The world was washed out, all shades of gray and brown, and the woods on either side of the dirt road were just a blur of dripping pine. Mud sucked at my boots with a thick, greedy sound, trying to hold me here. Some days, I felt like letting it.

I trudged on, head down, the rhythmic drumming on my hood the only company I needed. Then I saw it. A shape, huddled and small, near the rust-eaten husk of an old county line sign. My first thought was a dog. A stray, miserable in the downpour. I’ve put more than one wounded animal out of its misery over the years. It’s a kindness, I tell myself. A quick end to a long suffering.

But as I got closer, the shape resolved itself. Not a dog. It was a kid. Knees pulled tight to its chest, a faded green backpack clutched in its arms like a shield. A wave of something cold and familiar washed through me, colder than the rain. I slowed, my boots sinking deeper into the muck. Kids meant baggage, and mine was already heavy enough to break a stronger man’s back.

I stopped a dozen feet away, squinting through the downpour. It was a girl. Couldn’t be more than ten, maybe eleven. Her hair was plastered to her scalp, water running in rivulets down her face, dripping off her chin.

She lifted her head, and her eyes met mine. They were wide, hollowed out by whatever put her on this road, but there was a sharpness in them, too. A flicker of something hard and knowing. She didn’t speak. Didn’t plead or shiver or look away. She just watched me, still as a deer right before it bolts.

The silence stretched, broken only by the relentless patter of the rain. It was the silence I remembered most. The quiet that came right after the splash, before the screaming started. Before I knew.

"You out here alone?" My voice was rough, a rasp of gravel dragged over steel. It felt foreign in the quiet.

No answer. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the straps of her pack. That stare of hers didn’t waver. She was weighing me, judging. Good. The world shouldn’t be trusted.

I scratched at the wet beard on my jaw and let out a long, slow breath that turned to mist in the cold air. "Figures."

I should have turned then. Walked away. Left her to her fate, same as the world had left me to mine. But I couldn't move. Every drop of water sliding down her pale cheek was a ghost. I could almost feel the phantom weight in my arms, the slickness of a small body, cold and still. The memory was a physical thing, a hand closing around my throat. June. The name was a scar on the inside of my skull.

I took a step forward. The girl tensed, her whole body coiling like a spring. She didn’t make a sound, but the message was clear: Don’t come any closer.

My jaw tightened. This was a mistake. I knew it. But the image of her, small and alone in the drowning rain, wouldn’t let me go. It was a hook in my gut, twisting.

"Cabin's a ways down," I grumbled, jerking my chin toward the trees behind me. I wasn’t offering, just stating a fact. "Got a roof. Firewood. Food."

Still nothing. Just those eyes, ancient and weary in a child’s face. She’d already learned the world didn’t hand out charity, only traps. I couldn't blame her. A surge of frustration, hot and useless, rose in my chest. I huffed, shaking my head more for myself than for her. "Fine. Sit out here, drown yourself in the rain. Don't matter to me."

I turned my back on her and started down the road again, my boots making angry sucking sounds in the mud. One step. Two. It was done. I was leaving.

I could feel her eyes on my back. Or maybe I was just imagining it. My hands clenched into fists in my pockets. I saw June’s face, tilted up at me from the water, her eyes wide and unseeing. I saw the silence that followed. The endless, echoing silence.

Damn it. Damn it all.

I stopped, the water dripping from the brim of my hood like a slow, ticking clock. My shoulders slumped under a weight that had nothing to do with the rain.

"Come on," I said, my voice low, defeated. I didn’t look back to see if she was following. I couldn’t. I just started walking toward the cabin.