Marisa stepped aside, and I saw him. He sat in a wheelchair by the front window, a blanket over his knees. The left side of his face was a map of old, healed burns, and his hands were curled and stiff. But his eyes were the same pale gray I had watched across a dance floor at seventeen. They filled with tears the moment he saw me.

“Hello, Dandylion,” he said hoarsely. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. Then I heard myself ask the only question that mattered. “Bobby, why did you let me think you were dead?” His face crumpled. He reached beside his chair and lifted a battered shoebox onto his lap. “I didn’t,” he whispered. “I wrote you forty-three letters from that hospital. My mother promised she mailed every one.”