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to his feet. "It's time to go." She led him off the bus, her steps unsteady on the icy platform. The driver, eager to be rid of them, had already tossed their single, battered suitcase onto the ground. It burst open on impact, spilling a few threadbare dresses and a pair of small trousers onto the frozen mud. His mother didn't stop to pick them up. She pulled him away from the depot, her eyes scanning the town with a wild, desperate intensity. "Where are we going, Mama?" he asked, his legs struggling to keep up with her frantic pace. "Just a little further," she said. "Just a little further, baby." They walked through the town, past the grocery store where a woman was unlocking the front door, past the diner where the smell of frying bacon and coffee drifted out into the cold air. A few people were out and about — mostly black men and women heading to work as domestics or laborers in the white neighborhoods. They looked at the pale, thin woman and the small, frightened boy with curiosity, then quickly looked away. In the South, a white woman in such obvious distress was a complication, a problem that no one wanted to touch. They reached the edge of town, where the paved road gave way to a dirt track that wound into the dense pine forest. The trees loomed dark and forbidding, their branches reaching out like skeletal fingers. The boy felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. "Mama, I don't like this," he said. "Can we go back?" His mother stopped suddenly, and he nearly crashed into her. She knelt down in front of him, her hands gripping his thin shoulders with a ferocity that frightened him. Her eyes were wild, desperate, filled with a terror that made his blood run cold. "Listen to me, William," she said, her voice urgent and low. "I have to go. I have to go away for a while. You need to stay here. You need to be brave. Do you understand me?" The boy shook his head, tears already welling in his pale blue eyes. "No, Mama. Don't leave me. Please don't leave me." She pulled him into a fierce embrace, her body shaking with silent sobs. "I have no choice," she whispered into his hair. "I have to protect you. They're looking for us. They'll take you away from me if they find us. This is the only way. You stay here, and someone will find you. Someone will take care of you. You're a good boy, William. A good, brave boy. Remember that. Remember me." She pressed a kiss to his forehead, her lips cold and chapped. Then, before he could say another word, she stood up and ran. She ran into the forest, her thin coat flapping behind her like the wings of a wounded bird, and the boy watched her go until the darkness of the pines swallowed her completely. He called after her, his voice cracking, but there was no answer. Only the wind, moaning through the trees, and the distant cawing of crows. He stood there for a long time, the cold seeping through his thin shoes, his fingers numb around the photograph of his mother that he still clutched in his hand. It was the only thing she had left him, a worn, faded picture of a woman with a sad smile and eyes that held the weight of too many sorrows. He didn't know what to do. He couldn't go back to the town; the