Arriving at 14 Maple Street, he did not head towards the door. He sat down on a bench on the other side of the street, clutching a crumpled telegram and the letter Ellie had sent before him.
The house was white, with green shutters, a world apart from the pig troughs and copper dust of Redstone Gulch. It seemed peaceful. It looked like the kind of place where a boy could grow up without ever knowing the taste of iron in his mouth or the weight of a hand raised in anger.
The gate creaked.
A boy stepped forward. He was lanky, his limbs moving with the awkward grace of a colt, and he carried a satchel of schoolbooks. He had a cap pulled down over his shoulders, but when he reached the sidewalk, he stopped and looked up, squinting against the afternoon sun.
Cole’s heart wasn’t just beating; it was struggling. He saw the shape of his own jaw. He saw Abigail’s eyes. But most of all, he saw a ghost made flesh.
The boy set off towards the school, then stopped. He looked at the man sitting on the bench across the street. He didn’t look scared, but curious. Then he read the eyes on the letter Ellie had written to him.
Cole stood up. His instinct screamed at him to flee, to spare the boy the sight of a scarred stranger claiming to be family. But then he thought of Ellie, standing on the porch, her hands firmly holding her pen.
“Don’t suppress your grief,” she had said. “It’s just surviving.”
Cole crossed the street. His boots clattered on the cobblestones like thunder. He stopped a meter and a half away.
“Thomas,” he said.
The boy froze. He stared at Cole’s face, following the irregular white scar that ran across his jaw from his temple to his jawbone. He observed the dust-covered hat and the fixed brown eyes.
“The man of letters,” Thomas murmured. His voice changed, breaking in the middle—a sound that gripped Cole’s soul. “The one who stutters when he feels something.”
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