“His name was Tom,” the girl said finally, her voice shaking. “He said we were nothing but trouble. That anyone helping us would be sorry.”
Silas swallowed. The warning cut close to home. He’d been Tom once—young, scared, trying to survive by any means necessary. He’d seen how a child could grow sharp and hard in the wrong hands.
“I’m not Tom,” he said quietly. “And I don’t reckon you want to die out here.”
The girl’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe we do.”
Silas crouched a little, leveling himself with the oldest. “Maybe you do. But that baby—he ain’t got a say in any of this, and he don’t get to freeze to death ‘cause you’re mad at the world.”
The girl hesitated. Her jaw twitched, a muscle tightening and releasing, a storm behind her eyes. She glanced down at the small one in her lap.
Silas stepped closer, slow, careful. “Let me help him. Just a minute. I won’t touch the rest of you if you don’t want me to.”
The knife didn’t move. But the girl’s grip softened a fraction.
