PROLOGUE — MARCUS
AGE SEVEN
Ihate my birthdays.
They always begin with the same bleak reminder that the one thing I want the most is the one thing I can’t have.
Maybe I should change the wish. Try to see if I can make a better one.
One that doesn’t revolve around wanting something I can never have.
Too late now.
Mom’s slightly trembling fingers tighten around my clammy hand—or maybe it’s hers that’s all sweaty. Her usually affectionate touch is jaded, smothered by the consequences of my stupid wish.
I peek up at her, sinking my teeth into my lower lip.
Mom is still in her pale-pink nurse’s uniform, her white sneakers smudged from the walk in the rain and a worn leather bag slung over her shoulder. Her jet-black hair is pulled into a ponytail, a few strands slipping loose around her face.
I love Mom’s face. It’s round and welcoming, accented by huge dark eyes that I see myself in and warm skin kissed by the sun.
She carries that faint trace of disinfectant, the scent I’ve loved for as long as I can remember because it means she’s home. My classmates say the smell of the hospital stinks, but for me, it means Mom’s hugs as soon as she walks in.
Doesn’t matter how worn out she is, Mom always smiles the widest when she sees me, falling to her knees to hug me and shower me with kisses.
“How was your day?” I’ll ask because that’s what she always asks me.
“Much better now.” She’ll sigh in my hair, hugging me again.
Mom works in the emergency room at the local hospital in our town, Stantonville. And because she works night shifts and overtime, she usually has panda eyes.
Like now.
Normally, she leaves me with Mrs. Rodriguez next door, but yesterday, Mom asked Dad to spend time with me.
Because it was my stupid birthday wish.
I waited by the window, peeking through the curtains all night long, holding the puck he gifted me last year, but I fell asleep, and Dad never came.
This morning, Mom found me sleeping slumped on the windowsill, grabbed my hand, and drove us here.
To Dad’s mansion.
I’ve never been here before.
The house looks as big as Dad. Too big. Like a castle. And…just far away, though it’s right in front of me.
It rises from the ground like it swallowed the whole street, with so many floors stacked on top of each other and countless windows and doors. Even the garden is wider and neater than the park back home. It looks as magical as the gardens in fairy-tale stories Mom loves reading to me.
I wonder if there are roses I can get for Mom.
“The least you could’ve done is tell me you weren’t coming, so I could’ve come up with alternate plans for Marcus.” Mom’s voice is bitingly low—the tone she always uses when she’s fighting with Dad. “A child his age shouldn’t be left alone.”
“He’s eight and grown enough,” Dad says in that dismissive way of his, the sound cutting through the air, although his voice stays controlled.
“Seven. Marcus is seven, Andrew.”
“Seven. Eight. What’s the difference? You’re being dramatic.”
