gregory but I don’t remember which), Amanda, and her dad, Mr. Hayashi, are struggling with what must be the world’s biggest harp. They have to tip it just to get it through the door. Mr. Hayashi is yelling the whole time. 

“—my delivery fee refunded! How could they be so inept? It’s not even the right day! No one gets married on a Tuesday!”

 “Can I help?” I ask.

Mr. Hayashi shakes his head. Somehow, he manages to look refined even when sweaty and furious. “No, sweetie, but thank you. Amanda, go hang out with your friend.”

The words ‘hang out’ make Amanda grimace, but she does as she’s told, letting the others take over the steering of the harp.

“Twenty-five years old, and he still talks to me like I’m a teenager,” Amanda mutters, following me back to the front desk. “It was my idea to store the harp here anyways.”

“What happened?” A temp accidentally knocks the instrument against a wall, and Mr. Hayashi’s face turns a new shade of red. I wince in sympathy.

“Our previous harpist was the sister of the event manager, and since she quit, we had to rent from this new company. But they got the date wrong, and no one was here when they dropped it off, so they left it on the lunch patio of all places….” 

I miss the rest of what she says. Owen’s gone. I left him on the chair when I went to offer help, but it’s empty, and he’s nowhere to be found.

“Do you see Owen?” My head whips around, searching the mostly empty room. “He was just here a second ago, I swear.”

“Uh-oh.” Amanda peers over the desk. There’s no one back there. “Maybe he’s playing hide and seek?”

Panic balloons in my chest. I lost him. I lost the most precious little kid on earth, and I’m never going to be able to find him because he’s a freaking mime. And his mom is going to have me arrested for kidnapping and when the FBI comes to take me away they’ll ask how come I’m 24 and I’ve only kidnapped one kid, and then they’ll write in my file that I’m not living up to my kidnapping potential and my parents must be so disappointed in me— 

“Oh, wait!” Amanda leans over so far, her feet leave the ground. “I think he’s under the desk.”

I run to check and my whole body sags in relief when she’s right. Owen is curled up underneath the desk, his hands over his ears, his face buried in the floor.

“Hey, buddy.” I reach a hand out carefully, but remove it when the touch makes him flinch. “Owen. Owen, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Amanda joins me, crouching down so we’re at eye level with him. “What’s that about?”

I have no idea. “Maybe he’s autistic?” I’d babysat a couple kids with autism before. They’d sometimes get so overwhelmed by certain sounds or sensations that they’d completely shut down. “The noise could have triggered him.”

Except I’ve never seen Owen flapping his hands or rocking back and forth, the way the other kids I’d worked with had, and he makes eye contact easily. Plus, when I was upset, he understood what I was feeling and how to comfort me. Kids with autism usually don’t pick up on those social-emotional cues.

“Or he’s just scared of my dad.” Amanda snorts. “I’m a grown woman and I’m used to him, but even I get freaked out sometimes when he starts yelling.”

That could explain why Owen looks so terrified. Mr. Hayashi is about the most harmless and physically gentle person I’ve ever met, but I can see why someone who doesn’t know him would find his intensity scary. 

I decide to just go for it and scoop Owen up, ignoring the way he kicks and thrashes.

“Hey, it’s just me,” I murmur in his ear. “It’s Lissa. Don’t be scared.”

Eventually, he stops fighting me and clings to me instead. I cradle him and make soothing noises, trying to coax him out of the little shell he’s made of his body. He won’t look up. Despite Amanda’s reasoning, I can’t help wondering if there’s something more going on here. This doesn’t seem like a normal reaction to shouting. 

But I can’t ask Owen what’s going on in his head. All I can do is hold him, and try to ignore the tiny seed of dread taking root in my stomach.