Dead To You

    There are three of them. No, four.

       They step off the Amtrak train into the snowy dusk, children first and adults after, and then they hesitate, clustered on the platform. Passengers behind them shove past, but the four – Blake, Gracie, Dad, Mama – just move a few more steps and stop again, look around. Their faces are an uneasy yellow in the overhead light from the station. Mama looks most anxious. She peers into the darkness under the awning where I stand, just twenty feet away, as if she knows instinctively that I am here, but no confirmation registers on her face. I am still invisible in the shadows.

       Invisible, but cornered. Backed up against the station wall next to a bench, the woman from Child Protective Services that I met this afternoon standing beside me. It’s too late to stop this now. Too late to go back, too late to run away. I press my back into the wall, feeling the tenderness of a recent bruise on my right shoulder blade. I wet my chapped lips and break into a cold sweat.

       “Is that them?” the woman asks quietly.

       “It’s them,” I say. And I’m sure. I feel panic welling up in my gut.

       If I move, they’ll see me.