Page 7 of Shattered

She'd chosen to leave. Preferred the absence of pain over the presence of me.

Social services wanted to send me to a group home. No family, no guardian, no place to go. I was twelve years old and completely alone in a way that felt permanent. Final. Like the rest of my life had already been decided.

Then Miguel Santoro appeared.

He'd been my father's friend. Not close, but friendly enough to come to the funeral and check in afterward. When he found out about my situation, he didn't hesitate. Told the social worker he and his wife would take me in. That I'd have a home for as long as I needed one.

Elena welcomed me like I'd always belonged there. Gave me a room, enrolled me in school, treated me like a third child—even though I was a stranger carrying more grief than any twelve-year-old should.

Daniel was fourteen—quiet, serious, already focused on becoming a doctor like their father. He didn’t know what to do with me at first—this silent kid who’d landed in his house overnight. But he tried. Invited me to play basketball, showed me how things worked, made space for me in his life.

I was nonverbal in those early months. Not because I couldn’t speak, but because words felt impossible, pointless. What was there to say? My parents were dead. My mother had chosen pills over me, and there was no language big enough to hold that. No combination of words could fix that or make it make sense.

Other kids tried at first. Classmates, neighbors, Daniel’s friends. They’d ask questions, try to include me, wait for responses that never came. Eventually they gave up. Decided I was weird, damaged, not worth the effort.

Everyone except Delia.

She was ten years old and could talk enough to fill a whole mountain range. She’d follow me around the house, chattering about her day, her art projects, the book she was reading, theinjustice of bedtimes. She asked questions she knew I wouldn’t answer. Told jokes that weren’t funny. Invented games that required no participation from me whatsoever.

Most people would have gotten frustrated, taken my silence as rejection.

Not Delia.

She was stubborn in a way that should have been annoying but somehow wasn’t. She’d sit beside me while I did homework and narrate her thoughts about absolutely nothing. She’d draw pictures and explain them in elaborate detail even though I never asked. She’d deliberately say things engineered to provoke a response—wrong facts she knew I’d catch, outrageous statements, questions so ridiculous they practically begged for correction.

“The sky is green,” she’d announce.

I’d look at her.

“What? It is. Everyone knows that.”

I’d shake my head.

“So you’re saying it’s not green?”

I’d shake my head again.

“Then what color is it? Oh wait, you have to actually use words to tell me.”

I lasted another three days before finally saying, “Blue.”

She’d grinned like she’d won the lottery. “I know. Just wanted to hear you say it.”

I should have been annoyed. Should have found her exhausting, invasive, too much. But I wasn’t. Even then, even as a grief-broken twelve-year-old who wanted nothing more than to disappear, I’d been fascinated by her. By the way she refused to let me hide, refused to accept my silence as permanent, refused to give up on pulling me back into the world.

She made me exist again at a time when existing felt impossible.

It wasn’t until I was fourteen that I understood what that fascination actually was.

Love.

Inconvenient, impossible, wildly inappropriate love for the daughter of the family who’d saved me. For Daniel’s little sister. For someone so far out of reach she might as well have lived on another planet.

I handled it the only way I knew how: distance.

I left for college across the country. Came home for holidays but kept visits short. Built my career—my empire of galleries and museums—and crafted an entire life that kept me away from the Santoro house and the complications I couldn’t afford.

I watched Delia grow up from a distance—college graduation, art shows, relationships that never quite worked out. I told myself I was being responsible. Honorable. Doing the right thing by staying away.