Chapter 2 - The Man on the Porch —
I watched through the torn edge of the curtain.
The man wasn’t what I expected.
He wasn’t shouting. He wasn’t holding a weapon. He wore a dark coat and stood on our porch like he had all the time in the world.
Two other men stayed near the cars.
He knocked once.
“Emily? Your aunt is behind me.”
Lisa came up the walk so fast she almost slipped.
“It’s me, honey.”
I opened the door for her.
She stepped inside first, put both hands on my face, and looked me over.
Then she took Noah.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
The man remained outside.
“I brought food,” he said. “May I set it down?”
Lisa’s mouth tightened.
“Yes.”
He placed three bags inside the doorway. Milk. Bread. Bananas. Eggs. Baby food. Things I hadn’t realized I was counting until I saw them.
“I didn’t know what he could eat,” he said.
Lisa carried Noah into the kitchen.
I stayed by the door.
“Are you the person I texted?”
“Yes.”
“I said twenty dollars.”
“I saw.”
“That looks like more.”
For the first time, his expression shifted.
“A little.”
I folded my arms because they wouldn’t stop shaking.
“I can’t pay you back.”
“You don’t owe me.”
People said that sometimes. Then later they remembered everything you owed.
He seemed to understand what I was thinking.
“Not tomorrow either,” he added.
Behind us, Lisa opened a jar of food. Noah’s crying broke into tired little hiccups.
I almost cried at the sound.
The man noticed. He looked away, giving me somewhere to hide.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Lorenzo.”
Lisa dropped a spoon.
It hit the kitchen floor hard enough to make all three of us turn.
At six seventeen, Mom came home.
She stopped on the porch when she saw him.
Not surprised.
Afraid.
“Emily,” she said, “go into the kitchen.”
“Mom, he bought—”
“Kitchen. Now.”
I moved, but not far enough to miss what happened next.
Lorenzo stared at my mother.
“Rachel?”
Her face went white.
“Don’t.”
He looked past her at me, then at Noah in Lisa’s arms.
“I didn’t know.”
“You weren’t supposed to.”
“Rachel—”
“You don’t get to stand in my doorway and say my name like we’re friends.”
For the first time since he arrived, Lorenzo looked shaken.
Mom grabbed the edge of the door.
May you like
Then she said something that turned our little house colder than the street outside.
“Your name was on the truck that killed my husband.”
