Chapter 6
The pen made a dry, scratching sound against the pale blue paper of the checkbook. Julian’s hand was steady, but the letters he formed were cramped and angular, like barbed wire laid across a field. Across the table, Leo sat on the edge of the velvet-upholstered chair, his muddy shoes dangling inches above the carpeted footrest, unwilling to let his weight settle fully into the luxury.
"What is your mother's full name?" Julian asked without looking up.
"Clara," the boy answered, his eyes fixed on the silver bread basket in the center of the table. "Clara Vance. But she hasn't used that name since we lived by the mill in Tours. People around here just call her the seamstress because of the bags she mends for the market."
Julian’s pen stopped. A tiny blot of black ink bloomed on the paper, spreading into the fiber like a bruise. He didn't curse; he simply drew a clean, straight line through the smudge and kept writing. He knew the mill in Tours. He had left there in the back of a canvas-covered truck forty years ago with fifty francs in his pocket and a promise to himself that he would never look back at the grease and the damp wool again. He had built an empire on imported tiles and real estate along the grand boulevards, trading the mud of the provinces for the dry marble of the city center.
"She always said you went to America," Leo added, his voice dropping slightly.
"I didn't go that far," Julian said quietly. "I just stopped talking to people who remembered my name."
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He tore the check from the binding with a sharp, clean rip. He didn't fold it. He laid it flat on the table, right over the corner of the photograph, anchoring both pieces of paper with a heavy silver salt cellar. The figures written in the corner were more than enough to cover Saint Jude's and every machine they had plugged into the wall for the next ten years. But looking at the numbers, Julian knew money wasn't the currency she had sent the boy to collect.
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