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Simon woke thinking of his first best friend.

When he was seven, his parents had spent weeks worrying about a solitary man who had moved into the house across the street and never spoke to any of his neighbors. The next morning Simon had rung the man's doorbell and demanded to know who he was and why he was bothering Simon's parents. The man had proven to be alone because he had recently lost his wife. He had taken a new job in a new city as an attempt to restart his life. His wife had always been the one to meet people. The man was an electrical engineer who became a dear friend to them all and steered Simon into science.

Nearly two years later, Simon had rewarded the man by mixing together household chemicals and blowing the roof off his garage. A month after that, Simon's parents had been killed in an auto accident. Simon had entered foster care and never saw the man again. He had not thought of the man in years.

Simon rolled over and discovered he had slept holding the key Vasquez had given him. He had no idea why he still wore it on the chain around his neck. The professor was dead, and the reason why Simon had been given the key in the first place had died with him.

But he had never taken it off. He wore it like a talisman that had lost all purpose. Or a reminder of who he could once have been. As though maybe he could still remake the broken components of his former life and regain what he could no longer even name. Hope, perhaps. Or a purpose beyond the next good time. The professor had never stopped believing in Simon's potential. Not even when everyone else at MIT had written him off.

Not even when Simon had betrayed him.

Simon opened his eyes and discovered an imp standing in the doorway.

The kid was brown and skinny and possessed a grin too big for his body. Simon rubbed his face. “Where am I?”

“Three Keys Orphanage!” He spoke like he was making a double-barreled announcement of pure, unbridled joy. “I am Juan!”

Simon eased himself up to a sitting position on the narrow wooden cot. He must have jammed his neck when the car slid off the road because it gave off a sharp pain as he twisted his head back and forth. His forehead throbbed, but the pain was subdued now, like a wound that had already started the healing process. He gingerly reached up and touched the bandage. It seemed to be professional work.

“Your wound, it was nothing,” Juan announced. “A graze. Three stitches. You are fine. But Sofia wants you to take the antibiotics with your breakfast. You are hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Sofia, she says that is the best sign that you will soon be well. Wait here!” The kid bolted out of the room.

Simon rose to his feet in gradual stages. The bedroom was spare in the extreme—wooden cot, the straight-backed chair where Sofia had been seated the previous night, a narrow table, a stool. A cross hung on the wall by the bathroom door. The floors and walls were all bare plywood, scarred from use and cleaning. The odor of a cheap industrial cleanser clung to the still air.

Simon limped to the narrow window and unlatched the hook. Soon as the window opened, the sound of children spilled through. Laughter, happy shouting, and in the distance a piano and someone singing.

He overlooked a dusty courtyard rimmed by whitewashed structures. The buildings were flanked by broad verandas with overhanging roofs. The courtyard was perhaps 150 feet long and half as wide. Stubborn clumps of grass grew in several places, but it was mostly hard-packed earth.

Children played a rowdy game of soccer. There were perhaps a dozen kids on one team and thirty or maybe even forty on the other. The dozen kids were bigger and older and knew what they were doing. The younger kids were getting hammered, so they threw the rule book aside and did everything but actually tackle the bigger kids. The laughter was infectious.

Juan scampered through the soccer match like it wasn't even there, tin plate in one hand, tin cup in the other. Simon heard footsteps race up the stairs, then the kid appeared in his doorway. “Breakfast!”

Simon grinned as he took the food. The kid accented everything with a shout of pure joy.

He ate standing at the window. The tin plate held beans and yellow rice and a limp tortilla. The sun felt good on his face. The food was bland but fresh and filling. The sensations meant he was alive. Even if his safety was temporary, that felt good as well. The place was both active and calm, a remarkable and jarring combination. Simon felt as though he had been deposited in a place he would never understand.

Then the bell began ringing.

The kids scampered over to an outside pair of faucets. They crowded about, washing their hands and faces and bare feet. Then they lined up, littlest in front and tallest behind. All aimed at the door directly below the tolling bell.

“It is time for morning chapel,” Juan declared. “You will come?”

“You go ahead.” Simon kept his face to the window as the kid scampered down the stairs. Juan's invitation and the ringing bell brought the professor's absence a great deal closer. Faith had remained a vital component of Vasquez's life.

A clutch of villagers entered through the orphanage's main gate and headed for the chapel. The beautiful woman, Sofia, was the last through the portal. She shooed Juan ahead of her, her voice a musical chant even when scolding. After she climbed the three steps, she turned back. Sofia looked straight at him, a blistering moment of silent communication.

Simon raised his cup in a mock salute. She snapped her head back around. Her hair shimmered like a wave of liquid onyx. Then she was gone.

The bell went silent. Simon stared at the open doorway and listened as the kids began to sing. He could still feel Sofia's gaze. And he understood her silent message. All too well.

He had to get out of here. Before he got one of those kids killed.

Sofia sat in her customary seat, near the back of the chapel. And tried hard to stop thinking about Simon.

Her brother was in his normal place, up front leading the children's choir. Because of Pedro's responsibilities as assistant town manager, he could not attend morning chapel more than once or twice a week. The children treated his appearances as causes for celebration. The orphanage choir stood in a semicircle around him. Pedro pretended to pull on a massive rope, struggling to make them sing on tempo. They sang and they laughed at the same time.

