Owen’s mouth tightened again, like the question itself was too simple to be safe.

“I’m not hungry,” he said.

Clara didn’t react. Not even a flicker.

“That wasn’t my question.”

For a moment, he just stared at her.

Really stared.

His eyes were dark in a way that didn’t belong to a child who should still have softness left unspent. Tired. Guarded. Irritated at a world that kept trying to manage him instead of hearing him.

“Everyone keeps asking me to eat,” he said finally.

“I’m not everyone.”

A short laugh escaped him—almost silent, almost not a laugh at all.

“You work for my father.”

Clara tilted her head slightly. Calm. Steady.

“That still doesn’t make me everyone.”

That made him pause.

Not because it was convincing.

Because it wasn’t trying to be.

Owen studied her the way he studied adults when he was trying to figure out what kind of problem they were going to be. Whether they would insist. Whether they would give up. Whether they would turn kind only when it became convenient.

Clara didn’t move under his scrutiny. She simply waited, hands folded in her lap, like patience was not something she was performing but something she had decided on.

“What did you used to like?” she asked.

Owen frowned slightly. “Before what?”

“Before people started bringing you beige food on trays and looking disappointed when you didn’t clap.”

Something shifted in his expression at that.

Not dramatic.

Small. Internal.

Like a door inside him had cracked open just enough for air to get through.

He turned back toward the window, suddenly more interested in the world outside than the one sitting across from him.

“There was a bakery,” he said after a while. “In Oak Park. Briar & Bloom.”

Clara didn’t interrupt. Didn’t rush him. Didn’t try to fill the silence he was carefully carrying.

“My mom used to order my birthday cake there,” he added.

A pause stretched between the words.

“What kind?” Clara asked.

Owen hesitated.

For the first time, his voice dropped instead of sharpened.

“Chocolate,” he said. “Not the fancy kind. Just… real chocolate. And she’d make them write something stupid on it.”

Clara’s expression softened slightly. “Like what?”

Owen swallowed, eyes still on the window.

“Like I was allowed to be happy,” he said, almost too quiet to hear.

The words hung there.

Not dramatic.

Just honest.

And somehow, that made them heavier than anything else he had said so far.