For a moment, neither spoke. The children played softly, the pup tumbling over Joseph’s hand to curl against his leg. Felix cleared his throat, absurdly feeling the faintest tightness in his chest.
Could Lilly be the messenger he needed? Had she found him, and would she open his path toward the family he’d always hoped to have?
He wanted Maisie here. In this room. With his friends. With this silly puppy tucked under her arm. He wanted her to laugh at Raphi’s dramatics, to raise a brow at Gideon’s dry wit, to sit beside him and take his hand like no time had passed at all.
Oh, Maisie, where are you?
“Well,” Felix said briskly, clasping his hands again. “If you must saddle the puppy with sentimentality, Lilly shall do as well as any other name.”
Raphi grinned up at him, triumphant. “Sentimentality is the lifeblood of good names, Felix. Remember this when you next despair over my wisdom.”
Felix smiled but said nothing, instead crouching beside Joseph and the puppy, letting his fingers trace lightly over her silken fur.
Lilly. A name as simple as breath and soft as morning.
The pup blinked up at him, her small pink tongue darting once over her nose before she curled tighter against Joseph’s side, her trust absolute.
And for the first time in too long, Felix felt something shift inside him. A hush beneath the ache. A murmur that hope, perhaps, had not left him entirely.
Even if her name had nearly been under his hand. Even if it had slipped past him in silence, folded into a bundle of the nearly lost.
If only he could find Maisie.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Klonimus’ workshophad taken on a thicker kind of quiet—the kind that settled once the brothers arrived. They moved with purpose, sleeves shoved up, tools in hand. No fanfare. Just the slow clink of metal, the thud of wood against wood. The day had begun.
Felix paced the floor. The same three boards underfoot gave a faint groan with every turn. He didn’t change his route. Let them speak.
Above the hearth, the brass clock ticked with the patience of someone watching him waste time. Each second, a door closes.
“I just wanted to ask about your inquiries before I leave,” he said, shifting Lilly against his chest. “First patient’s at nine.”
“I know,” Raphi said. “I waited.” He nodded toward the nearest chair. “Sit down.”
Felix stayed where he was. He didn’t need to hear the words. Raphi’s voice had already dropped—low, careful. Bad news wore that tone like a coat.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “There’s no central record. No registry. A woman can disappear here just by avoiding the synagogue. And if she doesn’t marry under our rites, she leaves no trace. Parish books list only heads of household. Governesses? Companions? They don’t exist unless someone names them.”
He looked up, jaw tight. “Maisie wouldn’t hide from me.”
“Not from you,” Raphi said, his voice even. “From men like List,and there are plenty like him, from the law. If she needed to run, she’d leave pieces behind. Enough to start over.”
He tapped the table twice. “She wouldn’t need much. Change one letter—Maisie becomes Mary. Morgenschein becomes Morning. Shine. To the world, she’s a distant cousin, or a nursemaid. The kind of woman who stays polite, keeps quiet, and doesn’t belong to anyone.”
Felix’s gaze dropped to the pages on the table—letter after letter, address after address. None of them was written in her hand. None of them hers.
Ghosts on paper.The phrase landed hard.
Raphi kept going. “You have to ask the one question you don’t want to. What if she doesn’t want to be found? After the riot, would you have left a message behind? I wouldn’t. Not when a knock at the door could end everything.”
Felix blinked. His eyes stung.
He remembered the broken windows. The blood. How silence had become the only response when his parents were beaten to death and when Alfie…
Raphi leaned forward, quicker now. “If she’s staying with someone, she’s off the map. But the map isn’t where we’ll find her. We look in the ledgers that run alongside: tailors, coachmakers, booksellers, apothecaries. She may be gone from the records that count names—but not from the ones that count coin.”
Felix looked up. “Then we trace the transactions. Not the people. She touched the world—she left fingerprints.”
