25.
Because Desirée had been a single mother, no one really knew her heart. She was too wise to burden her daughter with it. She
had been alone for most of her life, but she was not lonely.
For most of her life, men had been an interference—static, not a pleasure. They did not envelop you with warmth and allow
a flower to bloom. They were the arid desert. They were the clouds that block the sun, the drought that causes a crop to fail.
She had known to be careful. Women had so little protection. But she was not bitter. She was happy. She had her darling baby
girl, she had Old Town, and she had life. It was a gift to cherish.
Which was why when she rounded a corner next to an alley one raw morning on her way to work and saw the man standing there,
she knew all was lost. The car was waiting behind him, the trunk already cracked open. She had crawled into this life a mute
animal, and fought to have a voice, and now this man wanted to take it from her.
All her thoughts from that moment on were of her daughter. She wanted to survive. Not for herself—for Ruby.