E Ellis Allen (girlonstilts.com)

He hurried toward the train platform and never looked back—not even as he heard the screams and squeal of metal as the subway tried to stop.

At street level, he breathed in the cool air. He saw the man over and over—the back of his body, unaware of his shadow. The flat-brimmed baseball hat, the white earbud snug in his ear as he unwittingly bobbed his head, the music counting down the last few seconds of his life.

And then the push.

The man had turned just in time to see him, just in time to spot the man’s hands shove him, just in time to register he was falling, and the train was barring down.

He wouldn’t have recognized his murderer. Why would he? He looked nothing like his son. He shared nothing of his child’s dark skin and black features, his big brown eyes, and thick lips.

During his child’s whole life, no one ever connected them as father and son. He was a white man who had adopted a black baby. He was a white dad with a black nineteen-year-old, off at college.

Then he was a father sitting and watching the final brain waves register on his son’s CT scan. He buried his child and was nothing anymore.

Murdering them had been easier than deciding to in the first place. Finding them hadn’t been too hard, either. In the year and a half since they jumped his son outside a bar and left him unrecognizable with a fractured face and skull, they had the arrogance (or was it supremacy?) to remain in the same place.

A taxi honked. Someone with a thick accent shouted, “Wake up, man!”

He jogged between traffic back to the sidewalk. He was shaking now.

Two down, one to go.