Chapter 1 - The Children Crawling Toward My Porch
The screwdriver slipped from my hand and struck the porch boards with a metallic crack.
I had been trying to repair the loose hinge on my front door for nearly an hour, even though the job should have taken ten minutes.
But my mind kept drifting to my younger brother.
Aaron.
Three years had passed since a heart attack took him at thirty-five. One ordinary morning, one terrible phone call, and suddenly I was standing inside a funeral home staring at my little brother in a suit he would have hated.
Aaron left behind two children.
Drew was three at the time.
Lily was barely old enough to walk.
He also left behind his wife, Reena, who stood beside the casket and promised everyone that the children would be safe with her.
I believed her because I needed to.
After the funeral, I tried to remain involved.
I called.
Dropped off groceries.
Offered rides, repairs, child care—anything that might keep me connected to the last pieces of my brother.
Reena always had an excuse.
The children were sleeping.
They were sick.
They became emotional when they saw me.
I reminded them too much of their father.
Eventually, she stopped answering the door.
I told myself she was grieving.
I told myself pushing harder could make things worse.
That evening, as I bent to retrieve the screwdriver, I heard a scraping sound behind me.
Slow.
Uneven.
Wrong.
I turned toward the sidewalk.
For one second, my mind refused to understand what my eyes were seeing.
Drew was dragging himself toward my porch.
Six years old.
Barely upright.
His brown hair clung to his dirty forehead. His gray hoodie was torn near one elbow. One leg dragged stiffly behind him at an angle that made my stomach twist.
Clinging to his back was Lily.
Three years old.
Pink pajamas.
Tangled blonde hair.
Hollow cheeks and enormous eyes.
Her arms were wrapped around Drew’s shoulders while her feet barely touched the ground.
They had traveled seven blocks like that.
Drew reached the first porch step.
His injured leg gave way.
I lunged forward and caught them against the railing before both children struck the boards.
“Drew. God—what happened?”
His breathing came in tiny, ragged bursts.
“She locked us downstairs again.”
The word struck harder than anything else.
Again.
My hands hovered over his leg, terrified that touching it incorrectly would make the injury worse.
Lily buried her face against his shoulder and trembled.
I knelt until my eyes were level with his.
“Who locked you downstairs?”
Drew looked behind him toward the empty street.
As if he expected someone to appear.
“Reena.”
I reached toward him.
He tightened both arms around Lily.
“Don’t make us go home.”
Something inside me broke.
Not loudly.
Cleanly.
I lifted Lily into one arm and supported Drew with the other, keeping his injured leg as still as possible.
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“You’re not going back,” I said.
Then I carried my brother’s children through the doorway they had been crawling toward all along.
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