When Julian asked the boy his name, there was the briefest hesitation before he answered, “Evan Cole,” and Julian noted the way the name seemed to sit awkwardly on his tongue, like a borrowed coat that didn’t quite fit.
Against every piece of logic screaming at him to slow down, Julian offered the boy food, gesturing toward a nearby café, and though suspicion flickered across Evan’s face, hunger won, because hunger always did, and they sat together in a corner booth where Julian ordered far too much, watching as Evan ate with a mix of desperation and caution, his eyes constantly scanning the room, his body angled toward the exit, habits formed by years of instability.
Julian asked gentle questions, never pushing too hard, learning that Evan had spent time bouncing between shelters and foster homes, most recently with a couple outside Chicago named Brent and Marla Hensley, who had lost their foster license after “incidents,” a word Evan used with bitter irony, explaining that they’d called him cursed, broken, said bad things followed him wherever he went, and the words settled heavily in Julian’s chest, because he had once held a little girl who cried after a nightmare and whispered that monsters followed her too.
When Julian carefully asked again about the necklace, Evan touched it reflexively, his fingers moving over the emerald with unconscious familiarity. “It’s the only thing that’s always been mine,” he said. “When everything else changed, it didn’t.”
Julian pulled out his phone then, his hands shaking despite his efforts to steady them, and showed Evan a photograph he had carried for years, the last one ever taken of Liora, smiling on a summer afternoon, her hair catching the light, the star pendant resting against her chest, and the reaction was immediate and visceral, Evan’s face draining of color as if the blood had been pulled straight from his veins, his breath hitching sharply as he shoved the phone away, standing so abruptly that the booth rattled.
