Chapter 10

"You spend all day observing people." He pointed toward a chair. "Come sit."She did. Harold studied her face. "Still thinking about the man in the wheelchair?"Maya nodded. "I think about him a lot.""Why?"She looked out the window; the answer came easily. "Because he's lonely."Harold's expression softened. "Lonely?""Everybody talks to him like he's broken."The old man remained silent.Maya continued, "They talk around him. Not to him."Harold slowly nodded. There was wisdom in that observation—more wisdom than most adults possessed. "Maybe."Maya folded her hands. "The woman talks for him.""Claire?""Yes."Harold watched her carefully. "And that bothers you?"Maya thought for a moment, then nodded. "She acts like he belongs to her."The old man stared into his coffee. Something about that sentence unsettled him: not because Maya sounded dramatic, but because she sounded certain. And certainty coming from a child usually meant she had noticed something others missed.That evening, after helping distribute meals, Maya walked home with her mother. The wind had grown stronger. Streetlights flickered overhead. Somewhere nearby, a siren echoed through the darkness.Their apartment building appeared exactly as it always did: old, tired, overlooked—much like the people living inside it.As they climbed the stairs, Maya noticed an envelope stuck beneath their apartment door. Denise saw it, too; her smile disappeared immediately. Maya pretended not to notice, but she noticed everything. Her mother opened the letter, read it, then quietly folded it. The movement lasted only seconds, yet Maya saw the tears forming, just for a moment. Then they vanished, like Claire's fear in the park.Adults thought children missed these things; adults were wrong.That night, after dinner, Maya sat by the window watching trains pass. Each one shook the building; each one carried strangers somewhere else—somewhere better, maybe.Across the city, Ethan sat in his study staring at the same rain-dark sky: two completely different lives, two completely different worlds. Yet both of them felt trapped: one by poverty, one by a wheelchair; one by circumstances, one by something he couldn't yet understand.And neither of them knew that tomorrow would bring them together again. Because Maya Carter had decided she wasn't finished helping the man in the wheelchair, and Ethan Whitmore was beginning to realize that the little girl everyone ignored might be the only person asking the questions nobody else dared to ask.

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