3

The marble lobby of the brownstone always overwhelmed her. It felt like a tomb. Tilly could hear Charlie stomping angrily up the curved stairs to the luxurious second-floor apartment where the Sterlings lived.

The cook bustled up the basement stairs and grunted past Tilly on her way up.

“Janice, anything in the kitchen left over from lunch?” Tilly asked hopefully.

“Not for you.” Janice scowled even deeper than usual. “Don’t be late for chores if you want any dinner!” Janice had to share the tiny basement with Tilly and despised her for it. Tilly didn’t love it either.

Tilly turned and caught the doorman looking at her with a furrowed brow. He looked away, shuffling uncomfortably in his uniform. Feeling embarrassed at having asked for food in front of him, Tilly hurried down the narrow steps into the basement.

The stairs led to a damp and dingy space, lit darkly by a few meager rays of light that struggled in through the dirty windows at street level. Tilly shivered. It was impossibly cold all the time.

She dropped her backpack and sank down onto the floor in front of the rusted fireplace. She was supposed to be free by now. It was supposed to have happened five days ago. She had held on to that hope for eleven long years. So stupid! Why would you hold on to something you were told as a five-year-old?

She pulled the matches she had pilfered from the kitchen out from under her mattress and lit a small pile of tinder. The flame danced and grew, and Tilly piled on a few sticks of dry wood. Mama used to have a fire at home every night, and Tilly and her sister, Cleo, always ate whatever frugal dinner they had in front of it. But that was a long time ago, and they weren’t here now.

Starving and cold, she tried not to think about them anymore. She pulled the blanket off her mattress and wrapped it around her shoulders. The fire crackled more energetically now.

Mama used to tell them stories every night. Tilly, never able to sit still for more than two minutes, had pranced around the room while Mama’s animated voice carried her to some faraway land. Some nights, they sat out on the beach in front of a fire built on the sand. Tilly closed her eyes. She could almost smell the warm scent of Mama’s hair in the salty breeze as they lay staring at the stars.

Remember the heart, Mama used to say as they looked up. It was perfect. As long as she didn’t go in the water. She wasn’t allowed…not even to dip her toes.

Was their little house still there? What did it matter? Mama wouldn’t be there, and to this day, she didn’t know what had happened to Cleo.

Tilly fought back tears. Those days were imprinted in Tilly’s memory like a blissfully endless summer. But then they were shattered so suddenly…and all because of her. It was her fault. All of it.

Then she had been dumped with the Sterlings, who apparently knew nothing of Mama or her past. But she had clung to the promise that she would be taken away from all of this, taken back home, eleven years after the day she was brought to New York. But Tilly didn’t even know where home was.

It all seemed so stupid now. Was it just a story concocted by a desperate and lonely child? The memories of their escape were blurry. They had run with just the clothes on their  backs…and the parchment.