Who would call me by that name? Now, when the only people who use it, my family, are all preoccupied with their own pain? A tall man stands in front of me, his thick, dark brows bunched with sympathy. I don’t know him. I would remember a man like this, who stands strong like an oak tree. A well-tailored suit molds his powerful shoulders. Dark brown, not quite black, hair is cut ruthlessly short, but hints at waves if given the chance to grow. His prominent nose makes itself known above the full, finely sculpted lips below. His eyes are shockingly vivid—so deep a blue they’re almost the color of African violets against skin like bronze bathed in sunlight. No, a man like him you’d never forget. Something niggles at my memory, tugs at my senses. I’d never forget a man who looked like this, a man with eyes like that…but what about a boy?

“Ezra?” I croak, disbelief and uncertainty mingling in the name I haven’t uttered in years.

It can’t be.

But it is.

In place of the awkward boy I knew stands a man exuding self-assurance in the confident set of his shoulders, the proud bearing of his head. If adolescence was the rough draft, this finished product is a masterpiece of symmetry and beautifully sketched lines.

He nods, a tiny smile relieving the sober line of his mouth. “Yeah, it’s me.”

Maybe it’s the emotion, the vulnerability that shatters the guard I always lock in place. Maybe it’s the compassion in his expression. Or maybe it’s finding in the eyes of a stranger the comfort of a long-lost friend. It could be all of these things, or maybe it’s none of them, but I surge to my feet and fling myself into his arms. He doesn’t seem as surprised as I am by this ungoverned physicality, his strength tightening around me right away. He’s much taller than I am, much taller than the last time I saw him, and he dips a little closer to my ear.

“I’m so sorry, Kimba,” he says. “He was one of the finest men I ever met.”

His words and arms warm places left frigid all week, and this moment melts into a million others I thought I’d lost forever. Ezra and me tracing our names into wet concrete with sticks. Riding our bikes through the streets, shouting and laughing at summer dusk, racing the sun. Pumping our legs to propel us so high on swings at night in a deserted park our feet seemed to kick the stars. Ezra Stern was the axis of my childhood.

“Ez.” I pull back far enough to look up at him, scouring his features for the changes twenty years have made. “But you…what are you…how—”