LITMIR.BIZ

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“H i, there.” Ana approached the girl.

      Brown eyes focused on the basketball game, the child sat on the concrete floor. With her legs tucked to one side, she gripped the hem of her skirt with both hands, as if she could somehow tug it over her knees. She wore the usual white T-shirt, her arms like thin straws hanging from the cupped sleeves.

      “Can you please tell me where the bathrooms are?” Ana asked.

      The girl said nothing. Her tongue darted out to moisten her lower lip, but her eyes remained glued to the game. Ana considered walking away. Obviously this child wanted nothing to do with her. She had chosen her dark corner, and she intended to stay in it.

      Ana’s palms dampened, and she smoothed down her slacks. She, too, had known the need to hide.

       “Los baños, por favor?” she asked in her mother’s native Spanish.

      The girl’s brown eyes darted to her.

      She had understood.

       “Sabe donde quedan los baños?” she tried again, keeping her voice casual.

      The child looked away. “No se,” she whispered.

      Ana smiled. “Esta bien.”

      Taking a step closer, Ana eased down onto the floor nearby. She leaned against the cool wall and took off her shoes. “Oh, my feet,” she said in Spanish. “These things are killing me! Take a look how high the heels are.”

      She held out a shoe. The girl shook her head, her attention back on the basketball players.

      “You’re smart to wear sandals,” Ana continued. “I’ve been up and down the sidewalks today. I bet I have blisters.”

      She levered one leg over the other and examined the bottom of her foot. The child’s dark eyes slid across, studying the woman’s toes as Ana checked them.

      “There’s a blister. See?” She angled her foot in that direction. “That really hurts. I need to soak it in some warm water. Do you know where I could do that?”

      “Down the hall,” the girl whispered in Spanish. “You have to take the steps to the basement.”

      “I wonder if it would be okay for me to go barefoot. There are so many rules here.”

      “It’s all right. They won’t notice you.”

      Ana sat for a moment, absorbing the dark corner where this little one had found her private haven. Where had she come from? Why had she chosen the shadows? And what made Ana’s heart beat so heavily each time those brown eyes focused on her face?

      Was it possible this skinny child had a story Ana needed to tell? Carl Webster, her editor, had asked for several articles on the lead paint as well as accompanying sidebars. The deadline was a week and a half away, and Ana had no time to detour into any other subject. In addition to the series, she had to keep up with the small assignments that landed on her desk each day. If she couldn’t produce quality reporting, Carl would replace her. He had made that clear. There was no way Ana could allow that to happen.

       Haunted, Sam Hawke had described the invisible children. A small girl with haunted eyes was not worth Ana’s time, was she? Neither was Terell Roberts, who even now—across the basketball court—sat with one child draped over his back, a second in his lap and a third at his feet. He was rubbing the back of the little boy at his feet, and he and the girl on his knee kept tickling each other. Again she felt a vague unease, and she had to look away. Maybe it was innocent. Maybe this little girl in the shadows had nothing to tell.

      Ana lifted her hand and touched the cross at her throat. As a child, she had gone to church with her parents and learned about God. But not until later, after her sister’s death, had she given herself to Him wholly, completely, falling into His arms like a drowning woman pulled from the sea at the last moment. The last gasp. The final breath. In that instant, she would have died and been glad. Welcomed the end.

      But God had saved her. Truth had dragged her up from the sandy bottom, the clutching seaweed, the deadly undertow. She had seen His hand reaching out to her, and she had taken it. Even now, years later, she recalled that moment when she had chosen to live. And all the way out of the depths, onto the shore and along the pathways of her life, He had stayed at her side.

      Now, each morning when she opened her eyes, she searched for God, prayed to Him, and gave herself to Him again. It was the only way she could survive. Her morning run to the river, the articles she wrote, the people she encountered, each activity throughout the day until she dropped into bed at night belonged to Him.

      Her faith didn’t sound exactly like Sam Hawke’s. He had spoken of committing his life to Christ—almost as though Jesus were a military commander who required absolute obedience. Ana saw God as the Father. She had met Him one desperate day, and to Him she belonged with her whole heart.

      As she studied the skinny girl in her faded green skirt, Ana prayed. Why this child, Father? Why did You draw my eyes to this little one in the corner? Has that huge man across the room harmed her in any way? Can I do anything about it? What do You want of me?

      “Could you lead me to the ladies’ room?” Ana whispered the Spanish words. “This is only my second time to visit Haven, and I’m afraid I might get lost.”

      “I can’t take you.” The girl hung her head. “Ask someone else.”

      Ana relaxed against the wall and lifted her eyes to the water-stained white ceiling. She ought to leave the child alone. Talk to some of the others in the building, concentrate on her lead paint story. Upstairs, she could interview the construction crew. They would know how many rooms had been contaminated with the deadly old paint.

      She might even approach Terell again—ostensibly to discuss his background in professional basketball. That ought to produce some interesting quotes. She slipped her shoes back on her feet and started to rise.

      “Do you know La Ceiba?”

      The birdlike voice stopped her.

      “La Ceiba?” Ana frowned, trying to think where she might have heard the name. Wasn’t that some kind of tree? She recalled her mother pointing it out in Brownsville—a tree with palmlike leaves and large fruits. Several Ceiba trees grew in their neighborhood, and when the fruit burst open, the silky fiber pulled away from the seed and drifted on the breeze like clouds you could actually touch. Ana had stuffed the fiber into pillows for her dolls’ beds.

      “La Ceiba is a tree,” she said.

      The girl looked down, her face sad. “Yes, it’s a tree.”

      “Why do you ask me this?”

      “Because…because I understand your words when you talk to me.”

      Ana wondered what her knowledge of Spanish had to do with the silk-cotton tree. “My mother is Mexican,” she explained. “But I grew up in Texas. It’s a long way from here.”

      The girl nodded, twisting her fingers together. “Yes, a long way.”

      “Where did you come from?”

      The girl shook her head and wedged her shoulders into the corner, retreating into the darkness again. Ana ached to ask more questions. Her reporter’s instinct told her to keep pressing, cajole the information out of the girl, make her give up the story. But she sensed it would do no good now. The door had closed.

      “I guess I’ll try to find the bathrooms,” she said, getting to her feet. On an impulse, she put out her hand. “My name is Ana.”

      The child lifted her left hand and set it softly in Ana’s right palm, as though she might suddenly decide to climb up out of the shadows and come away with this kind stranger. But at the touch of human flesh, the child snatched her hand away and tucked it behind her.

       “Me llama Flora,” she said softly. I am called Flora.

      A surge of victory welled

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