Bits and pieces of their story emerged. She gathered they were taking shelter in an abandoned, unsafe building close by. Liam, she realized, was fiercely protective, doing everything he could to keep Sophie hidden from the authorities, terrified that the system would tear them apart.
Hearing this, Evelyn began to set aside whatever scraps she could spare. She collected old blankets, a pair of warm gloves, and packaged the diner’s leftovers each night, creating a small cache of supplies to help them endure the harsh winter.
And then, just as suddenly as they had appeared, they vanished. One morning, they just didn’t show up. Evelyn scanned the street corner where they always waited.
Feeling a pit in her stomach, she trudged through the fresh snow to the derelict building they had called home. It was vacant. There was no sign of them, no scrawled note, nothing but a heavy, chilling silence. Evelyn tried to comfort herself with the thought that a kind person had found them and taken them to somewhere safe.
Despite this hope, a small, dark corner of her mind never stopped wondering, never stopped dreading a much sadder outcome. Fifteen years, and fifteen long winters, came and went. For Evelyn, life continued on its predictable path.
She remained at the diner. The dark in her hair surrendered to streaks of gray at her temples, and her hands became a roadmap of her life, marked by decades of hoisting coffee pots and wiping down counters. She had never found a partner, nor had she ever had children of her own.
The memory of Liam and Sophie would surface now and then, usually on mornings just like that first one, when the snow fell in heavy, quiet blankets. Her eyes would instinctively drift to the diner door, a fleeting hope fluttering that two adult faces might one day appear in the glass.
It happened on a dreary, rain-soaked Thursday afternoon. Evelyn was just about to clock out, wiping her hands on her apron, when an immaculate black sedan—she thought it might be a Bentley—glided to a stop right in front of the diner…
