A little girl with bl0 0dy feet and a torn sweater clutched a paper bag at the station, raising alarm before she spoke. Inside was a baby barely breathing—and the truth behind it would silence the entire town.

Crinkled. Damp in places. Held like it mattered more than anything else in the world.

That’s when he noticed her feet.

Bare.
Not the careless kind of barefoot you see in summer, kids running through grass without thinking—but raw, damaged. The soles were dark with grime, cracked in places, small cuts scattered across her toes. One of them still bled, the red already drying against her skin.

She had walked. Far.

And not recently.