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"I should say hi," Sabina murmurs. "Maybe explain… explain what's going on."

"I think that's a good start. And I'll be right here if you need me, okay?"

Sabina nods and slips away from my grip, then she approaches the door on unsteady legs. It takes a few seconds for her to work up the courage to grab the handle, but when she does, the door slides open and she walks in with a big smile on her face.

"Hi, Illyana, do you remember me?"

Illyana glances up and smiles widely as she nods. "Yeah!"

"Can I help you color?"

22

SABINA

"Sure! That really pretty woman brought me these. She said that she likes to color in a lot since her accident. Did you see her scar? It looks so cool. I wonder if I'll have a scar like that when I get my new kidney. I remember the doctor said it was going to be minimally invasive…" She hesitates over the word, then surges on. "Like a teeny, tiny slice to make a pocket, but I was thinking about it and I don't think you can put your kidney in a pocket. I've seen the pictures of my scans on those screens and it looks huge!"

Illyana rambles on with such quiet delight that it's hard to believe how sick she is. The paleness of her skin, the cracks on her fingernails, and the dullness around her eyes are all evidence of how hard this is on her little body, but she talks just like any happy ten-year-old who ends up in my restaurant.

"Have you got any scars?" She turns those big eyes onto me and holds up an orange pen. I take it and she angles her coloring book toward me where half of a giraffe stands out brightly from the page.

"No," I reply. "Well, actually, I have a scar on my knee that's in a little V shape."

Illyana's eyes widen. "Cool! How did that happen?"

"When I was young, younger than you are now, my next door neighbor got a skateboard and I wanted to impress him because I thought he was cute."

"Eww." Illyana giggles.

"I know. I know. So I got on his skateboard and I was doing okay until he told me to do a flip. I tried and I failed. I went down and the skateboard came up and cracked me on the knee. Where the wood split, it cut into my knee, and after it healed, it created this little V."

"That's so cool." Illyana focuses on coloring the giraffe's spots pink. "When I go back to school, I'm going to tell everyone that I got attacked by a shark. I think that's so much cooler than having a broken body part."

School.

I hadn't even considered something like that. Have I taken her away from all her friends and classmates? "School? I… what was your school like?"

Illyana tilts her head as she works. "Boring. Well, it was really just me and Mandy, but sometimes she'd take me on outings and trips and I'd see other kids my age. I like that. Uncle Mario never let me play with them and kept telling me to wait until I'm older. I'm ten now, though. How much older does he want me to get?"

"Ten is very old," I agree, nodding slowly. My stomach flips over itself. "So you… lived with Mario?"

Illyana nods. "When I got sick."

"What about your dad?" The question thoughtlessly slips out of me before I can stop it and Illyana immediately stops coloring.

"He's always busy. And grumpy. And tired. I don't get to see him much. He's not like the dads in my books." She sighs deeply and then looks up at me. "Is he coming here soon?"

My lips part but I have no idea what to say. The hopeful glimmer in her eyes breaks my heart, and all I can do is shake my head.

Surprisingly, Illyana doesn't seem that bothered, almost as if she's used to the disappointment. Whatever else she plans to say seems to melt away when she spots something on my arm. "What's that?"

Glancing down, I glimpse the tail end of my vine tattoo peeking out from beneath my sleeve. "My tattoo?"

"You have a tattoo?" Her eyes go as big as saucers. "That's so cool! I saw that the other man has one too."

I straighten myself slightly and roll up my sleeve to reveal the simple black vine tattoo that crawls up the outside of my arm and settles into a couple of small flowers near my shoulder.

"That's so pretty," Illyana breathes out and she holds up her pen. "Can I color it in?"