The unexpected kindness made Leah’s eyes water more than the familiar cruelty. She grabbed her old canvas schoolbag. “In here. Thank you.”

Thelma gathered Leah’s toiletries into the schoolbag while Leah filled the box with clothes.

Then Leah pinned on her hat, slipped on her raincoat, slung her purse and schoolbag over her shoulder, and picked up her box.

Mrs. Perry stood back from the doorway. “I’ll follow you out to watch those sticky fingers of yours.”

Somehow Leah’s feet made their way downstairs and out onto the porch.

The door slammed behind her.

Rain pelted the sidewalk and made the leaves shiver.

Leah pulled her hood over her hat and arranged her coat around the cardboard box the best she could. With her hands full, she couldn’t raise her umbrella.

At the end of the block, she stopped. Where to? She didn’t belong anywhere.

Tiny puffs of her breath turned white and floated away. She had nowhere to go. Nowhere.

No matter how bad her life had been, she’d always had a place to sleep. Even when her parents died.

She could still see the terror in her mother’s eyes. “Thalia! The babies!”

Leah had fallen, rolled to the curb, pebbles scratching her cheek and hands, the carriage with her twin sisters clattering beside her. A double thump, and a black car screeched to a stop where her parents had stood only a moment earlier. In their last moments, flinging their daughters to safety.

Death had torn her parents from her, but she’d had a roof. Always a roof. She’d been unwanted and abandoned, but never without a home.

Her chest heaved, and rain splattered her face. She was a good-for-nothing orphan, a godless heathen.

Leah would always hear the word heathen in Mrs. Jones’s outraged voice, feel the slap across her mouth, see Mr. Jones grabbing the switch. “I’ll teach you not to use that foreign talk in my house.”

“Leah? Leah Paxton?”

She blinked, her eyelashes heavy from the rain.

A pickup truck parked across the street, and Mercer Bellamy peeked out the window. “What are you doing out in the rain?”

She could only shake her head.

“Let me give you a lift. Rita Sue would have my head if I left you in this downpour.” He jogged around the truck and opened the passenger door.

Only a lifelong habit of obedience carried her into that truck.

Mercer climbed back in. “Where to?”

Leah stared at the dashboard and shook her head.

“Are you all right?”

No. No, she wasn’t.

“I’ll take you to Rita Sue.” He turned the truck around, drove a few blocks, and parked in front of his house. Then he opened the door for Leah and reached for her box.

“No.” Leah clutched it tight and walked to the house.

Mercer passed her and opened the door. “Rita Sue! Leah’s here. Something’s wrong.”