Gregory Fletcher did not move.

For one terrible second, he forgot how to breathe.

Daisy stood beside him with her small fingers wrapped around her white cane, her pale face tilted toward the vial in the homeless boy’s hand. Her cloudy eyes searched the air, not for shapes or colors, but for the scent that had haunted her every evening. “That’s the same smell Mommy puts in my tea,” she whispered again.

And Gregory felt the last piece of his marriage crack in half.

The boy slid the vial back into his jacket as if it were a loaded gun.

“Don’t take her home,” he said.

Gregory’s head snapped toward him. “Who are you?”

“My name is Caleb.”

“Caleb what?”

The boy hesitated. For the first time, fear crossed his face.

“Caleb Monroe.”

Gregory froze.

Monroe.

The name struck something buried deep inside his memory. A newspaper headline from years ago. A scandal. A woman found dead. A grieving husband. A case dismissed as illness.