CHAPTER 4: FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS AND A BORROWED HOPE

The card was still in my fist when the car stopped.

I had not realized how hard I was gripping it until the edge bit my palm. Sinclair Group. My own smiling face. I stared at it until the driver cleared his throat.

"Miss? We are here."

A narrow brick building, a flickering lamp over the door. The car door flew open before I touched it.

"Amelia!" Sophia stood there in pajama pants and one slipper, her hair in a wild knot, her face wrecked with worry. "Oh, honey. Come here."

I fell into her.

I buried my face in her shoulder and cried like I was five years old, loud, hiccuping, my fingers twisted in her shirt.

"I have you," she kept saying. "I have you."

She dragged my suitcase up three flights of stairs and pushed me onto her couch. Her apartment was tiny. One bedroom, stacks of books leaning against every wall.

When she brought the tea, her eyes dropped to my hand. "What is that?"

"Damien's office wants it back." I laughed, a cracked little sound. "Or it will be treated as theft."

"Give it to me."

"What are you going to"

"Burn it. Or mail it back covered in glitter." She tossed it on the coffee table. "Tell me everything."

So I did. The boy in the navy coat. Damien's hand on that small head. The pregnancy I had given up, and when I said it out loud in a room that was not his, it sounded even worse.

Sophia's knuckles went white around her mug.

"I am going to kill him," she said. "And look good doing it."

I laughed, and it turned into a sob, and she pulled me against her again.

I slept on her couch with my knees tucked up and my eyes open, listening to the pipes knock. Every time I closed them, I saw the door closing, soft and expensive.

Morning came gray and early.

I woke to the smell of toast, and the truth settled over me, heavy as wet cement.

I had no home.

The tears came before I could stop them. They slid sideways into the pillow, silent at first, then not. I pressed the blanket against my mouth and shook.

"Hey. Hey, hey." The couch dipped. Sophia's arm wrapped around me. "Let it out."

"I am so tired of crying."

"Then cry until you are done."

So I did, for a long, long time.

When it slowed, she did not let go. She stared at the wall for a moment, jaw working.

"Mel. I need to say something, and I hate it."

My stomach dropped. "You want me to leave."

"No! God, no." She turned to face me. "I want you here. But my landlord is a snake. The lease says one tenant, and he does surprise checks. If he finds another person living here, we are both on the street by the end of the month."

"Sophia"

"I would give you my bed and sleep on this floor." Her voice cracked. "I cannot risk it. I hate this so much."

I took her hands. They were shaking as hard as mine. "You gave me a night when everyone else gave me a closed door. I would never put you at risk."

She wiped her cheek, furious about it. "Okay. So here is what I did. I made some calls this morning."

"Calls?"

"My coworker's cousin manages a place across town. It is not fancy. But it is safe and cheap, and she will give you the weekly rate." She breathed in. "Fifty five dollars a week. You do not have to look for anything, Mel. I will take you myself."

My lip trembled. "Soph."

"Do not thank me. Eat your toast."

Before we left, she pressed a folded envelope into my palm.

"Everything I can spare."

A hundred and fifty dollars, soft and creased.

"I cannot take this."

"You can and you will. Or I will chase you down the street."

I hugged her until my ribs ached.

In her little car, the envelope sat in my lap like a stone. A hundred and fifty dollars. Even at fifty five a week, it would not last long.

Then something flickered in the back of my mind. Faint. Almost forgotten.

"Sophia." I sat up. "Can you stop at a bank?"

"Why?"

"I think I have an account."

She glanced over. "You think?"

"I opened it at nineteen, waiting tables. I put my tips in it every shift." My voice sounded strange, distant. "I stopped using it when I married Damien, and then I forgot it existed. I do not even remember the last time I looked at it."

Sophia pulled into the next bank without another word.

I stood at the machine with my old card trembling between two fingers. The plastic was faded, the corners soft. I typed the PIN I had not used in six years.

Wrong.

My heart slammed. Sophia's hand settled on my back. "Breathe. Think."

I closed my eyes. A nineteen year old girl, counting crumpled singles after a double shift. I typed it slowly.

The screen blinked.

Three hundred and fifty dollars.

My knees went weak. I pressed my forehead against the cold metal and a sob broke out of me, small and shaky, because the girl I used to be had saved this for me. She had no idea she was building a lifeboat.

"Thank you," I whispered. To her. To nobody.

The bills slid out. I held them against my chest.

Five hundred dollars, with Sophia's. My entire life, in a handful of paper.

The Lakeview Lodge had no lake. It had a buzzing sign, an oil stained parking lot, and a woman behind the desk with tired eyes.

Sophia stepped up beside me. "Hi, we spoke this morning. This is Amelia."

"Fifty five for the week," the woman said. "Cash is fine."

I counted the bills out slowly, Sophia standing right at my shoulder. In my head, I was already doing the math. If I ate crackers and walked everywhere, nine weeks. Maybe two months, if I never got sick.

Two months to find a job. A place. A reason to get up.

"Room twelve." The woman slid a key across the counter.

Sophia carried my suitcase down the walkway. The lock stuck. She shoved her shoulder against the door and rattled the key until it gave with a sullen click.

Inside, a single bed. A stained carpet. A crooked lamp. A window facing a brick wall, so close I could have touched it.

"It is not much," Sophia said softly.

"It is a door I can close."

She hugged me hard at the threshold. "Call me tonight. I mean it."

When her footsteps faded, the silence rushed in.

I thought about calling Damien.

For one weak, shameful second, my thumb hovered over his name. Just a call. Just a little money. He would sigh, and he would give me something, because he always gave things when it suited him.

I put the phone face down on the nightstand.

"No," I said aloud. My voice sounded small. "Not him. Never him."

I started unpacking. Sweaters in the drawer. Jeans on the shelf. My mother's scarf, carefully folded.

Then I pulled out the gray sweater I had thrown in last, and something slipped from the fold and fluttered to the carpet.

A card.

Cream paper. Gold edge. The kind you buy when you want to impress someone.

I knew it before I touched it. I picked it up anyway.

Inside, in his slanted, confident handwriting: Our family will come when the time is right. I promise. Happy anniversary, my love. D.

My breath caught. I read it once. Twice. A third time, until the words blurred.

I should have torn it in half. Instead, I held it against my chest like a wound.

Why did it still hurt? Why did my body still remember how it felt to believe him?

I slid the card into my mother's scarf, deep in the fold, where I would not have to look at it. Where I would never be able to forget it.

And that was when I finally saw the date.

He had written it the very week I came home from the clinic.