I reached for the door, hoping I hadn’t waited too long and could still catch him, tell him . . . I wasn’t sure what. I’d do whatever I could to make this work—if he gave me, us, the chance? That I wasn’t giving up? That I would be happy and he would too? Only once I got outside he wasn’t there.
But I thought I saw a flash of movement at the end of the hall. I hurried towards the bend, my earlier fatigue gone. When I turned the corner I found myself at a dead end, I realized this wasn’t the way we’d come. The stairs were at the other end of the hall.
A slight movement near the floor, besides behind a solid looking bureau, caught my attention. I frowned.
There was a girl curled up and half hidden behind the thing. A dirty, badly-dressed girl that for some reason made me think of a wild cat. But still, she was only a girl, just a handful of years younger than me.
“Hi,” I said, strangely comforted by seeing her. I bent forward slightly to get a better look at her. She was wearing a stain…