"We were behind on everything. Norah kept saying she had ruined us." The memory rose fresh and merciless. Norah at the sink with both hands over her mouth.
Norah flinching at headlights through the blinds. Norah folding Lily's clothes, though none needed folding. Two days later, she was gone. Marin's voice became very quiet. "Corbin killed my brother."
Everett looked at her. She did not say it like a theory. She said it like a door finally opening. "Norah found proof," he whispered, "and he made her disappear or made her run. For three years, I told my daughter her mother loved her but couldn't come home."
"Some days I didn't even believe myself." His hands curled on his knees. He wanted to break something. He wanted to go back to every night he had cursed Norah in his heart while heating soup from a can.
Every morning he had watched Lily stare out the window on her birthday. Every hospital visit when the nurse asked for mother's information and he had said not available. Marin, who had spent years being called merciless, did not offer him a clean comfort. She only said, "Then we find out the truth."
Before Everett could answer, three hard knocks struck the downstairs door. Then another set on the stairwell entrance. Not neighbor knocks, not landlord knocks. Heavy, coordinated, official, without being lawful.
Lily froze. Marin turned toward the sound, all grief erased beneath command. "Did anyone know you brought me here?" "No."
Everett grabbed his phone and saw a new message: "You should have taken the warning." A crash sounded below, then Mrs. Alvarez shouting in Spanish. Then the thud of boots on the stairs. Everett's body moved before fear could. "Lily, shoes, backpack."
"Now!" She obeyed with the white-faced speed of a child who knew her father did not use that voice unless the world had become dangerous. Everett pulled the kitchen table away from the door, not to open it, but to buy three seconds. He took the old army flashlight in one hand, his keys in the other, and pointed Marin toward the bedroom. "Fire escape."
"In this dress—unless you can fly." She moved. Lily shoved her feet into sneakers without socks and grabbed the little yellow backpack Everett kept ready with medicine, documents, and an emergency $20 bill tucked behind a coloring book. The apartment door shook under the first impact.
The deadbolt held. The second strike splintered the frame. Everett pushed Lily through the bedroom window into Marin's waiting arms, then climbed after her as the door gave way behind them. Cold rain slapped his face.
The fire escape trembled beneath their weight. From inside, a man shouted, "Window!" Everett yanked the sash down and jammed the flashlight through the metal track. A bullet or a baton struck the glass behind them.