The middle-aged couple standing quietly at the edge of the crowd were Julian Walker and Vera Hale, the parents of Sophie Walker. They did not stand at the center, nor did they attempt to draw attention to themselves. Their posture was careful, restrained, as if years of experience had taught them that in the Walker family, visibility was not a privilege—it was a risk.
Time had worn them down in subtle ways. Not through poverty or hardship in the conventional sense, but through something colder and far more enduring: long-term neglect. The kind that seeps into one’s bones, teaching people how to lower their eyes, soften their voices, and accept exclusion as a natural state of being.
Behind them stood a young woman who looked distinctly out of place.
She was Naomi Walker, barely nineteen,
