Xander's eyes widened. "That's amazing, Mom! Congratulations!"
His mother, Elena, never spoke of him directly. But Xander knew the shape of the absence. It was a boy-shaped hole in every family photo after 1997, a silence that fell over birthday dinners like a held breath. When he was twelve, he found a faded Polaroid: a teenager with his same sharp jaw and distant eyes, arm around a younger Elena, both of them laughing in front of a chain-link fence. xander corvus mom
Xander left the prison and drove straight to his mother’s house. She was in the garden, kneeling in the dirt, planting tulip bulbs for the spring. When she saw his face, she knew. Xander's eyes widened
Above them, the sky was the color of prison walls. But somewhere beneath the frost, the tulip bulbs waited—buried, unseen, but not gone. But Xander knew the shape of the absence