The downpour that night felt like it would never stop. It wasn’t just raining; it was drumming on the shingles, gurgling in the drainpipes, and turning the streets of Maple Hollow into dark, slick mirrors. Maple Hollow itself was a town of blue-collar folks, a place where lights went out early and alarms went off too soon. People here were perpetually weary.
Tucked away at the town’s edge, in a cramped two-room house, Daniel Harper was sitting on a threadbare sofa. Next to him, his seven-year-old son, Leo, was dozing fitfully. Daniel’s eyes were fixed on the kitchen clock as its hands crept closer to the midnight hour.
Sleep was what he desperately needed; a double shift at the diner waited for him in just a few hours. But Leo had picked up a nasty cold, and a dry, hacking cough refused to let the boy rest. Daniel’s existence had settled into a grim routine: work two jobs, shuffle through a mountain of bills, and share quiet meals under the buzz of a single, unreliable lightbulb. It had been this way for two years, ever since his wife, Maya, was gone. Resilience was all they had left.
It started as a sound so quiet he almost dismissed it—a light tapping on the front gate. Then it came again, this time more insistent. Daniel pulled the door open and was met by a solid sheet of falling water. Through the downpour, the dim yellow glow of the streetlight illuminated two figures: a pair of teenage girls, perhaps sixteen, shivering, with their hair stuck to their faces and their clothes completely soaked through.
“Please,” the first girl managed to say, her voice cracking with the cold. “We’ve been walking for what feels like hours. The bus driver… he dropped us at the wrong stop. We’ve knocked on doors, but no one is answering. Can we just… please, just stand somewhere warm for a minute?”
Daniel paused, his hand on the doorknob. He had almost nothing to offer. Food was tight, there were no extra beds, and this neighborhood wasn’t known for taking in strangers. But then he looked past the rain and saw their faces properly. He saw their chapped lips, pale with cold, and their hands, red and raw. In their shivering helplessness, he saw his own son.
“Get in here,” he said, his voice gentle. “Come on. We’ll sort something out.”
They hurried inside, pooling water on the worn linoleum floor. They looked like twins, almost identical, but he quickly saw the small differences. Emma, the one who had spoken, had a direct, steady gaze. The other, Lily, held back, her eyes anxiously taking in the small room.
Daniel dug out the driest towels he owned, then found a couple of his late wife’s old, thick sweaters. He put the kettle on and found two packets of instant soup. As they sat at his small kitchen table, the room filled with warm steam and the comforting, faint aroma of chicken broth.
“Where are your parents?” he asked gently…
