Chapter 4 - Alan

Thursdays weren’t usually this packed.

I’d picked up a new client last week—a couple with twin spaniels and zero leash training experience—and somehow, I was now responsible for two hyper dogs who thought every pigeon was a personal affront. Add an excitable puppy and a moody Boston terrier, and I was one leash tangle away from losing my patience and possibly a kneecap.

Normally, I’d bring Rufio along. He liked the action. But today? He was wired. Restless in that specific way that said he wasn’t going to walk—he was going to challenge physics.

And Zeus and Tinkerbell weren’t scheduled today, which meant one thing: they were at home. Which meant Clay and Xenia were home. And if they were home, I had a place to drop Rufio without guilt or chaos.

I pulled out my phone at a red light and texted Clay:

Busy day. Rufio’s in gremlin mode. Mind if I drop him off with you for a few hours?

He answered thirty seconds later.

Come by. I’ll be here. X is baking. Tink’s already waiting at the door like she knows.

Of course, she was.

Ten minutes later, I was standing outside the firehouse on Morton Street, which looked like something out of a movie—red double doors repainted sleek black, old brass signage still polished above the arch, and the faint scent of bread, dog, and something lemony floating into the street. The place always gave me a weird feeling. Not bad, exactly. Just full. Like it had a memory of every laugh, every burnt cookie, every muddy pawprint tracked across the polished concrete floors.

I barely reached the threshold before Rufio let out a triumphant yip and lunged forward with his entire body weight. I didn’t stop him. Tinkerbell was waiting, just like Clay said. She performed what I could only describe as a royal welcome dance. Rufio practically dragged me through the hall to get to her, their tails wagging in chaotic harmony as they collided and began licking each other’s ears like they hadn’t just played three days ago.

I cut in enough to unhook his leash before the mother-son duo raced up the stairs. Tinkerbell waited every few steps for her tiny-legged pup. I followed along, resisting the urge to pick Rufio up, knowing it would take him a while to get up the stairs, but he’d be peeved with me for not letting him do it on his own.

As we reached the top step, Xenia poked her head out of the kitchen, a dusting of flour on her nose. “RU-FI-OOOO!” she sang, full musical theater. “My prince returns!”

“He’s yours now,” I said.

Clay appeared from the kitchen, barefoot, holding a cup of coffee and wearing a T-shirt that said Emotionally Unstable Dog Dad. He gave me that same unreadable expression he always wore when he knew I was skating the edge of something but wasn’t ready to admit it.

“Rough morning?” he asked.

I handed over Rufio’s leash. “He’s on squirrel watch. I’m trying to survive.”

“Tink’s been mopey all day,” Clay said. “This’ll make her week.”

I nodded. “Appreciate it.”

“You staying for coffee?” Clay arched a brow, raising his mug.

I shook my head. “Too many dogs. Not enough hours.”

He didn’t argue, just gave me that small nod that meant you’re always welcome anyway.

I turned back toward the street as the door closed behind me, Rufio’s happy barking echoing off the old brick walls.

I had just stepped onto the sidewalk when Clay’s low and deliberate voice followed me.

“Hey—Dorian.”

I stopped. Not because I wanted to. Because I had to.

That name hit differently in the open air. I hadn’t heard, let alone thought about it in years. Not since I deleted the message from that number and told myself it was nothing. Just a mistake. Just a ghost. But hearing it now, in the daylight, in a place I’d let myself feel safe? It scraped something raw inside me.

I turned slightly, one foot pointed toward the street, as if I didn’t shift back toward him, I wouldn’t be pulled under. Clay stood just inside the doorway of the old firehouse, backlit by the warm glow of high ceilings and soft lighting, his mug steady in one hand.

“Everything good?” he asked. Casual. Controlled.

He didn’t mean the dogs.

I held his gaze for half a beat too long. “Just busy.”

Clay didn’t blink. “You sure?”

My jaw clenched automatically. Clay didn’t push often, but when he did, it wasn’t because he needed answers. It was because he already knew them. Still—I wasn’t ready to give anything away.

So, I nodded once. “Appreciate you taking Rufio.”

He looked at me for a moment longer. Not suspicious. Just seeing. Then he gave a slow nod, like he was letting me off the hook even if he didn’t believe a damn word I’d said.

“You know where we are,” he said. “Anytime.”

And just like that, he turned and disappeared back inside, the door closing softly. I exhaled hard, the breath scraping up my throat like sandpaper. Then I walked. Fast. Focused. Like I could outrun the name still ringing in my ears.

Dorian.

That name didn’t belong here. Not on these streets. Not in this version of my life. It belonged in cold hallways and shadowed corners. In rooms with too many locks and not enough windows. It belonged to a world I burned behind me the day I walked away.

Makayla helped me leave it. Reinvent it. Become Alan Chambers—the quiet guy with the dog-walking business, the clean record, the name that opened doors instead of locking them.

But days like this—when Clay spoke it aloud, even gently—reminded me that I wasn’t really gone, no matter how far I’d come.

I shoved my hands into my jacket pockets and tried to clear my head. I needed to focus, stay sharp, and stay focused. I had dogs to walk, schedules to keep, and streets to navigate.

And I did not have time to think about soft hands gripping the front of my hoodie, or wide eyes blinking up at me like I’d caught her mid-fall and rearranged her whole world.

