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were trying to be glad for him. Brom frowned, and Ichy dug his shoe into the dirt. Everything the boys had shared seemed captured in the line Ichy made on the ground between them. The twins had eaten every meal with Ren, played with him at every first snow, watched with him from the window every time the soldiers came and took another boy away. Since their arrival, they had stretched beside him every night of his life and opened their eyes next to him every morning.
     
    The three boys stood together awkwardly in silence, until Ichy reached down and pulled a stone from the mark he’d made at their feet. He cleaned it with the tail of his shirt, then handed it to Ren. The rock was warm from the sun, its surface black and craggy, with bits of red garnet that sparkled. Ren admired the stone for a moment, then closed his fingers around it, feeling the splinter still in his palm.
     
    “Where’s he taking you?” Brom asked.
     
    “I don’t know,” said Ren. And he was filled with a kind of regret—a nostalgia for everything he was about to lose: the smell of fish, the oatmeal for breakfast, the thin blankets, the cold stone walls that echoed. But he knew what it felt like to be left behind, and for the first time in his life he wasn’t the one watching with an aching stomach from the gate as someone else was taken home. He knew then to say what they all said— I’ll come back to visit—and, like them, he knew he never would.

Chapter V
    I t wasn’t until the latch was closed on the gate that Ren thought to be afraid. Afternoon prayers were about to begin. Father John would be leading the first decade of the rosary, and Ren would not be there. Instead he was outside, following a stranger down the road. The sun and the grass and the trees seemed to know this; even the air felt charged as they walked through it. He wasn’t sure what to say, so he tried to match Benjamin Nab’s stride.
     
    They’d walked for only half a mile when they reached the end of the blueberry bushes. This was the farthest Ren had ever been from the orphanage. The boys were sent to pick the blueberries in the middle of the summer. It was always a thrill to be outside the brick wall, and Ren connected the feeling with the taste of the berries, the stain of the juice, the thin blue skin so easily damaged. Now it was fall, and the bushes looked completely different, the leaves turned orange and red.
     
    Ren and Benjamin Nab continued along the road. They passed several fields and came over a hill, breathing heavily as they reached the top. Ren could see a far distance, out to the edges of the mountains and down into the valley. The trees covered every inch, the fall foliage in full color, catching the light of the afternoon sun—yellow, red, and orange, but also ocher, vermilion, magenta, and gold—a brilliant, shimmering view.
     
    Benjamin Nab put his hands on his hips and surveyed the land as if it all belonged to him. Then he turned back to the boy. “Let’s have another look at you.”
     
    Ren stood perfectly still as the man walked around him. Benjamin Nab crouched down, then lifted the boy’s arm and examined the end of the wrist where the skin was sewn over. Ren watched for the usual signs of discomfort or shock. But Benjamin Nab’s face held none of these things. He raised his eyebrows.
     
    “Well,” he said, “you have another one, don’t you?”
     
    There were marks beneath his cheekbones, signs of worried skin. His eyebrows were fair, but the outline of the glasses made up for this, bringing a sturdy look. “You’ll do just fine,” Benjamin said. Then he stood up, and they continued down the road and into the valley. The sun set behind them, and Saint Anthony’s went with it.
     
    Benjamin Nab was a fast walker, easily avoiding ruts in the earth and piles of manure with a quick turn of his boot—the war wound that he had complained of at Saint Anthony’s seemed to have disappeared. Ren struggled to keep pace. He