She was by general consensus at the recovery center impossible not to like. Matthew would bring her to the center after her school day ended, and she would do her homework at the small table near the indoor garden while he finished his afternoon rounds.
On the days the weather held, she played in the outdoor area alongside the children who were there for sessions. She had learned quickly, not because anyone told her, but because she simply paid attention, that some of the children needed different things.
Some needed noise and chasing. Some needed to be near activity without being pulled into it. Sophie had a talent for reading which was which. Luna was the second kind. She would sit near the edge of the play area watching.
Sophie had tried once early on to offer her a section of a puzzle she was working on. Luna had not taken it, but she had watched Sophie finish it, and the next afternoon she had settled herself a few feet closer.
Evelyn had observed Matthew for the first time on a Tuesday. He had been crouching beside one of the younger boys, a child of about four, who had worked himself into a low-grade panic over a ball that had rolled under the bench.
Matthew had not raised his voice, had not reached for the ball immediately, had simply said something too quiet for Evelyn to catch, and the boy had taken a breath, and then they had retrieved the ball together, methodically, as if it were a small important project.
Diana Cole, Evelyn’s operations director, had been standing beside her. She had glanced at Matthew and back at Evelyn with the brisk disinterest of someone mentally filing a person under irrelevant.
Evelyn had said nothing, but she had noticed. It was an ordinary Wednesday afternoon when it happened. Matthew was crouched on the paving stones near the garden beds, tying Sophie’s left shoe.
The lace had come undone for the third time that week. the same shoe, always the left, because Sophie insisted on double knotting the right herself and the left she left to fate and her father.
Matthew was used to it. He had developed a small routine around it. He would tie the lace and tell a piece of a story while he did, something small and specific about something Sophie had said or a bird he had seen on the roof that morning.