As she observed her brother, she recalled the day she and Pedro had arrived here. She had been six, her brother scarcely three. A woman had come to their home and shown a paper to the weeping nanny. The woman had then driven them here to the Three Keys. Pedro had cried for their parents on the way. The woman had smiled and said they would come soon and bring them candy. But Sofia had sensed a dark secret hidden in the woman's smile.

Three weeks after they had arrived, Harold brought her into his office and spoke to her about how the cartel had mistaken her parents for enemies and sent them home to Jesus. Sofia had not moved or scarcely even breathed because she did not want to cry in front of him. Pedro still wept at night for their mother and father, Sofia could hear him in the boy's dorm next door, his wails piercing the dark. She had to be strong for them both.

Harold spoke to her in his heavily accented Spanish, his face suffused with the love and compassion he carried with him everywhere. He asked if she would like him to pray with her. When she nodded, he settled his hand upon her head and asked for a special blessing upon her heart and her life as a result of this change, and that God's healing grace would restore Pedro and her. He asked for God to help them both through this transition.

Sofia did not understand much of what Harold prayed, but she felt a stillness fill her, the first such calm she had known since their life had been taken away.

Sometime before her seventh birthday, she felt as though her parents stopped really existing. She never spoke about this with Pedro. She feared that saying the words would bring back his cries in the night. But for her, Harold became her father and her mother.

Despite herself, she glanced at the chapel's open doorway. Hoping Simon would appear. But it was not going to happen. Though she had never set eyes on him before last night, she knew him inside and out. And she knew this chapel was the last place on earth he would ever come.

When Harold stepped to the podium, Sofia forced herself to turn back around. Simon was not of this place. He did not belong. And today he would leave.

Before it was too late.

Simon showered and dressed in a T-shirt and cotton drawstring trousers that had been left for him. He returned to the window as children spilled through the chapel doors in a chattering flood. They were all dressed the same, in shorts and white T-shirts stamped with the orphanage logo of three interlocked keys.

Simon watched Sofia cross the courtyard with Harold and Juan. The kid looked gangly from this angle, all skinny limbs and barely contained energy. Simon wished the beautiful lady would glance his way. But she remained deep in conversation with Harold. If she even noticed him there in the window, she gave no sign.

Simon left his dusty shoes under the bed and padded down the stairs in his bare feet. Juan stood just inside the open doorway at the foot of the steps. Simon had the impression this was the kid's favorite pose, hovering at the perimeter, absorbing everything.

The doorway opened into Harold's office. His was a simple room holding a battered desk, an upright piano, stacks of papers, and a slowly revolving ceiling fan. Directly opposite where Simon stood was an old-fashioned wall clock, the white enamel face pitted with rust. The second hand ticked in slow cadence around the circle. Simon heard the soft drumbeat of passing time and felt the pressure grow.

Sofia was talking softly on the phone. She stood at Harold's desk with her back to Simon. Her index finger traced a line down an old-fashioned ledger that lay open on the desk. Her voice in Spanish sounded lovely. Harold stood beside her, his arms crossed, his face creased in worry. Juan aped Harold's stance, arms crossed, head cocked to one side, watching and listening with tight focus.

Finally Sofia hung up the phone. “Why didn't you tell me you had missed four payments?”

“Because I don't want you giving us any more of your money,” Harold replied. “You already do too much.”

“You can't run an orphanage without electricity.”

“Tell me what the power company said.”

“They agreed to give us two days.”

“What?”

“It's the best I could do.”

“When is the next delivery due from America?”

“Any time now.” Sofia pulled over a calendar. “The Marathon churches are a week late in their donations.”

“I'll call them.”

“No, Harold. I will make the call. You are too soft. They need to understand how urgent things are.” She tapped the ledger. “What the orphanage needs is an income of its own. In the meantime, I'll speak with Enrique—”

“No. I won't have it.”

“Which would you prefer, that I speak with Enrique or the children lose their home?”

“Don't say such things.” Harold kneaded the place over his heart. “God will provide. He always has.”

Sofia's only response was to cross her arms. The fabric of her blouse tightened as she clenched herself. “What about Simon, when is he leaving?”

“I for one would like to see him stay.”

“Here? But the gang might have tracked him!”

“Pedro doesn't think so. And you know how much the professor thought of him.”

“I know
exactly
what Vasquez thought of Simon. And so do you!”

Harold stood in partial silhouette, with the morning sun blazing through the window beside him, casting him in shadow. He was a tall man, slightly bowed by age and responsibility. His voice carried great strength even when speaking softly. Like now. “I see great things in that young man. So did the professor.”

“He ruined the professor's life!”

“He also was the professor's last great hope.” Harold stopped her response with an upraised hand. “What if God has brought him here for a divine purpose?”

Simon found himself flooded with bitter regret. The professor had posed the same question the last time they had spoken. What if God intended something great? Would that not make it worth their while to forgive and move on?

A handbell clanged through the open window. The sound turned Sofia around to where she spotted Simon hovering in the doorway. Her gaze tightened even further. Her full lips clamped down hard on what she was about to say. She gathered up her purse and started for the door. “I'm late for my first appointment. I will stop by this afternoon.”

Harold moved toward Simon. “Welcome, son. Good to see you up. How's the head?”

“Sore, but healing. Thanks again for letting me stay.”

“Don't mention it.” Harold swept up Juan in one outstretched arm and then reached forward with his free hand and clapped Simon on the shoulder. “Let's go grab us a cup of coffee.”