“Please, mister,” she whispered, glancing nervously at a beat-up van parked in the shadows. “My baby brother hasn’t eaten since yesterday. They won’t sell to kids, but you look like someone who’d understand.”
I looked at that van. Then at her bare feet on the cold concrete. Then at the convenience store where the clerk was watching us with suspicion.
Something was terribly wrong.
“Where are your parents?” I asked gently, kneeling down despite my bad knee screaming in protest.
Her eyes darted to the van again. “Sleeping. They’re tired. Been tired for three days.”
Three days. My blood went cold. I’d been clean for fifteen years, but I knew what that meant.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Emily. Please, the formula. Jamie won’t stop crying and I don’t know what else to do.”
