Page 33 of Born for Starlight

He looked at the cinnamon roll. He looked at the bite missing from the cinnamon roll. He looked at me.

One eyebrow went up.

I smirked.

"That's my cinnamon roll."

"It was unattended."

"It was pre-ordered." He slid into his side of the booth, and Lettie appeared with his coffee, black, and vanished again just as fast. "There are laws about this kind of thing."

"Sue me. I know a guy who can find leverage on anybody. His name's Bruno."

At my brother's name, he flashed an expression that was there and gone too fast for me to read. He wrapped his hand around his mug. "You want to tell me why I got summoned, or do you want to keep committing breakfast crimes?"

"Both. I'm a multitasker." I pulled my phone out of my bag and set it face down on the table, and just like that, the fun drained out of me. I hadn't planned for the fun to drain out. I'd planned to be breezy about things. Keep it simple and light.

He didn't say anything, he just looked at me with concern.

"Before we talk about the trip," I said, "I want to show you something."

"Okay." His voice was soft. I hated it as much as I appreciated it.

"I've watched it eleven times." I turned the phone over and didn't look at him while I said it. "Eleven times, and I can't tell you why you're the first person I'm showing it to."

I hit play and slid the phone across the table.

I knew every second of it by now. The shaky vertical video, someone's phone at Casa Semente, a sister in a gray habit thanking me in accented English while kids in mismatched clothes waved at the camera behind her, hamming it up, shoving each other. Kids just being kids. And then at the very end, in the last four seconds, the girl. Seven, maybe eight. Thin. Big eyes. Standing at the edge of the frame the whole time, not waving, not performing, just standing there. And in the last second before the video cut off she looked directly into the lens. Directly through it. Directly at me.

Matthew watched all of it without moving. When it ended, he set the phone down carefully, like it weighed more than it had a minute ago.

"The girl at the edge," he said.

My breath went out of me. "You saw her."

"I saw her."

"Eleven times, Matthew. I've watched a forty-second thank-you video eleven times, and every time I tell myself I'm watching the sister or the boys and girls goofing around, and every time I'm actually waiting for the last four seconds." I wrapped both hands around my coffee. "I don't know that girl. I don't know her name. I don't know why she feels like unfinished business."

He was quiet for a moment. I could tell he wasn't just thinking. He was feeling.

"What do you want to do?"

"I need to meet her."

"That's Casa Semente?" he asked.

I nodded and pulled up the itinerary, even though I suspected he'd already seen every line of it. I turned my phone around so he could see it. "Which you already have, don't you? Code had it, so you had it."

"I've read it," he nodded.

"Of course you have." I turned the phone back to me. "It's my first stop. A day there, maybe more. They reached out to me themselves, did you know that part? Not through Marty, or some publicist. A direct message to my actual account. They have their own account which the sister apparently runs on a phone with a cracked screen. It took her three tries to spell my name right and she apologized for bothering me." I felt a lump in my throat. "They weren't asking for the quarter million. They didn't even know about the quarter million yet. They were thanking me for saying the word orphanage and Brazil out loud on a podcast."

"Casa Semente is the real thing." He said it flat and certain. I looked at him carefully, and I could see that he really knew what he was talking about. The tightness in my chest loosened as he confirmed what I'd been hoping. "The order's been there sixty years. Their books are clean, their people stay for decades, and your money will go where they say it goes. You could spend a month there and I'd sleep fine."

"You checked their books?"

"I check everything." He turned his mug a slow quarter turn. "That place will change because you walk into it. That almost never gets to be true. Enjoy it."