Chapter 76 - The Child in the Loft
The interior smelled of damp straw, mildew, and lamp oil. I slipped through the low pantry door into the main room, keeping my weight on the balls of my feet to avoid the groaning floorboards.
In the center of the cabin, Greg stood over a rough pine table, feverishly sorting through a stack of blue legal folders under the yellow glow of the lantern. Melissa was pacing near the front door, her designer coat ruined by mud splatters, her hands trembling as she brought a cigarette to her mouth with jerky, erratic motions.
Neither of them had looked up at the loft.
Above their heads, on a small platform constructed of rough-hewn pine planks, a tiny form was curled beneath an old canvas tarp. A strand of blonde hair stuck to her pale forehead. Lily’s eyes were open, wide with terror, staring silently at the ceiling beams, but the moment my shadow crossed the lower doorway, her gaze flicked downward.
Her lips parted, but before she could make a sound, I pressed my index finger to my lips in the dim candlelight.
A single tear cut through the dirt on her cheek, but she did not cry out. She was nine years old, but the bitter winters and the cruel treatment she had endured from Melissa’s spoiled boys had taught her when silence meant survival.
"We have to leave now," Melissa muttered, chewing on her thumbnail. "Mother’s taking too long at the church. What if Julian couldn't force Nora to sign? You know how stubborn she is."
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"Julian has a gun, Melissa," Greg sneered, not looking up from the papers. "Nobody is stubborn when they’re looking down the barrel of a thirty-eight."
"I am," I said, stepping fully into the lantern light, the iron bar I had salvaged from the garden clutched tightly in my right hand.
