Chapter 2: Language of the Lost
The apartment was not much, but it was a fortress of warmth. Located on the third floor of a walk-up that groaned under the weight of the gale, it smelled of stale tea, old books, and the lavender laundry detergent Emily’s grandmother insisted on.
After getting the woman—who had introduced herself as Evelyn—into dry clothes and onto the pull-out couch, Emily felt a strange sense of displacement. She was exhausted, her bones aching with the rhythm of her twelve-hour shift, but the presence of this stranger in her living room transformed the space. It felt less like a lonely apartment and more like a sanctuary.
Evelyn was meticulously neat. Even as she drank the soup Emily had heated up, she moved with a grace that felt out of place in a tenement building. She watched Emily with those piercing gray eyes, analyzing her, deciphering her movements with a focus that made Emily feel transparent.
You have lived here a long time? Evelyn signed, her movements fluid and rhythmic.
Five years, Emily signed back, sitting on the floor near the radiator, which was currently rattling like a tin can. Since my grandmother got sick.
She is with you?
At a care facility. It’s hard to visit. But I bring her everything she needs.
Evelyn’s gaze softened. She reached out, her fingers tapping the air, then forming the sign for Family. She is lucky.
She taught me how to talk to you, Emily admitted, feeling a sudden urge to be honest. Without her, I would have just walked past you in the snow. I would have been like the others.
Evelyn stopped eating. She looked toward the window, where the wind was still battering the glass, then back at Emily. Her expression darkened, a shadow passing over her face that looked like old grief.
I should not have been out, Evelyn signed, her hands moving slower now. I was being followed.
Emily felt her heart skip a beat. Followed? By whom?
Evelyn hesitated, her fingers hovering in the air. People who think they own me. People who have forgotten what it means to be kind.
Emily didn’t push. She knew that look—the look of someone who had spent a lifetime keeping secrets that weighed more than lead. She got up, brought a thick, knitted blanket from her own bed, and tucked it around Evelyn’s legs.
You are safe here, Emily signed firmly. At least for tonight. It is Christmas Eve. Even the worst men in Buffalo stop to sleep on Christmas Eve.
Evelyn looked at her, and for a moment, her eyes brimmed with something that looked like sorrowful gratitude. You have a good heart, child. But goodness is often a signal fire to those who hunt.
Emily laughed, a dry, tired sound. Who would hunt me? I have forty dollars in my bank account and a pile of bills that even a thief wouldn’t touch. I’m nobody, Evelyn.
Evelyn didn't sign back. She simply watched Emily, her expression inscrutable.
Later, after the lights were dimmed, Emily lay in her small bedroom, staring at the ceiling. The silence of the apartment was heavy. She thought about the way Evelyn’s coat had looked—the quality of the wool, the hidden stitching—and how it clashed with the frantic, terrified way she had stood in the snow.
Just as Emily was finally drifting into the fitful sleep of the exhausted, she heard it.
A low, guttural rumble.
She sat up, her breath hitching. She crept to the window and pulled back the curtain, just a fraction.
Down on the street, parked directly under the flickering yellow light of the streetlamp, was a black SUV. It was idling, its exhaust rising in thick, white plumes into the blizzard. Two more pulled up behind it, their headlights extinguished simultaneously.
They weren't plow trucks. They weren't delivery vans. They sat there like silent, predatory beasts, waiting.
Emily’s stomach turned to ice. She backed away from the window, her heart hammering against her ribs like a bird in a cage. She looked toward the living room, where Evelyn was sleeping—or pretending to.
Goodness is a signal fire, Evelyn had said.
Emily realized with a jolt of terror that the fire hadn't been lit by her kindness. The fire had been burning all along, and she had just walked straight into the middle of it.
She needed to wake Evelyn. But as she moved toward the living room, she heard the muffled sound of a car door slamming shut downstairs. Then another.
Heavy, rhythmic footsteps began to climb the stairs.
May you like
Emily turned back to her nightstand, her hand trembling as she reached for her phone, but the screen was dark. She hadn't charged it since the shift. She was cut off.
She was alone, in the middle of a blizzard, and the men in the black SUVs were coming for the woman on her couch.
