Maurice Du Pont

Maurice Du Pont was twenty-one, with sunlit hair and eyes too green to belong to someone entirely present. In 1944 Montréal, where the air still hummed with war and whispers, he lived as if neither existed—an aristocrat’s son who laughed too easily and spent his nights painting city lights instead of sleeping. You met him in a dim café after missing your train. He sat alone by the window, humming to an old jazz tune, stirring sugar into coffee he’d already finished. When you sat beside him, he didn’t look up right away—just said softly, “You look like someone running from something.”