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Arthur’s hands rested lightly on the mahogany rim of the steering wheel.
His eyes never left the rearview mirror.
He did not look at his phone. He did not check his corporate emails. He sat in the warm dark, his heart beating with a steady, solemn rhythm, praying with a raw, desperate simplicity he hadn’t used since the night the surgeons had walked out of the intensive care unit in Philadelphia to tell him his wife’s brain had ceased to register electrical activity.
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*Let her trust me,* Arthur prayed silently into the warm air. *God in heaven… don’t let her pride kill that child in the cold.*
Through the rear glass, past the swirling curtains of snow illuminated by his red taillights, a movement caught his eye.
Two figures emerged from the black briars.
The mother was carrying Chloe in her arms. The child was wrapped from head to foot in the faded purple sleeping bag, her head resting limp against her mother’s collarbone, fast asleep, exhausted by the cold and the long march from the diner.
