At home, Miss Ruby waits in her recliner, oxygen tank humming softly beside her. She’s seventy-three but looks older—diabetes, arthritis, high blood pressure. Her body is failing her, but her spirit stays strong.

“How was your day, baby?” She asks the same question every evening.

“Good, Grandma. Yours?”

“Better now that you’re home.”

They don’t talk about the pills she can barely afford. They don’t talk about the doctor visits she’s been skipping. They don’t talk about the college applications hidden in his backpack. Some conversations are too heavy for evening light. Instead, they watch the news together—stories about other people’s successes, other people’s tragedies, other people’s lives that seem to happen in a different universe from theirs.

But tonight is different. Tonight, Darius will make a choice that changes everything. He just doesn’t know it yet. What he also doesn’t know is that for the past three days, someone has been watching him—asking questions about the young man who helps elderly neighbors with groceries, who tutors kids for free at the library, who gives up his bus fare to make sure Miss Ruby has lunch money. Someone who’s about to put that character to the ultimate test.