I hadn’t meant to catch her like that. And I sure as hell hadn’t meant to hold on. But I had. Longer than I should have.

And for the rest of the day, every time I tightened a leash or checked my route, I kept seeing her smile and hearing her laugh. Feeling the ghost of her weight leaning into me, like she’d always belonged there. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t safe. And it wasn’t going away.

I made it three blocks before the knot in my chest demanded I stop.

There was a café between a laundromat and a boutique pet bakery—one of those blink-and-you-ll-miss-it West Village spots with chipped mugs and a bell that jingled too loud when the door opened. I ducked inside on autopilot, needing something warm in my hands. Something that didn’t ask questions.

The barista didn’t look up when I ordered a double espresso. I leaned against the far wall, waiting, eyes drifting to the corner-mounted TV playing a muted local news segment.

At first, I didn’t pay attention. My thoughts were still circling Clay’s voice—Dorian—echoing low and sharp like a warning shot I hadn’t seen coming. But then I caught the name on the ticker at the bottom of the screen.

City Approves Early Development Plans for Marigold Grove Redevelopment Project

My stomach dropped.

The footage changed—first, a slow pan over crooked old oaks and sun-dappled grass, then that crumbling stone arch I knew like the back of my hand. Marigold Grove. A sliver of green wedged between forgotten blocks in Lower Manhattan. Most people didn’t know it existed. It wasn’t touristy, wasn’t trendy. Just… quiet.

Just ours.

It was where my mother took me when I was little—on the rare days we had to ourselves before my father’s grip tightened around our lives. We’d sit under the marigold trees that bloomed golden-orange every spring, petals catching in her curls. She’d tell me stories—soft and strange—about heroes who ran instead of fought, queens who whispered to birds, and how magic always hides in quiet places.

It was the only part of the city that felt like it didn’t belong to the Lorenzetti name. It belonged to her. To me.

I hadn’t gone back after she died. Not until I became Alan.

When Makayla helped me disappear, I finally left everything behind, and Marigold Grove was the first place I went, alone at sunrise. I sat beneath the same bent oak and listened to the city breathe. It was the only place I let myself grieve.

And now?

They were going to rip it out.

The segment showed city officials grinning beside polished architectural renderings—clean, lifeless walkways and luxury townhomes. The trees were gone, and the stone arch was gone, too. The wild edges were trimmed into manicured sameness. I felt my pulse pounding in my ears.

The barista called my name—Alan—and I blinked, stepping forward in a haze to take the espresso. I stood near the window, barely tasting the coffee. My reflection was vague in the glass, just a silhouette with shadows under his eyes. All I could think was: They’re going to bury her twice.

The espresso was cooling in my hand, untouched. I sank into the corner booth by the window, elbows resting on the scarred wooden table, and let the low hum of the café fade behind the sound of my heartbeat.

Marigold Grove wasn’t just a park. It was the only place I ever saw my mother happy.

I remembered how she used to slip my hand into hers without a word and lead me through the narrow alleyways off Delancey Street, past the faded mural with the sleeping fox and the rusted fence we had to wiggle through sideways. No one else knew that path. It was ours.

I couldn’t have been older than five or six. She’d pack a thermos of tea and a paper bag with two chocolate croissants, still warm from a tiny café we had to walk an extra block to reach. She said they were “worth the detour,” and I didn’t question it. Back then, any day with her was worth everything.

She’d wear that oversized linen jacket she never buttoned and twist her hair into a braid that always unraveled by the time we reached the bench beneath the old marigold tree. Her laugh was different there—softer, like the weight she carried didn’t exist between the branches.

She’d sit, sip her tea, and tell me stories that weren’t from books. Stories she made up. Ones she said were “just for you, mio cuore.”

There was one I remembered more clearly than the rest.

It was about a boy who could talk to trees.

He didn’t know why at first. People thought he was strange. But the trees listened. They told him stories, warned him when danger was near, comforted him when he cried, and didn’t want to explain why.

At the end of the story, I asked her if the boy had ever told anyone.

She smiled, brushed a marigold petal from my shoulder, and said, “Only the people who loved him enough to listen.”

I didn’t understand what that meant back then, but I do now because no one ever really listened in my father’s house—not to her, not to me.

That park was the last place I ever saw her smile and mean it. It was the last place she was free from the shadows closing in around our lives.

And now those trees—the ones that had bent and swayed above us like guardians—would be ripped out, paved over. Turned into some fake version of serenity, sterilized for rooftop brunches and $5 dog biscuits.

I looked down at my phone, gripped my palm so tightly the screen had smudged. I deleted the message from the unknown number two days ago, but I haven’t stopped thinking about it. And now this?

Marigold Grove.

They knew. Whoever sent that message—they knew.

They were picking at the edges of my life, tugging at the threads that still tied me to Dorian Lorenzetti. Reminding me that I wasn’t invisible no matter how many names I changed, dogs I walked, or routines I followed. I wasn’t safe. And I wasn’t free. Not really.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and looked out the café window.

Across the street, a yellow cab honked. A kid rode past on a scooter. The city carried on like it always did—loud, alive, indifferent. But inside? Something was breaking. And I didn’t know if I could stop it.