Pedestrians hurried beneath umbrellas.
The boy was gone.
“Dad!”
Sophie had followed him.
Ethan turned.
She was standing beneath the market awning, staring upward.
Rainwater reflected the evening lights.
For years, Ethan had described colors to her.
Now Sophie was seeing hundreds of them at once.
Gold from the streetlights.
Red from car taillights.
Green from the market sign behind the glass.
And above the buildings, just beyond the storm clouds, a narrow strip of evening sky remained visible.
Sophie stared at it.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“You told me blue felt like having nowhere you need to be.”
Ethan smiled.
“I remember.”
She kept looking upward.
“You were wrong.”
“Oh?”
Sophie reached for his hand.
“Blue feels like getting somewhere you thought you’d never reach.”
Ethan looked at his daughter.
Then toward the place where the stranger had disappeared.
For nine years, he had believed Sophie’s story had already been written.
A childhood without sight.
A future constructed around limitations.
A world she would only know through somebody else’s descriptions.
One stranger had changed everything with a gesture so small most people would have ignored it.
He had raised his hand.
A little girl had followed the shadow.
And a father had finally looked at what had been in front of him all along.
Sophie squeezed his hand.
“Come on.”
“Where?”
“I want to see the flowers.”
They returned to the market.
This time Sophie walked ahead of him.
And Ethan followed.