“Nazareth, let’s give Mary some time to settle in. I’ll show you your bedroom.”
I glance at Mary, and she’s still avoiding looking in Samuel’s direction. “You gonna be okay?” I ask.
She nods lightly, biting the corner of her bottom lip.
“I won’t be far,” I assure her, and then follow Valeria out into the hall.
We pass one bedroom. Then another. A study with a heavy oak door left slightly ajar, bookshelves visible through the gap. Then two more bedrooms, both closed. The hallway curves slightly, and the carpet runner beneath our feet feels longer than it did on the way up, like the house is bigger on this side than it looked from the outside.
I count without meaning to. Four doors. The study. Then Valeria stops at the last door at the far end and rests her hand on the handle.
“This one’s yours.” She smiles.
I look back the way we came. Mary's room is completely out of sight.
“Um, Mrs. Capello?—”
“Please, call me Valeria.”
“Can I be closer to Mary?” The question comes out before I've finished deciding to ask it. “To her room. I just—we've always shared a bedroom. She has nightmares sometimes, and when she does, she needs—” I stop, and try again. “I just like to be close. In case she needs me. I can even sleep on a mattress in her room.”
Valeria looks at me for a moment. Not unkindly. Patiently, the way a teacher is patient with a question that has an obvious answer she's choosing not to embarrass you with.
“Nazareth.” She says my name again. “You're her brother. Not her keeper.”
“I know. I just?—”
“It would be quite unusual.” Her voice stays warm, stays gentle. “A boy your age, sharing a bedroom with his little sister. Wanting to be that close.” A small pause, perfectly weighted. “People would find that strange. Don't you think?”
The word lands somewhere soft. Strange. I turn it over. Think about what it looks like from the outside, how the other kids at the group home would look at me funny when I told them my sister and I used to share a bedroom.
Heat climbs my neck.
“I wasn't trying to be strange,” I say quietly.
“Of course you weren't.” She reaches out and touches my jaw—brief, light, just her fingertips, the same gesture from the doorstep. “You love her. That's a beautiful thing. But she needs her own space now. Room to feel settled. To grow.” She tilts her head. “You want that for her, don't you?”
I look at the carpet. Cream and deep, my footprints visible in the pile.
“Yes,” I say. Because she's framed it as something Mary needs, and I would hollow myself out for what Mary needs.
“Good.” She opens the door and gestures me inside. “Now. Let me show you your room.”
We're about to walk in when footsteps come down the hall—unhurried, authoritative, the footsteps of a man who has never once needed to announce himself because the space rearranges around him automatically.
“Ah. Rowan, darling.” Valeria's voice changes. Just slightly. A tightening, barely perceptible, like a string tuned up half a note. “I was just about to show Nazareth his new room.”
Rowan steps in beside her. He's tall. Older than her, silver at the temples, a navy suit that looks like it was measured to fit only him.
“Mr. Capello,” I greet, and he looks at me the way you would at a piece of furniture you're considering for a room. Assessing. Taking in the dimensions. Deciding if it fits.
He extends his hand. “Nice to meet you, Nazareth.” Then he steps past his wife into the room. “Come tell me what you think.”
I follow him, and the bedroom is nothing like Mary’s. No fairy lights, no window seat, no shelf arranged by color. But it isn't bare either. Navy walls, dark wood furniture, a desk by the window with a green-glass lamp already switched on, casting a warm pool of light across the surface. The bed has a charcoal duvet pulled tight and flat, the kind of tight that takes effort. Andthe bookshelves—two of them, floor to ceiling on either side of the desk—are full.
I cross to them before I even mean to.
Encyclopedias, a whole set, spines in matching burgundy with gold lettering. An atlas thick enough to use as a doorstop. And then the others—shelved in a row like they belonged together, like someone had thought carefully about the order.The Art of Judo. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: Theory and Technique. Karate-Do. The Complete Book of Throws.Book after book, the whole shelf of them, discipline after discipline.
