and her mom never let her get too close to him when he was like that. There was a smell in the air that reminded her of that. Reminded her to be afraid of getting too close.
After a few minutes her eyes adjusted. The room was small, about the size of her baby brother's bedroom. There was a small bench by the wall, and the floor was made of wood. A slit of light shone from a crack under the door, but other than that she couldn't see a thing.
Her throat began to choke up. She didn't know this place. She wanted to feel her mommy's arms. Wanted to smell her daddy's sweet breath.
Suddenly she remembered walking home from the park, remembered feeling a hand clamp over her mouth.
She couldn't remember anything past that.
The girl let out a cry of help, then ran toward the door.
She gripped the knob and twisted as hard as she could, but it didn't budge. She pushed and pulled and cried, but the door stayed shut.
Finally she collapsed onto the floor and began to cry.
She wiped the snot away from her nose. She needed a tissue. She could wipe it on her clothes, but she loved the sundress she was wearing. Bright pink with pretty sunflowers. Her mom had picked it out for her at the mall, the same day she'd bought that nice barrette in the shape of a butterfly that mommy wore to the park.
She began to cry again. She screamed for her mother.
For her father. And nobody came.
Then she lay back down, curled into a ball, and hoped maybe somebody could hear her through the floor.
And that's when she heard footsteps.
She sat back up. Looked at the door. Saw a shadow briefly block out that sliver of light. She wiped her eyes and nose. She held her breath as the doorknob turned.
Then nearly screamed when it opened. She would have screamed. If she wasn't too scared.
There was a man in the doorway. He was bald, with thinning hair and glasses that were too small for his head.
He was wearing light jeans with a hole by one knee. On his hands were leather gloves. When she saw the gloves, she finally managed to scream.
The man flicked a switch on the outside of the door, and a lightbulb came on, bathing the room in harsh white. She closed her eyes, blinked through the glare, then opened them. The man was now barely a foot in front of her. He was staring at her. Not in a scary way, not like bad men on television did. In the way her daddy did when he tucked her in at night. He'd taken the gloves off. He held them out to her, then made a show of putting them in his pocket.
'Don't be scared,' he said. 'I would never hurt you.'
The man reached out, took her chin in his hands. They were callused, rough. She was too scared to move, felt her head pounding, mucus running down her nose and onto his hand.
When he noticed the snot on his fingers, the man reached into his pocket. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, he'd taken out a handkerchief and was wiping her nose, her face.
'That's better,' he said. He had a glass of water with him. He handed it to her. 'Go on. Drink some.'
She took it, her hand trembling. She didn't know what was in it, whether he'd poisoned it, whether he'd spit in it, but she was so thirsty she downed almost all of it in one gulp. When she was finished, he took the clean side of the handkerchief and wiped her mouth.
Then he handed her two small pills. She looked at him, looked at the pills.
'You must have a bad headache,' he said. 'This will make you feel better.'
Then he smiled at her.
She didn't know how he knew about her headache, but if the pills would help…
'How do you feel?' he asked.
'Hurts,' she moaned.
'It won't for long.'
She looked at him. He was wearing a wedding ring. It was polished and it gleamed something pretty.
He stood up. Motioned for her to do the same. The girl stood up reluctantly, then smelled the aroma of pancakes coming from somewhere. Her favorite.
'Strawberry and chocolate chip. Fresh off the griddle,' he said, smiling. 'Let's get you fed, you can meet your new mommy and new brother, and then I'll show you to your room.'
She took the man's hand, his grip gentle, and followed him out of the darkness.
11
It would have been easy to say no. For years she'd grown accustomed to disappointments, to a life that never quite went the way she planned.
The wound still hurt terribly. Doing this could rub salt in deep. And who knows? Another few weeks, few months, and the pain might have begun to die down. And given a few years, she might have never thought about him again. Things would have gone back to the way they were before the day they met.
None of that mattered, though, because when Henry called, for the first time in months his voice coming over the phone, she agreed to meet him almost immediately.
Just a few years ago, Amanda had nothing, no friends, nobody to trust but herself. Her life had been a series of halfhearted relationships, embarked upon mainly because that's what she assumed was normal. That's what she was used to. Men who were more interested in their own success than how it could be used to make others happy. She'd grown weary of that scene, and at some point, like many other girls her age, Amanda Davies had simply given up.
The irony was when she'd met Henry, the very first thing he did was lie right to her face. Looking back, she knew he'd done it to save his own life without implicating her. And while back then she contemplated literally ditching him on the side of the road, she could look back at his brazen behavior fondly.
He'd tricked her into giving him a ride out of town when he was mistakenly wanted for murder. In the end
Henry was able to clear his name, yet there was a moment, that moment when he'd come clean, admitting his lie, when she could have left him on the side of the road to die.
But in that moment Amanda was able to look into Henry
Parker's eyes and tell one thing. This was more real than anyone she'd ever known.
Henry's eyes gave away everything. The year they knew each other, he could never hide anything. She could read his language-words and body-like nobody else. And he offered himself in a way that was both selfless and confident, and utterly consuming.
That's why when he ended their relationship, it wasn't simply another thing to forget. Being with him was the first time Amanda felt a future. She couldn't be the only one who thought that way, though, so when he decided to end it, for her own sake in his words, she didn't fight. She didn't want to be another one of those sad girls, trying to convince a guy to stay.
If she was meant to be happy, she would be. If not, that was life.
So when Henry called her out of the blue, after radio silence for nearly six months, the easy thing to do would have been to hang up. To tell him to go screw himself.
Instead she found herself sitting on a bench in Madison
Square Park, waiting for him to arrive, looking at every boy that walked by, waiting to see if the months had been as cruel to him as they had to her.
The park was neutral ground. That was one condition she made him agree to. They had to meet far enough away from both their offices that they could sit, and talk, and see what was what, without any distractions.
Amanda folded her arms across her chest. The sun was bright over the trees. She sat and watched couples lounging on the green grass. The line snaking outside the Shake Shack, home of the best burgers in NYC. Her purse
