It starts with Jasper.
It always starts with Jasper walking towards me with the easy certainty of someone who has decided that being around me is reasonable and refusing to second-guess this.
I am in the school library at lunch trying to work through Elias’s genealogy record alongside the research notes I photographed from my father’s boxes, and Jasper arrives with a sandwich, drops into the chair across from me and says nothing, which is unusual because Jasper always says something.
I look up.
He has the expression of someone itching to spill the tea because he’s been sitting on it too long.
I wait.
He opens his sandwich.
Then Roman comes in.
He doesn’t announce himself.
He never does.
He is simply standing at the edge of my table with his jacket still on and his eyes scanni
