"Where is he?" Taylor Thomas queried.

Her sister, Abigail, looked around again.

"I don't know," she replied.

The nine-year-old girls were waiting outside PS 41 in Greenwich Village. School had just let out and they wanted to go home. After much negotiating they'd earned the right to make the ten-minute trip on their own. The caveats were they had to stay together, and they had to keep an eye on their six-year-old brother. If they violated either of these conditions, their unsupervised walks would be delayed another year with no avenue for appeal.

Taylor crossed her arms, frowning. There were still plenty of kids around with school aides watching everything. The twins had only gotten out of class ten minutes earlier, but she hated waiting. Matthew wasn't her responsibility.

"I'm learning to draw cartoons in art class," Abigail began. Her current life goal was to write books and do all the illustrations herself.

As she spoke, she interrupted her own narrative every so often to say "good-bye" to friends or teachers who walked past them. Taylor let her go on, catching every fifth word and nodding at random intervals. Even at her age, she recognized how different they were.

Both girls had long, red hair, pale skin, and freckles. Their noses were small, and they were even losing their baby teeth at a similar rate. But, for all their similar physical traits, the twins varied widely in personalities. Abigail was outgoing, happy to befriend anything with a pulse. While she was far from friendless, Taylor was quieter and more reserved. They both liked to read with Abigail preferring fantastical tales while Taylor preferred more realistic narratives and non-fiction.

Matthew finally emerged from the school building and located his sisters.

"Hey, guys!" he said, brushing some stray brown hairs out of his face.

"Come on," Taylor said. "Let's go. We've been waiting."

September was always an exciting month for Matthew. Starting kindergarten and then first grade presented a wealth of new opportunities to explore. Plus, his birthday was October 2, now three weeks away, and he was always giddy about this in the days prior. The twins, whose birthdays were August 12 and 13, were past their annual euphoria.

Matthew was growing quickly, having broken the four-foot milestone over the summer. His brown hair, matching his father's, no longer looked like anyone had needed to challenge it with a comb, but he was probably due for a haircut. He was proving to be very curious, his blue eyes always exploring his surroundings, though he wasn't always paying enough attention.

"Be careful!" Taylor cried, grabbing her brother's arm before he stepped off the curb. She pointed towards the red letters on the traffic light.

"Don't walk," she recited. "We have to wait."

A car passed them, and the red letters then disappeared. A few seconds later, "WALK" appeared, illuminated in green letters.

"Now we can," Matthew said, leading the way across the street.

Taylor sighed as she and Abigail followed.

They'd made it half a block when they saw blue lights up ahead. Moving closer, they saw police cars blocking the street. As they approached the intersection, a uniformed police officer intercepted them.

"You can't go this way, kids," the officer said. "Bad car accident. The block's shut down."

"We need to go this way to get home," Taylor protested.

"Can't let you through this way. You know another way?"

Taylor tried to recall the alternate route their father had shown them. They were to use that in case they couldn't go the regular way.

Meanwhile, Abigail was studying the street sign visible over the officer's shoulder.

"We're on 11th Street and 8th Avenue," she said.

The officer nodded, his smile suggesting he was impressed, but Abigail was ignoring him as she continued speaking to her siblings.

"We can get to Monique's store from here," she said, pointing down 8th Avenue.

This idea was met with universal approval. As they turned to head down 8th Avenue, they noticed an ambulance approaching the barricade the police had created in the street.

"Is everyone all right?" Taylor asked as the ambulance was waved through.

"I'm sure everyone will be fine," the officer said. "You guys know where you're going?"

"Yeah," Abigail replied, leading the way down 8th Avenue.

Taylor stood there, staring as the ambulance moved further down the block.

* * *

They needed to walk two blocks over and then turn in the same direction they'd originally come before being diverted. Half a block up, they entered Mallard's Book Corner, which was as far from any street corner as one could get in Manhattan.

"Hey," Frank Norris said as they entered. "What brings you guys here?"

The kids came to the bookstore after school about once a week, but he always acted like this was happening for the first time. He was sitting behind the register and, with no customers to attend to, had been perusing his iPad.

