“Thank you,” she whispered, over and over, clutching the food like it was breakable and holy all at once.
I asked if I could call someone for her, or take her somewhere safe, or at least walk her to a shelter I knew a few blocks away.
“I can keep going now.”
Every time she shook her head.
“You’ve done enough,” she said. “This gave me strength. I can keep going now.”
She promised she’d wait outside while I finished my shopping.
But when I came out again, juggling two heavy bags and my guilt, she was gone.
No sign of her, no trace, like the sidewalk had swallowed her whole.
I asked a couple of people out front if they’d seen a pregnant girl in a thin coat, but I got shrugs and blank stares and one guy telling me to mind my own business.
“My office. Now.”
I went home with my groceries and a hollow feeling I couldn’t shake, the kind that whispers you should have done more, even when you don’t know what “more” would have looked like.
For weeks after that, I looked for her face in every crowd, but life kept needing me—homework, bills, sick days, my boss’s endless requests—and the memory just got folded into the pile of things I worried about at three in the morning.
Then one morning, about a month later, my boss barreled into my cubicle like a storm with teeth.
“My office. Now.”
His voice was so sharp that people in the next row ducked.
“It’s about the trouble you caused a month ago.”
I followed him down the hallway with my stomach doing somersaults, because in that building, you usually only got summoned like that if you’d messed up something huge or someone needed a scapegoat.
He slammed his office door so hard the blinds shuddered, then turned on me with this look like I’d personally set his house on fire.
“What did you do,” he hissed, “to that pregnant girl?”
My mouth went dry. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He snatched a manila folder off his desk and threw it down so hard the papers inside slid out.
“It’s about the trouble you caused a month ago,” he said. “The pregnant girl.”
On top of the stack, I saw a hospital logo.
On top of the stack, I saw a hospital logo, then a copy of a birth certificate, then printed emails and screenshots and messages, a whole paper trail of somebody else’s disaster.
“She is my son’s mistress,” he spat, like the word itself burned his tongue.
The room tilted sideways for a second.
