Angela left the coffee untouched, grabbed her coat, keys, and purse, and walked out without looking back, because there are moments when a woman understands that hunger can wait but something worse cannot.
The city was still half asleep as she drove through empty streets, Christmas Eve barely visible in the quiet tension that lingered over Dallas at that hour.
She found Megan under a flickering light at the terminal, sitting on a metal bench, her body so still that for a second Angela felt her heart stop.
She ran toward her daughter, and when Megan lifted her face, something inside Angela broke beyond repair.
Her left eye was swollen shut, her cheek bruised, her lips cracked, and her breathing uneven, while her body trembled in that rigid way survivors carry before their minds catch up.
“Mom,” Megan whispered weakly, her voice barely forming the word, “they threw me out when I told them I knew about the other woman.”
Angela wanted to ask everything at once, but Megan coughed violently, and then Angela saw the blood, not enough to scream, but enough to understand everything.