I cracked the door just wide enough to see him, basket in hand.
“Hi,” I managed, not trusting my own voice.
“I’m your new neighbor.”
He lifted a basket. “These muffins are for you so you don’t complain to the HOA if I forget to mow the lawn.”
I tried to laugh like a normal neighbor.
Then his sleeve slid back.
The skin along his wrist and forearm wasn’t the same texture as the rest of him. It was shiny in places, tight in others — grafted.
And on the inside of his forearm, half-hidden beneath it, was a distorted scar — like melted ink.
A figure-eight. An infinity symbol that had been through suffering.
My throat closed.
Then his sleeve slid back.
I didn’t mean to speak; I didn’t mean to say his name like a prayer.
“Gabe?”
His smile faded.
“You weren’t supposed to recognize me, Sammie,” he said. “But you deserve truth, huh?”
“Gabe, how are you here?”His voice broke. “That fire, 30 years ago, wasn’t an accident.”
I unlatched the door and stepped aside.
“Come in,” I said.
His smile faded.
We sat at my kitchen table like strangers who shared a secret neither of us understood yet. I poured coffee out of habit.
He kept staring at his hands.
“I don’t even know where to start,” he said.
“Start with the fire,” I replied. “Start with why we buried you.”
His jaw tightened. He nodded once.
