Page 70 of Boomer

Ansel didn’t smile back. He turned pages carefully, showing respect for his idol. “That one’s from the Laurentian Library vestibule. He carved it in his later years. Look at the legs. They’re too long. Deliberately.”

Boomer looked down, letting the kid guide the page. “Yeah?”

“It was meant to be seen from below. The angle mattered.” Ansel looked up, his eyes solemn and old-souled. “Beauty’s kinda like math, you know? My eyes just see it that way. The shapes, and the lines…like secrets hiding in everything. That’s where the good stuff comes from.”

Boomer’s chest constricted.

This kid wasn’t talking like a kid. He was talking like an adult.

Like a boy raised in the quiet corners of too many adult rooms, one who saw the world in form and weight, in tension and structure. He felt it like wire strung between his ribs and those concepts resonated with him.

“You draw?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

The boy nodded. “I sculpt mostly. But I draw when I’m sad.”

Boomer nodded slowly, something catching in his throat. “That’s a good thing to do with sadness.”

The boy stared at him for a long moment, then pointed to the wound on Boomer’s arm. “You’ve been hurt.”

Boomer followed his gaze. “Yeah. I have.”

Ansel tilted his head. “But you’re not really broken. You’re just…scraped on the inside.”

That stopped him cold.

The words landed with weight. Real, heavy weight. He had no answer for them, just a quiet nod, too thick in the throat for anything more.

Then, as if needing to change the subject, the boy turned another page. Boomer shifted as he settled in beside the boy.

“You wanna know what else?” Ansel asked, thumbing to a different page.

“Absolutely,” Boomer said, smiling softly.

The kid launched into a deep, impassioned explanation of David's proportions and how Michelangelo believed in thetension between potential and action, how the statue wasn’t of the battle, but of the moment before.

Boomer listened, soaking it in. Not just the facts, but the way the boy’s voice shifted with each insight, the way his hands moved as he explained. The way his passion came alive like a fuse.

It was the same way Mike used to talk about ideas. The way Taylor got when she was breaking down mission strategy or German procedural law. The way Emil must have been, before the world broke his rhythm.

Boomer leaned back, arms loose over his knees, letting the words wash over him.

For the first time in what felt like forever, he didn’t feel like a man on the edge of a breach.

He felt…invested.

From the kitchen came the sharp cadence of voices, Taylor and her mother still at it. He felt the boy flinch at the verbal sparring match that Boomer had no doubt would end with at least one heart bruised. He glanced back toward the archway, instincts flaring but stayed put.

Ansel had gone quiet. He was tracing a line of text with one finger. His voice came soft.

“My dad used to tell me art was as important as law or anything in the sciences,” Ansel said, his voice soft but certain. “I like science. But I love art.”

Boomer let the weight of those words settle between them. He turned the page of the book, slow and careful, to a rendering of the Dying Slave, one of those sculptures where motion still lived in the stone, tension and surrender frozen forever.

He didn’t look at Ansel when he answered.

“Your dad was right,” he said, voice low, gravel edged with something softer. “Law might tell us what we can do. Sciencetells us how. But art?” He tapped the page gently, just once. “Art tells uswhy.”

Ansel blinked up at him.