Page 12 of Ghost Ribbon

His face changed.

Guilt. Relief. Fear. Love.

All of it at once, too much for his small features to contain, overflowing like water from a cup.

“I have to go.” He tried to stand too quickly and swayed, his hand shooting out to catch the bench.

I caught his elbow, steadying him.

He slipped my jacket off and handed it back with great care.

Then he touched my closed fist where the ribbon still rested.

“Keep it,” he said.

The woman called again, closer now, her voice breaking. “Marco!”

Marco turned to run, then stopped. He came back one step. Then another.

Before I could ask what he was doing, he rose onto his toes and pressed a quick kiss to my cheek.

It was nothing.

A child’s thank-you.

Warm lips against cold skin for less than a second.

But it burned. Like the first fire ever kindled in an endless dark.

At the edge of the garden path, where the shadows gathered, he looked back once.

Only once.

Then he vanished between the hedges and the night swallowed him.

I sat on the steps until the sky began to lighten, bleeding from black to purple to grey to gold. The ribbon stayed in my hand, then in my pocket, pressed against my ribs where I could feel it with every breath.

It was the first time I had ever felt anything real.

And because I never saw Marco again, it would also be the only time.

The next morning I tried to find him.

I walked the streets in daylight, retracing my path from the night before. I asked a shopkeeper if he knew a boy named Marco whose father worked at the estates, whose mother scrubbed floors at the big houses.

The man shrugged, wiping his hands on his apron. “There are many Marcos,” he said. “Many boys. Many fathers who work. What is the family name?”

I didn’t know. Marco had never told me.

Another person said there were hundreds of families who worked on the estates, cooks, drivers, gardeners, housekeepers. They came and went. No one kept track.

By afternoon my father’s business was finished and we were driven back to the airport. I kept the ribbon in my pocket the entire flight, my fingers returning to it every few minutes, touching the frayed edges.

I told myself I would come back one day and look properly.

I never did.

Over the next years, I often thought about searching for him.