My mother worked seventy-seven days without being paid while her boss flaunted a new Porsche and begged her to wait “one more week.”

Six months later, the air in Chicago turned crisp and golden with the arrival of autumn.

The Kane Foundation for Working Families was officially launched on the front page of the Chicago Tribune, featuring a smiling photograph of Mom in a sharp white chef’s jacket, standing beside Vincent Kane, and—tucked right in the front—me, holding a giant pair of ceremonial golden scissors.

To celebrate, Vincent invited us up to his private estate on the shores of Lake Geneva.

It wasn't a restaurant. It was a massive stone house surrounded by pine trees, with a long wooden dock stretching out into water so clear you could see small fish darting beneath the surface.

Mom was inside the massive professional kitchen helping prepare dinner, laughing with three other chefs she had hired—all of them former colleagues from restaurants where bosses had tried to cheat them out of their wages.

I sat at the end of the wooden dock, dangling my legs over the water, skipping flat stones across the lake. One, two, three skips.

Footsteps crunched softly on the gravel behind me.

Vincent walked down the dock, wearing a thick cable-knit sweater, carrying two mugs of hot apple cider with cinnamon sticks poking out of the foam.

He sat down beside me on the edge of the wood, his long legs dangling over the water just like mine.

"You're good at skipping stones," Vincent observed, handing me a mug.

"Mom taught me," I said, taking a careful sip of the sweet, warm cider. "She said if you throw it flat enough, even heavy things can dance across the water."

Vincent looked out across the lake, watching the ripples spread outward until they vanished against the distant shore.

"Your mother is a very smart woman," he said quietly.

"Are you still the boss of everything?" I asked, looking up at him through my bangs.

Vincent smiled—a real, full smile that made the hard lines around his eyes soften completely.

"I used to think so, Rory," he said, resting his chin on his hand. "Then a four-and-a-half-year-old girl walked into my restaurant with six purple stars and a red hoodie, and I realized I wasn't running nearly as much as I thought."