"They closed the street because of a car accident," Taylor explained. "We decided to come here instead."

Frank nodded. In his mid-forties with black hair which was growing white, he described himself as "a drifter without the drifting" with "little chattel" and "the smallest and cheapest apartment in Manhattan". He'd been working at the store for almost ten years and held a second job as a custodian for the New York City School District.

"Where's everybody?" Matthew queried.

"Lizzie's between the shelves somewhere," Frank replied. "Monique's in her office in the back. She isn't feeling well."

"What's wrong?"

"Not sure. Nothing to worry about though."

* * *

Monique Vasquez sat behind her desk, her fingers steepled beneath her chin. Another wave of nausea, the second of the day, was waning. She hadn't vomited yet, which she was grateful for, but the urge was still there. Monique was ready for this day to be over, though she couldn't picture tomorrow being any better.

The large, thick, beige envelope lay on the desk in front of her, half of it covering her computer keyboard. Monique felt it staring back at her, its message clear. She had to open it, for everyone's sake. She couldn't believe it had come to this.

A soft knock on her office door became a welcome distraction.

"Come in," Monique said, tearing her gaze away from the envelope.

The twins and Matthew entered.

"What are you doing here?" Monique asked, managing to hide her current discomfort with a smile.

"They blocked our way home," Taylor replied, recounting their encounter with the police officer.

"Okay. I'll text your dad and let him know where you are. Go upstairs and I'll be up in a bit to find you some snacks."

She needed to pee and knew this would be at least a ten-minute scenario. But she couldn't wait.

As the kids scurried up the stairs just outside her office, Monique took hold of the joystick of her wheelchair. She maneuvered around her desk and into her private bathroom.

The bathroom was almost as big as her office, she having split the hundred-and-eighty-square-foot space in half when she inherited the store. It contained a sink and toilet and was big enough to accommodate her wheelchair as well as the support rails she needed to get on and off the commode on her own.

Monique pressed a button next to her chair's joystick and the buckles for the straps over her legs, waist, chest, and shoulders simultaneously released. Feeling the straps loosen, Monique reached out and grabbed the nearest rail for support. In another minute, she managed to lift and scooch herself from her wheelchair onto the toilet seat. She then lifted herself twice more until she managed to pull her pants and underwear down. Relief then came as Monique tried to keep her mind from wandering back to the envelope. She'd have to open it soon and the thought washed a sense of shame over her.

* * *

If Lizzie Travis realized how often she'd been summoned to Monique's office to strap her boss's legs back into her chair since her hiring, she didn't say anything. She'd been at the store for almost six months. Monique only knew this fact from the records she needed to keep as the transition had felt that seamless. A tall woman, she had sharp brown eyes and long, graying red hair which she usually kept tied back in a simple ponytail. So far, she was good with the customers, something Monique needed with everything that'd happened.

"How are you feeling?" Lizzie asked, having not missed Monique's discomfort since the earlier mail delivery.

"I'm okay," Monique replied. She was feeling a little better, though that was sure to shift again.

Lizzie nodded and went back into the store. Monique moved her chair to her private elevator. The building's second floor was an apartment which, until recently, she'd called "home". Now, she spent about half her time there. The one-bedroom apartment was sparsely furnished and modestly decorated with a small kitchenette and another, even larger bathroom with a handicapped-accessible shower. Monique was still paying off the building loans she took out for the extensive renovations she commissioned when she took over the bookstore. Now, she and Jefferson were paying off a similar loan for similar work done on his house, even though he'd insisted he could just cover those costs. Monique had refused this option, insisting they needed to do things this way for their relationship to work. While not full of himself, Jefferson still owed his affluent life to his family's fortune.

The elevator opened onto the apartment's main room. Monique found the kids sprawled out on her two olive green couches, their shoes, jackets, and backpacks littering the floor.

"School can't be that hard," she remarked. "Move your stuff so I can get by and see what I've got for you guys to eat."

