Caleb was already standing, coat in hand. He had known Everett wouldn’t sit with this knowledge politely.
The drive through the city felt unreal. Glass towers dissolved into brick, then into streets that bore the quiet exhaustion of neglect. Everett had funded entire neighborhoods, revitalized districts with press releases and ribbon cuttings, yet somehow this part of the city had never intersected with his vision.
“Haven Row used to be a church,” Caleb said quietly. “Director’s name is Mrs. Okafor.”
Everett nodded, though his mind had slipped backward in time, into a hospital room filled with antiseptic and panic.
His daughter, Amara Langston, had been the light of his life, a woman with a laugh that disarmed strangers and a conviction that children deserved dignity regardless of circumstance. She’d married Daniel Cole, a high school counselor who believed troubled teens weren’t broken, only unheard.
Daniel was killed by a distracted driver six months before Amara gave birth.
Amara followed him three months later, hemorrhaging during childbirth while doctors fought to save her life and nurses carried her newborn away.
Everett had stood there, a widower already once before, staring at a future he felt too old and too hollowed out to manage.
That was when Marissa arrived.
Daniel’s older sister. Calm. Warm. Efficient. She spoke in reassurances, in plans that sounded reasonable to a man drowning in loss.
“I’ll raise her as my own,” Marissa had said. “She’ll have siblings. Stability. You can stay focused on your work.”
