“Nothing?”
“You told me people were looking for you. Grandma said that means quiet.”
He studied her. “And you listened?”
“I’m seven, not stupid.”
That startled a real laugh out of him, rusty as an old hinge.
Lily’s eyes widened.
“You did it,” she whispered.
“Did what?”
“You smiled.”
He touched his mouth as if it belonged to someone else.
The deepest shift came on a gray Thursday evening when Lily came home quieter than usual.
She sat at the table with her workbook open and didn’t turn a page for five full minutes.
Dominic noticed because he had begun, against all instinct, to notice everything about her.
“What happened?” he asked.
Lily shrugged too fast. “Nothing.”
He waited.
At last she said, “A boy at school called me poor.”
Rosa paused at the stove, spoon suspended midair.
Lily kept her eyes on the table.
“He said my shoes look like they belong in the trash.”
Dominic felt something old and poisonous stir in his chest. Memory. Shame. The hard fluorescent buzz of a classroom in Dorchester. Cheap sneakers with split seams. Boys laughing because hunger had a smell and children were merciless animals when they sensed weakness.
“What did you say?” he asked.
