His position gave her an opportunity to study his masculine face, the lines of his shoulders and ribs, the way the strands of his hair fell.

She and Sebastian had both been cut off from their biological parents. Just how much of the tangible and intangible stuff that made them who they were had been passed to them by people who were not a part of their lives? “Did your mother have gray eyes?” she asked.

“She had blue.”

“Is there anything about your appearance that resembles hers?”

“I have the same color hair that she did. Our mouths and chins have a similar shape.”

So far, she knew only what he’d told her about his mother at the Coleman family’s barbecue. Her name had been Denise, and she’d moved Sebastian from Chicago to Georgia. “Did your mom grow up in Chicago?”

“She was born and raised in Brooklyn, the youngest of five kids in a blue-collar family.” He picked up a persimmon-hued maple leaf and spun it by its stem. “She never talked to me much about that part of her life.”

“Why?”

“I’m guessing because those years were brutal for her. The summer after tenth grade, she took a job at a summer camp in upstate New York, and after that, she never returned to Brooklyn.”

“She moved out after tenth grade?”

“Yeah. At the end of that summer, she went home with a friend she’d made named Cassie who lived in Chicago.”

“Cassie’s parents were okay with that?”

“I guess so. She moved in with their family for the rest of high school.” He skimmed the leaf’s tip along the hand that she’d rested on her abdomen. It left a trail of tingles, so she pushed her sleeve up past her elbow and turned her inner arm upward.

Taking his time, he trailed the leaf up and down.

“What did she do after graduating from high school?” she asked.

“She got a job in manufacturing and moved into an apartment with a few roommates.”

“What was her personality like?”

“Stubborn, tough, willing to stand up for herself. Honest. Nothing about her personality was fake.”

“You told me that she passed away when you were eight of a terminal illness.”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t mention which terminal illness.”

His face went blank. She supposed that a long history of self-preservation had taught him how and when to mask his feelings.

“Heart disease,” he said.

Comprehension rolled from the top of her head down to her toes. Sebastian had once been a child powerless to save his mother. He was no longer powerless, and now he worked, every single day, to do for children what he’d been unable to do for her.

“Heart disease,” Leah reiterated.

“Yes.”

“Brought on by a congenital heart defect?” she guessed. He’d told her at the barbecue that his mom had had the condition all her life.