As the kids slowly rose and moved their things, her phone, in a cradle attached to her wheelchair, chimed and vibrated. Glancing down, Monique saw a reply from Jefferson, acknowledging her report of the kids' whereabouts.

Thanks. I'll let Anya know. See you tomorrow.

Monique remembered Jefferson had some sort of business dinner to attend that evening, though she couldn't configure such a scenario being necessary in the working life of a law professor. Sure, he took on an occasional client seeking a defense attorney, but none had ever required a dinner meeting. Maybe he had to meet the dean.

Monique's kitchenette had been largely untouched during the renovation. Not being much of a cook, she saw no need to expand this. The space was just big enough for her chair while preventing anyone else from entering.

"I think I've got some yogurt in here," Monique said, pulling open the refrigerator door. "Yes, I've got strawberry, vanilla and ... blueberry."

Hearing the kids' requests, she retrieved the small, plastic containers and, clutching them to her chest, put her chair in reverse. The cold soon made her skin tingle beneath her sweater.

"Watch out!" she called as she gingerly eased the joystick back, hoping she could keep both her arms steady. She'd struck the wall by the kitchen's entrance on more than one occasion. This time, young torsos and appendages were the bigger concern. She was grateful not to feel any impact.

"We'll have pizza tonight and then I'll take you guys home," she said, remembering Jefferson's nanny went off-duty at 5:30. He'd planned to pay her overtime to watch the kids while he was at his dinner.

Following Monique's instructions, the kids retrieved their own spoons and juice containers from the kitchenette. Monique couldn't help thinking how big this room looked as these tiny figures moved through it.

"Not happening," she said, catching Matthew eyeing the bottle of Sprite in her fridge. She left it to Jefferson to monitor their sugar intake and didn't contribute to it with soda.

"Please," Matthew said.

"No," Monique repeated. "You're awake enough and you've got that apple juice in your hand already."

Matthew put the apple juice back on the fridge shelf where he'd found it and turned back to Monique.

"No," she repeated. "It's that apple juice or water."

Resigned, Matthew grabbed the apple juice again and closed the refrigerator door. As he joined his sisters at Monique's dining table to consume his afternoon snack, Monique's phone chimed again with a text from Anya. The nanny also acknowledged the kids' whereabouts and asked if Monique wanted her to pick them up.

"No," Monique dictated to her phone, her words appearing on the screen. "I can bring them later. Thank you."

Sending the message, she turned her attention back to the kids.

"I'm going back downstairs," she reported. "I'll be back to check on you in a little while. You can watch TV for an hour, but then you're doing homework."

"What if we don't have any?" Abigail asked.

Monique raised an eyebrow. Abigail knew better than to say anything else.

"One hour," Monique repeated. "Come get me if you need anything."

She took her elevator back down to her office and pulled her wheelchair back behind her desk. She sighed as she came face-to-face with the envelope again. Taking a deep breath, she pushed it aside and logged back into her computer and pulled up her e-mail. As she reviewed her new messages, eight which came in while she'd taken the kids upstairs, she considered when she would tackle the documents. She'd have to do so soon.

Even though Monique was an independent person, moving around Greenwich Village with ease and familiarity, people still noticed her and what she was doing, where she was going, and what she was buying. It'd been that way all her life and she usually didn't mind. This was different. She hadn't even told Jefferson.

Monique glanced at the envelope, now near the edge of her desk. What would people say if they knew?

In her late thirties, Monique had long brown hair which she liked despite it being a pain to manage with her chair. She always had to make sure it wasn't between her back and the cushion. Some of her friends compared her to the actress Ashley Jud, though her chair tended to spook men who might otherwise make the same comparison. Thankfully, that fact was no longer an issue.

Thinking about Jefferson and their last two years together, Monique again wondered where he was going tonight. What sort of dinner was this? She wasn't upset that he hadn't asked her to come, but she was curious why he never suggested her joining him as being an option. He'd often asked her to accompany him to work-related events.

Monique felt another growing wave of nausea. Yes, she was curious, though there were other things she needed to focus on first. She cast another glance at the envelope and decided it would wait until tomorrow.