That Saturday she had heard coughing. A small, wet, hacking cough, coming from behind the rusted dumpster in the alley beside the old bakery. She had thought it was a cat at first, or a raccoon. She had looked behind the dumpster, and seen the hole in the wall, and in the hole, a pair of enormous gray eyes looking back at her.
"She wouldn't come out," Nora said. "She was so scared. She had this one blanket, the brown one, and a box of crackers, and that was all. She'd been there for days, I think. She didn't know how long. I gave her my sandwich. I came back the next day with more food. And the next day. After a week she let me come inside."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Sam asked. He tried very hard to keep his voice gentle.
Nora looked down at the blanket. "Because she made me promise. And because..." She stopped.
"Because what, honey?"
"Because you weren't there," Nora said, very quietly. "Not really. Not for a long time. And then you were, a little. But I didn't know if you'd stay. I didn't know if you'd just call someone and hand her off and go back to work. That's what you did with me. With Ms. Abernathy and the grief group and everything. You handed me off." She was crying again. "I didn't want that to happen to her. I wanted somebody to stay."
Sam closed his eyes. It hit him harder than anything had since the hospital, since the doctor in the green scrubs had come out into the hallway and taken off his cap. He held the little girl tighter and let it hit him, and did not look away from it.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Nora. I'm so sorry. You're right. I wasn't there. I'm here now."
June had been listening to all of this with her head on his shoulder, her eyes moving from one face to the other. Now she lifted her head.
"My mommy went to sleep," she said.
Sam looked down at her. "Did she, sweetheart?"
"In the motel. In the bathroom. She went to sleep on the floor and she wouldn't wake up. I shook her and shook her." June said it in that same terrible calm voice, the voice of a child who has learned that crying does not help. "And Rick came back and he yelled a lot and he said bad words and he said we have to go right now. And he put me in his car and we went to his house. And he said if anybody asks, Mommy went away and she isn't coming back."
"Who's Rick?"
"Mommy's boyfriend." June touched the yellow bruise on her jaw, absently, the way you touch a sore tooth. "He doesn't like kids. He said I was a lot of trouble. And one night he was sleeping on the couch and I opened the door really quiet and I ran. I