The cold was the kind that got in your bones. I had my son, Ethan, strapped to my chest, his face tucked into my old coat. We were out of formula. My husband was deployed, and I was living back home. My mom just shook her head when I asked for twenty bucks. “Things are tight for everyone, Olivia,” she’d said, not looking up from her iPad.
So I was walking. In the biting snow. The wind cut right through me.
A black car pulled up, silent and sleek. The back window slid down. It was my grandfather, Victor. He looked at me, then at Ethan, then at the frozen slush on my boots. His face was stone.
“Where is the Mercedes I bought you?” he asked. His voice wasn’t loud, but it cut through the wind.
I flinched. “Mary has it,” I whispered. My younger sister. “She said she needed it for her new job.”
