Chapter 1
I was halfway through my steak when the boy dropped to his knees.
The café around us kept spinning—forks scraping plates, strangers laughing, warm light bleeding through the glass windows—but at my small round table, the whole world stopped turning.
I froze with my fork in the air.
The boy was dirty. Thin. His shoulders shook so hard I could see his bones through his oversized shirt. In his arms, wrapped in a threadbare blanket that looked older than he was, a baby slept peacefully. Two more children stood behind him, wearing clothes that hung off their small frames like rags. They watched me with hungry eyes.
Not hungry for food. Hungry for hope.
"What are you doing?" I said. My voice came out sharper than I intended.
The boy lifted the baby carefully. Like she was made of glass. Like she was the most precious thing in the universe.
"This one can heal your legs."
For one heartbeat, I just stared.
Then I laughed.
Not a kind laugh. Not a gentle one. It was hard and cruel, the kind of laugh that comes from twenty years of sitting in this wheelchair, twenty years of watching people walk past me while I rotted in place. The smallest child behind the boy flinched and stepped back.
"You expect me to believe that?" I said, still chuckling darkly.
The boy didn't move. His eyes glistened with tears, but his voice stayed steady. Determined.
"Just let her touch you."
My smile faded a little.
Not because I believed him. I'd heard every scam in the book. Every con artist with a miracle cure. Every liar who wanted my money.
But this boy didn't look crazy.
He looked desperate.
The baby shifted under the blanket. One tiny hand slipped out, fingers curling and uncurling in the air.
I looked down at my useless legs under the table. Legs that hadn't moved since that rainy night twenty years ago. Legs that had turned my life into a prison.
My fingers tightened around the fork until my knuckles turned white.
"Wait," I said.
The boy rose just enough to bring the baby closer. His hands trembled, but he didn't pull away. He was offering me the most precious thing he had, and he was terrified I'd hurt her.
"She did it once before," he whispered.
That sentence struck something in me. Not belief. Not yet. But something raw and painful and alive.
The baby's tiny fingers hovered over my knee.
The boy held his breath.
I gripped the edge of the table, suddenly terrified. Terrified of hoping. Terrified of being disappointed again.
Then the baby touched me.
Her skin was warm. Soft.
Under the table, one of my feet twitched.
The fork slipped from my hand and clattered onto the plate.
May you like
And I gasped.
I gasped like the dead part of me had just remembered how to live.
