“It wasn’t yours to give.”
Lauren looked past him, through the big front windows, but the little girl was already gone.
Just a few minutes earlier she had been standing there in the fading light, tiny shoulders hunched, messy braids, thin fingers wrapped around a coin she kept tapping on the counter like she was afraid nobody would notice her.
Now she was gone.
And Lauren was about to lose the one thing standing between her and the street.
“It’s coming out of my pay,” Lauren whispered.
His laugh was short and ugly.
“Your pay?”
He leaned in a little.
“You already took an advance last month, remember? For your mother.”
Lauren’s cheeks burned.
The teenage kid at the drink machine stared at the floor.
A woman waiting for a takeout order pretended not to listen.
Lauren hated that. The pretending.
Everybody in this town knew how to watch somebody drown while acting like they were just passing by.
