The word barely escaped her lips, but somehow it carried the weight of twelve years.
“The test came out years later. Not immediately. Not when it mattered.” She laughed humorlessly. “That’s how these things work sometimes.”
The room felt painfully quiet.
“What happened to him?”
Ryan looked down.
“He left the city.”
I thought about the fear in the bakery. The sadness. The exhaustion. The way she looked over her shoulder before answering a simple question.
“What does all this have to do with the tattoo?”
Ryan looked at me, almost surprised, as if he’d forgotten that was the original question. Then he gave a small, broken smile.
“The tattoo came later.”
I froze.
“That?”
“It wasn’t like that before.”
