A girl sat up slowly, hair flattened on one side, maybe sixteen, maybe younger if she smiled and older if she didn’t.
She looked at me with the same exact eyes Mark had worn the day I handed him groceries.
Not defiant.
Not rude.
Terrified of being seen.
“She’ll be gone by Sunday,” he said.
For a second I almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because there it was.
The same sentence.
Different crisis.
Same pride trying to outrun shame.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“Lily,” the girl said softly.
Her voice surprised me.
Clear.
Educated.
The kind of careful voice kids use when they’ve learned too early that adults decide things based on tone as much as truth.
“How old are you, Lily?”
“Sixteen.”
I looked at Mark.
He rubbed a hand over his face.
“I know how this looks.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think you do.”
His face fell.
And right then I saw the real problem.
Not just that he’d brought someone in.
Not just that he’d lied.
It was that he honestly thought my first concern would be that I’d been inconvenienced.
That’s what life had taught him.
Make yourself small.
Hide the evidence.
Get out before anybody has to ask.
“Where is your mother?” I asked Lily.
She looked at Mark before answering.
That told me plenty.
“She moved in with her boyfriend in Mill Creek,” Mark said. “One-bedroom place. He said Lily could stay a week, maybe two, until they found something bigger. Then last night he told her she had to be out by this weekend.”
My stomach turned.
“She called me from a gas station,” he said. “I went and got her after my shift.”
“And you thought sneaking a sixteen-year-old into my basement without a word was the plan?”
His ears went red.
“I thought if I asked, you’d say no.”
That one was honest.
Maybe too honest.
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