Chapter 5 — The Green Eyes

It was the eyes.

The little girl had striking, clear green eyes, a very particular and uncommon shade of green, and Damian had seen that exact green in only one other human face in his entire life.

His mother’s.

His late mother, gone twelve years now, had had eyes precisely that color, and here they were, looking up at him out of the face of a three-year-old on a dirt-road porch.

“Mabel,” he said, and his voice came out cracked and strange.