They’d had hot cocoa, sugar cookies, and too many holiday movies.
In my mind, I pictured them asleep in flannel pajamas, cheeks pink, mouths slack with sleep.
Warm. Safe.
I felt a wave of gratitude—and then the familiar thought: I still have to wrap everything when I get home.
That’s when I saw her.
She stood at a bus stop, half-sheltered under the small plastic awning.
A woman clutching a baby tightly to her chest.
She wasn’t pacing.
She wasn’t checking her phone.
She was just standing there. Perfectly still.
The wind was vicious—the kind that cuts straight through coats and bones.
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