“Please mister, buy this painting so we can buy bread,” three dirty triplets begged. The billionaire mafia boss stared at the canvas, his heart stopping. The woman painted on it was the wife he mourned for years. With shaking hands, he pulled out a black card and whispered, “Take me to her.”

sharp, unyielding eyes—were exactly the same. When they locked onto mine across the curtain of rain, the rest of the planet ceased to exist.

For ten agonizing seconds, neither of us breathed. I had hallucinated her presence in crowded rooms a thousand times, but ghosts don’t shiver from the cold. Ghosts don’t look at their children with panic, and then continue reading …