“Careful. I was starting to like you.”
Eli smiled despite himself.
Then looked down at the shoes again.
“Why?”
Caleb crouched so they were nearly eye level.
“Because yesterday you reminded me what being rich really means.”
The boy frowned.
“You’re rich?”
Caleb laughed.
“Compared to when I was your age? Absolutely.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
He nodded toward the shoes.
“Take them, kid.”
Eli traced one finger along the edge of the box.
“My mom says gifts can make people owe things.”
“Smart woman.”
“So what would I owe you?”
“Nothing.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Eli studied him.
Then he slowly removed the torn sneakers.
His socks were patched.
There were red blisters along his toes.
Caleb felt his smile disappear.
Eli tried on the new shoes.
They fit perfectly.
He stood.
Walked a few steps.
Then ran in a circle around the library steps.
No slapping sole.
No stumbling.
Just a boy running.
When he stopped, he was grinning.
“Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“They’re pretty great.”
Caleb nodded solemnly.
“I have excellent taste.”
“You probably asked the store worker.”
“I absolutely asked the store worker.”
Eli laughed.
And for reasons Caleb could not explain, the sound hurt.
Then a woman’s voice came from across the parking lot.
“Eli?”
The boy froze.
“My mom.”
Caleb stood.
A woman was crossing the parking lot wearing navy housekeeping scrubs beneath an old brown coat. She carried a canvas tote bag and looked exhausted in the way only working mothers seemed capable of looking—like sleep had become something they remembered rather than something they experienced.
She was perhaps thirty-eight.
Maybe forty.
Her hair was pulled back.
Her face was thinner than it should have been.
Eli hurried toward her.
“Mom, look!”
Caleb turned.
The woman looked at the shoes.
Then at Caleb.
Her tote bag fell from her hand.
Oranges rolled across the asphalt.
One stopped against Caleb’s boot.
The color drained from her face.
“Mom?”
Caleb could not breathe.
Fifteen years vanished.
The scar on his cheek did not exist.
The gray in his beard disappeared.
The roar of motorcycles became rain on a motel window.
And the exhausted woman standing thirty feet away became the twenty-three-year-old girl laughing beside the lake.
“Sofia?”
Her lips parted.
Eli looked between them.
“You know each other?”
Sofia Torres whispered one word.
“Caleb.”
Fifteen years earlier, Caleb Mercer had loved Sofia Alvarez badly.
Not carelessly.
Not casually.
Badly.
The kind of love that made a man believe emotion could substitute for character.
At thirty-one, Caleb had been everything Sofia should have avoided.
He rode with the Iron Ravens back when they were not a charity club with rough-looking members.
Back when the Ravens ran stolen motorcycles, protection rackets, illegal gambling rooms, and enough contraband to keep three counties awake at night.
Caleb had been vice president.
His older brother, Darren Mercer, had been president.
And Sofia had been the only good thing Caleb possessed that he had not managed to destroy.
She worked mornings at a bakery and nights studying bookkeeping at community college.
She hated motorcycles.
Hated the club.
Hated Darren.
Loved Caleb.
For nearly two years, she begged him to leave.
Caleb always promised he would.
Soon.
After one more deal.
After one more debt.
After Darren didn’t need him anymore.
Then came a rainy November night and a warehouse full of stolen electronics.
