Raymond was forty-six now, which meant he had been a boy of seventeen when that child was born, barely more than a child himself, frightened and powerless against a wealthy family’s decision to make his son disappear.

All of it aligned with a precision that felt less like coincidence and more like something long broken finally, impossibly, trying to mend itself.

I looked from Raymond’s lined face to the small sleeping child in his arms, and back again, and the resemblance I had never thought to look for seemed suddenly to leap out at me, though perhaps I only imagined it in the shock of the moment.

The number landed in the room like a struck bell.