The manager's office smelled like stale coffee and cheap cologne, and I knew before he opened his mouth that I was finished."Sit down, Eli," Mr. Dawson said, without looking up from his screen.I stayed standing. Three years at Brightline Logistics, three years of doing the work of two men for the pay of one, and all it had earned me was a nickname the warehouse crew used when they thought I couldn't hear. Dirt. Because I smelled like cardboard and diesel, because my boots were held together with tape, because I had no father to brag about and no name anyone bothered to remember."We're letting you go," Dawson said. Budget cuts.You hired two new guys last week."Those are Mr. Hale's nephews." He finally looked up, and the pity on his face was worse than contempt. You're good with your hands, kid, but you don't fit where this company is heading.I wanted to tell him I had fixed his mistakes. I wanted to say that the shipment he bragged about to corporate had been saved by me at two i

They let me stay with her until the morning staff needed the room. A nurse with red eyes helped me to my feet and pressed a small plastic bag into my hands, my mother's belongings, her worn purse and her cheap watch and a few things I didn't have the heart to look at. I held it against my chest like it was her. I signed forms I couldn't read. A man in a gray suit asked whether I had arrangements in mind for her, and I said I didn't, and he said there was no rush, and I nodded and kept nodding until I realized I was doing it for no one.By the time I walked out of the building it was nearly midnight. The rain had thinned to a cold mist that clung to my face. I stood under the awning for a long while, unable to decide which way to go. My apartment was twenty minutes away, and the idea of walking into those two rooms without her humming in the kitchen made my knees weak. I had no job, no girlfriend, no mother. I had a bag, a warning, and a name I had never worn.I went down the steps and

I walked until the sirens faded behind me, and then I kept walking, because stopping meant thinking. By the time the sun was fully up I had ended up at a twenty-four hour laundromat on the edge of the industrial district. It was nearly empty, warm, and smelled like detergent. I dropped onto a plastic chair in the back corner, facing the door, and finally let myself shake.I had nothing. The clothes on my body, a cracked phone, forty dollars in my wallet, and the plastic bag from the hospital. I opened it because I couldn't stand to leave it closed any longer. Her cheap watch had stopped at 11:52. There was a lipstick worn down to a stub, a folded bus pass, a handful of coins, and a tissue she had used and tucked away the way she always did. I pressed it to my face and breathed in, and for a moment she was there, lavender soap and cold air and the kitchen at night. Then it faded, and the grief came back so hard I had to bend over my knees.I don't know how long I stayed like that. A wo

Ines made me ride in the trunk. She apologized twice before she closed it, and then there was only darkness, the smell of rubber and old oil, and the hum of the road coming up through my spine. I held the duffel against my chest and counted turns until I lost count. Twenty minutes became thirty. The car slowed, stopped, and I heard her window slide down and a man's voice say her name with the easy familiarity of someone who had said it a thousand times."Delivery for the kitchen," she said. "Mr. Kessler's medicine."At this hour?Do you want to be the one who tells him it's late?A pause stretched long enough for my heart to climb into my throat. Then the engine rolled forward over gravel, and I let out a breath I had been holding without knowing it. I was inside. Somewhere above me, heavy iron gates were closing, and every instinct I owned told me they would never open for me again.When the trunk finally lifted, Ines was standing in a narrow service yard behind a house so large I co