Chapter 41: A Time Traveler Makes an Investment
Christie set down her fork and looked at him directly. The softness in her voice was gone — not replaced by anything hard, just by something more straightforward. The careful, watchful quality in her eyes had cleared.
"So are you going to rent it to me or not?"
Andrew sat back and looked at her.
He'd been running a version of Christie in his head this whole time — the quiet child, the cautious one, the girl who'd been through enough that she needed careful handling. And all of that was true. But it was half the picture, and he'd been so busy responding to that half that he'd let the other half sit unexamined.
He thought back to the first day. Two armed men in the hallway. A nine-year-old girl who had assessed the situation, identified the safest available option, and executed a plan without visible panic. Who had sat in his apartment afterward and mocked him, lightly but deliberately, because she'd needed to establish that she wasn't someone who could be easily dismissed.
That girl had been there all along. He'd just been seeing what he expected to see.
"You're something else," he said, with genuine respect. "I mean that."
Christie waited.
"Okay. First question — where did the money come from?" He kept his voice neutral. "You're ten years old. Bonnie's going to be inside for a long time. If you're planning to be self-sufficient for the next decade, that's a significant number. Where does it start?"
Christie folded her hands on the table — a gesture that was so adult it almost made him laugh.
"Bonnie and a man named Edmund had money set aside. It was the reason things went wrong with the Hound Gang — they got between the wrong people over that money." She reached into her pocket and set something on the table between them, sliding it across with one finger. "She went back for the earring. That's why she got caught. She dropped it when she fell, and she turned around for it."
Andrew picked it up. Small, simple, the clasp still slightly bent from where it had been torn free. Dark rust-colored stains on the back of the setting.
He turned it over in his fingers.
"So," Christie said, watching him, "Bonnie trusted you. That means I trust you."
Andrew set the earring down.
"I don't need you to take care of me," Christie said, with the precision of someone who had rehearsed this and meant every word. "I need you to give me a chance to work. I know you're planning the food truck. Hire me. I don't need much — just enough to cover what I need day to day."
A pause.
"I can start once I finish middle school."
Andrew looked at this ten-year-old across his dinner table, who had just laid out a five-year employment proposal with supporting rationale and a compensation framework, and felt something that was equal parts impressed and something he didn't have an immediate word for.
When he was nine — in either life — his primary problem-solving strategy had been to cry and wait for things to change. Christie was sitting here with a plan, a negotiating position, and collateral.
"You're hired," he said. "But I have a condition."
Christie didn't flinch. "What condition?"
"School. Serious school." He leaned forward slightly. "I'll cover your living expenses — food, rent, everything. But you're going to a good middle school, and then I'm going to help you get to college. The tuition I'll front as an interest-free loan."
He paused.
"And I want you to study pre-law."
Christie's eyes sharpened slightly — not suspicion, more like calculation. She was working out the reasoning.
Andrew let her work it out. She'd get there.
In ten years he'd be in his early thirties, established, with real money coming in from multiple directions. By then Christie would be nineteen or twenty, potentially finishing her undergraduate degree. A lawyer he'd known since she was ten, who understood how he operated, who he understood in return — that was worth investing in. Not as a transaction. As something real.
He was also aware, sitting here, that he was doing this for reasons that weren't entirely strategic, and he was comfortable with that.
"Pre-law," Christie repeated. She was quiet for a moment, turning it over. Then: "Okay. I accept."
"Good." Andrew smiled. "Just don't resent me for it later."
Christie looked at him steadily. "Why would I resent you?"
"You won't," he said. "Probably."
She picked up her fork and went back to eating, the matter apparently settled in her mind. Andrew sat across from her and let his smile fade slowly into something quieter.
He hoped she didn't turn out like Bonnie. Not because Bonnie was without value — she wasn't. But because Christie deserved a life with more options than the one her childhood had pointed her toward.
He'd seen too clearly, lately, how these things replicated themselves. Parents passed their patterns to their children without meaning to, without knowing, sometimes without ever meeting them. He and Evan. Christie and Bonnie. Mirrors all the way down.
He didn't know if you could break the pattern from the outside. But you could give someone better materials to work with. That was something.
The next morning. The family services office.
The social worker at the front desk was professional and practiced and looked up with the standard opening smile.
"Good morning. How can I help you?"
"I'm looking for information about a child who was in your system recently," Andrew said. "A girl, ten years old, first name Christie. She was placed here after her mother's arrest a few days ago."
The social worker's posture changed slightly — the professional attentiveness sharpening into something more specific. She stood up. "You know her? Sir, that girl left the facility without authorization three days ago. We haven't been able to locate her."
"I understand." Andrew nodded. "I wanted to ask about the adoption process. Specifically, the requirements for someone in my situation."
The social worker looked at him the way people look at something that doesn't immediately fit the category they expected. Young, mid-twenties, well-dressed but not formal, standing in a family services office asking about adoption requirements with the calm manner of someone who'd thought about this before walking through the door.
"Sir," she said, with the careful tone of someone trying to be kind about a reality, "I can see you're young. The age requirements alone would—"
"I know I don't currently meet the standard requirements," Andrew said. "I'm not here to argue that. I'd like to understand what the full set of requirements actually is — specifically what thresholds apply, what exceptions exist, and what the process looks like. That's all."
The social worker looked at him for another moment.
Then she extended her hand.
"I'm Lola. I'm one of the placement coordinators here." Her tone had shifted slightly — still professional, but with something that might have been genuine curiosity. "Why don't you sit down, Mr.—"
"Sanchez. Andrew Sanchez."
"Mr. Sanchez." She gestured to the chair across from her desk. "Let's talk through what this actually involves."
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