“I’m not saying you stole it,” Nathaniel replied carefully. “It just looks exactly like one I gave someone very important to me.”
The boy tightened his grip on the bag.
“I’ve always had it. As long as I can remember.”
The words hit Nathaniel like a physical blow.
The timing fit. Too well.
And when he really looked—past the grime, the bruises, the hollow cheeks—he saw the eyes. The same gray-green eyes that once watched him from across the breakfast table. The same eyes that belonged to Isabella.
When Nathaniel asked the boy’s name, there was a brief hesitation.
“Noah Reed,” the boy said.
The name sat awkwardly, like a borrowed jacket that didn’t quite fit.
Against every instinct telling him to slow down, Nathaniel offered food, gesturing toward a nearby café. Suspicion flickered across Noah’s face, but hunger won—as it always did.
They sat in a corner booth. Nathaniel ordered far too much. He watched Noah eat with desperate restraint, eyes constantly scanning the room, body angled toward the exit.
Nathaniel asked gentle questions.
Noah spoke of shelters and foster homes. Of being passed around. Of a couple outside Cleveland—Derek and Paula Whitman—who lost their foster license after “incidents.” Noah said they called him cursed. Said bad things followed him.
The words settled heavily in Nathaniel’s chest.
Because he remembered holding a little girl who once whispered through tears that monsters followed her too.
When Nathaniel asked again about the necklace, Noah touched it without thinking, fingers brushing the emerald.
“It’s the only thing that never changed,” he said quietly. “When everything else did.”
Nathaniel pulled out his phone.
His hands shook as he showed Noah a photo he had carried for years—the last picture ever taken of Isabella. Summer sunlight. A carefree smile. The star pendant resting against her chest.
The reaction was immediate.
Noah’s face drained of color. He shoved the phone away and stood so abruptly the booth rattled.
“I don’t want to see that,” he said, panic slicing through his voice. “I have to go.”
“Please,” Nathaniel said, standing too. “I just want to help.”
At the door, Noah paused.
Without turning around, he whispered, “People who try to help me get hurt.”
That night, Nathaniel made the call he had sworn he’d never make again.