“I need to find someone.”

“Who, Dad?”

“Marcus.”

For three years, Marcus had cleaned restrooms on the overnight shift at the central bus terminal.

He earned little and lived in a basement that smelled like damp.

He had also done the unspectacular things that keep a person alive: leftover bread, a supply closet on the worst nights, coffee, and the sentence that sent Lucas to Julian’s kitchen in the first place.