People talk about courage as a loud thing.

The bravest act in this whole story was a man on the far end of a phone line, in the pause before he answered, choosing to say the sentence that would cost him everything he’d spent fifteen years protecting.

Chapter 12 — The Drive

The drive to Fabian’s took twenty minutes and felt like an hour.

Matthias drove in silence.

I sat in the back with our son asleep in his car seat, wrapped in the yellow blanket Belen had chosen for him, and watched the streetlights slide over his small face and turned one question over and over: what secret could a birthmark possibly be the key to?