He’d looked at his mom’s stuff. Were they going to take everything that belonged to her and roll it away, too? Desperately, he started grabbing items. Her hairbrush, her favorite bracelet, her robe, two picture frames. He hid it all in his suitcase.

Then his social worker drove him across town in a car that smelled so strongly of flowers that he felt like he was choking.

“Sebastian,” she said, when they arrived at a brown house, “this is Mr. and Mrs. King. They’ll be looking after you for the time being.”

“Sebastian! Welcome,” Mrs. King said. She and her husband were both round, pink, and smiling.

She looked nothing like his mother.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t know them, and his mom had taught him not to trust people he didn’t know.

“Come inside,” Mr. King said.

He was numb. Dead, like his mom.

His mom was gone.

His mom was gone.

She’d been here this morning. And now she wasn’t.

The social worker held the door of the house open for him. Mrs. King was saying a lot of things he didn’t want to hear. They passed a room where two kids, one older than him and one younger, were finishing dinner. He pretended he hadn’t seen them. He followed the adults to a room that had bunk beds with red covers.

He decided he hated red covers.

The social worker was talking to him. The strangers were talking to him.

His mom was gone. His mom was gone.

All he’d been able to do in that moment was wrap his hands around his backpack and stare at the strange room where they expected him to live with a kid he’d never met.

A bird’s cry fractured the memory like glass. The wind absorbed the shards, and Sebastian came back to the present.

This separation with Leah might be for the best, darkness inside him whispered.

It concerned him, how invested he was in Leah. Yet he wanted to see her again far too much to consider making this separation permanent.

Just like it was not an option to keep Isabella at status seven, it was not an option to leave things the way they were with Leah.

The stalemate between them could not continue.

The following day, Leah sat at her desk in her classroom, prepping for upcoming lessons during her free period. Beyond her windows, the weather was as gloomy as her disposition had been since she’d left Atlanta. The moaning wind whipped trees into unnatural angles.

“I found some blueberry muffins on my desk.”

She lifted her face toward the voice, which belonged to Ben. He stood framed by her doorway.

“Are you the anonymous donor?” he asked.

“I am.”

“Mystery solved.” He took the chair across from her desk, just like old times. “Thank you.”