Leo Maddox by Sarah Darlington

will be lucky. Then your Mommy will come back.”
    “My Mom's not coming back,” I argued. And she was completely clueless if she believed a clover could bring her back.
    Wetness filled her eyes. “Don't say that,” she whispered, her voice shaky and broken. She hadn’t cried a single tear in the last several days and now she was crying…not for herself, not for her mother…but for me.
    That hit my heart like a speeding train.
    “Do you wish I would disappear too?” I’m not sure why I asked her this, but I did. I needed to know.
    “No,” she answered quickly, sounding very shocked and possibly hurt by my words. “Why would I wish that?”
    I looked at Clara. I mean really looked at her. And I fell in love with her. It was her kindness I fell in love with. This one small act of kindness.
    “I think I do want to keep it,” I told her, meaning the clover. “I might need it one day. But we have to hide it because my dad would throw it away if he found it. Have you been keeping it in a book like I told you?”
    She nodded.
    “Pick a new one in here to hide it in.” I pointed to the shelves and shelves of books lining the walls of my dad’s library.
    Clara sniffled and then stood to her feet. I watched as she wandered around the room, her eyes scanning the books. I watched her in awe, in a new light. She was so different from Maggie—from anyone I’d ever met, actually. I used to think that made her strange, but now I knew otherwise. It made her special.
    “Is this one good?” she asked, finally picking a book from the many. I opened the book and tucked the little clover safely between the pages.
    “Do you think your dad will read it and find our clover?” she asked.
    I put the book back in its place on the shelf. “No. My dad never reads these books.”
    “Why does he have a giant library if he never reads?”
    “The same reason he has eighteen cars.”
    “Why does he have eighteen cars?”
    “You ask too many questions,” I muttered to her, not wanting to talk about my dad.
    “Can I ask one more?”
    “Okay.”
    “What will you use the clover for?”
    That same train-wrecking feeling hit my heart again. “Because,” I whispered. “I'm going to ask you to marry me one day, Clara. And I'm going to need all the luck in the world.”
    “Why?” she demanded. “Don't you want to marry Maggie?”
    I couldn’t answer her because the library light flipped on and a cold voice reverberated throughout the room, “Leonardo. What are you doing in here?” my father demanded.
    “Great Expectations,” Clara said aloud, breaking my thoughts and bringing me back to the present.
    It took me a second to realize it but we were both thinking of the exact same memory, at exactly the same moment . Great Expectations . The book she’d hid the clover in. Many times over the years I’d tried to remember the title to that damn book. I needed to remember so that I could find our clover. I’d searched and searched my father’s library—now, since I’d bought the house, my library—but I’d never been able to find that book.
    “What does that mean?” I asked, but I knew exactly what it meant and, apparently, so did Clara.
    “Nothing,” she muttered, her face going sheet white. She was remembering how I’d told her I would ask her to marry me one day. I just knew she was. Because I’d never wavered from that wish. And now Clara knew not only that I liked her, but that I always had.
    And that scared the hell out of her. The fear on her face was tangible and crippling.
    “Don't, Clara,” I pleaded. “Stop overthinking this.”
    “I have to go.”
    The train stopped at some random destination along our route, the doors slid open, and as people started to move off the train, her arms dropped away from me.
    “I'm going back to Steph's. Let me go.”
    With her eyes lingering on mine, she stepped off that train before I even realized what she was doing. The doors slid closed and suddenly she was gone. One