Chapter 2: The Photo
Clara’s fingers tightened around the photograph until the paper bent under her nail.
Inside the hall, someone called her name—light, laughing, oblivious. She did not turn. The boy remained crouched near the fallen bread, watching her with a mixture of fear and stubborn hope, as if he had rehearsed this moment in his mind many times and still could not tell whether it would save him or end him.
“What’s your name?” Clara asked.
“Noah.”
“How old are you?”
He hesitated. “Eight. I think.”
I think. The answer landed harder than a precise number would have.
Clara looked at the photo again. The woman in it was unmistakably her from years ago: the same eyes, the same mouth, the same small mole near the collarbone now hidden beneath gold fabric and careful makeup. The baby in her arms was wrapped in a pale blanket. One tiny hand had caught the edge of her shirt.
She had no memory of this picture being taken.
Or rather—she had spent years making sure she would not have one.
“Where is your mother now?” Clara asked.
Noah’s grip on the bread tightened.
“She’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
He shrugged one thin shoulder, a small movement full of practiced helplessness. “She got sick. Then she didn’t wake up. Before that, she said if I was ever alone, I had to find the lady in the picture. She said the lady would know.”
Clara felt the blood move out of her face.
“Know what?”
Noah looked at her as if the answer should have been obvious.
“Who I am.”
The back door of the wedding hall opened. Laughter spilled out, bright and careless. A man in a suit glanced toward them, frowned at the sight of the boy, and disappeared back inside. The interruption was enough to force Clara’s public instincts to the surface. She could not remain here, crouched in gold silk beside a starving child, while half the city’s carefully dressed elite celebrated twenty feet away.
And yet she could not walk away from the photo in her hand.
She slipped it into her clutch with fingers that did not feel like her own.
“Come with me,” she said quietly.
Noah stiffened. “Are you going to call someone to take me away?”
Clara looked down at him—at the matted hair, the torn shirt, the dirt dried in the corners of his mouth—and felt something old and dangerous open in her chest.
“No,” she said. “Not yet.”
She led him away from the main doorway, around the side of the building where the service path ran past stacked chairs and empty delivery crates. Every step in her heels sounded too loud. Every breath hurt.
May you like
Behind them, the wedding continued without her.
In her clutch, the photograph burned like a live coal.
