Chapter 4
Leo didn't wait for permission this time. His small hand dove deep into the pocket of his oversized coat, rustling against something dry and stiff before pulling free. He laid it flat on the white linen table, right beside Julian’s untouched butter knife.
It was a photograph, printed on heavy matte paper that had yellowed along the serrated edges. The surface was creased down the middle, nearly torn through where someone had folded it over and over again to hide it inside the lining of a winter coat. It showed a young woman sitting propped up against a metal rail in a high-ceilinged room with tall, arched windows. Her hair was cropped short, the dark strands clinging to her temples with sweat, but she was smiling directly into the camera lens with an expression so bright it felt out of place in the sterile white box of the ward.
Julian stared at the image. The fork slipped from his other hand, clattering against the plate with a sharp ring that made the nearby waiter look over his shoulder. The old man’s breath caught in his throat, a dry, rattling sound that he quickly swallowed back down. He didn’t touch the picture at first; he simply hovered over it, his shadow falling across the woman’s face like a late autumn cloud.
"My mom said you were her," Leo whispered.
May you like
The words hung in the space between them, heavier than the silver, colder than the wind off the river. Julian slowly lifted his eyes from the photograph to the boy’s face, really seeing him for the first time—the shape of the jaw, the dark curve of the eyebrows, the slight tilt of the left ear that no amount of dirt could obscure. It was a mirror held up thirty years too late, reflecting a life he had spent a fortune trying to forget.
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