The children on the mattress looked about Milo’s age. One had tawny skin and dark, tangled hair. The other had curls the color of pale wheat. Their clothes were threadbare, shirts torn at the seams, pants too short and stiff with dirt. Their feet were bare. Their ankles scraped.
Milo tugged free and ran.
“Milo, stop.” Augustine hurried after him, pulse climbing. “This neighborhood is not safe. Wait for me.”
Milo knelt by the mattress. He did not try to wake the children. He just stared, wide eyed, like he was searching their faces for a memory he had never been given.
“They look like me, Papa. They have my eyebrows. And the chin. The little dip in the middle. See?”
Augustine crouched down. His heart thudded once, twice, then stuttered. The little dip on the chin. A dimple like a fingerprint of fate. Milo had inherited that mark from Augustine’s late wife, Sofia, who had died giving birth. Milo had been the only baby placed in his arms that day. He had been told the others did not survive.
A memory surged. Fluorescent hospital lights. A nurse avoiding his eyes. A doctor speaking too quickly. A single tiny body wrapped in white. “Only one could be saved.” The words had broken him.
He had buried the grief under work. Under ambition. Under money. Now, he looked at the dirty, sleeping faces before him, and something inside him cracked like ice giving way in spring. One of the children stirred. The lighter haired child blinked up at him. The eyes were the same shape as Milo’s. The same improbable shade of hazel-green.
“Hello,” Augustine said, his voice suddenly hoarse. “What is your name?”
The child blinked again. “Rafael,” he whispered. “And that is my brother, Finn. We stay here so nothing bad happens to us.”
Milo took Rafael’s hand. “Are you hungry? We can get food.”
Rafael nodded once, tiny and tired. “It is okay. We learned how to sleep so we do not feel it.”
Augustine swallowed hard. “Where are your parents?”
“We never had any. A lady told us we had to leave the house because it was not ours. She said someone paid money for us once but no one came so we were bad luck. We are not bad. We try to be good.”
A sound escaped Augustine that was not quite a sob and not quite a curse. He reached forward, adjusting his coat to drape it over the boys. When he lifted Rafael’s small wrist to wrap the sleeve, he saw it.