Mom closed her eyes.
“He wanted me to see him.”
“Voss?”
“Yes.”
Aunt June tapped a photo on the wall. It showed Voss younger, smiling beside my mother near a hangar. Without the scar and shadow, he looked almost kind.
“He’s been moving again,” Aunt June said. “Whispers out of Europe. Missing engineers. Dead contractors. Someone is rebuilding Ghostwing.”
Mom looked at me.
I suddenly understood why she had never told stories.
Because stories had shadows.
And now those shadows had followed us home.
Aunt June turned to me.
“Lucas, did anyone at school touch your mother’s photograph?”
I thought back.
My notebook. The printed picture. Mr. Reynolds taking it from my hand before the presentation and holding it long enough to smirk.
“Yes,” I said. “My teacher.”
Mom and Aunt June exchanged a look.
“What?” I asked.
Mom opened the metal box and took out the original photograph, the same one I had copied for class.
