New York City | Friday Morning | Hawthorne Estate

The sun broke through the curtains for the first time in days — but even light couldn’t reach the heaviness sitting in the air.

Bryan hadn’t slept.

The photograph lay on his desk, the edges frayed from where his fingers had traced it a hundred times through the night.

Eden-042.

Eden-045.

Two numbers that once belonged to children who were never supposed to have names. Never supposed to grow up.

He looked at the girl in the picture again — those same dark curls, that same defiant stare. Violet.

He remembered fragments — the smell of antiseptic, a lullaby hummed through...