At seven a.m., winter’s bite pressed into everything. The kind of cold that seeps into your bones, makes every breath sting. I stood barefoot in the doorway, my four-year-old daughter clutched to my chest, her face buried in my sweatshirt. My seven-year-old son wrapped around my legs, shivering so hard I could feel it through my thin pajama pants.
Boots echoed from the stairwell. Heavy. Deliberate. Not rushed. Thirty men filled the hallway by the time they arrived, leather creaking, faces unreadable, blocking out the pale morning light. At the front, my landlord Rick stood with arms crossed, jaw tight, impatience dripping off him.
“No more grace,” he said. “Rent’s overdue. Eviction effective immediately.”
They weren’t here to negotiate. They were here to move my life to the curb.
I tried anyway. “I just started a paycheck coming this week. A few days—please.”
Rick looked at me like he’d heard it a thousand times. My daughter’s sobs grew. My son’s grip tightened. I felt stripped down, humiliated, frozen.
Then one man stepped forward.
Tall, broad-shouldered, streaked gray in his beard. Calm eyes that cut through the tension. His vest read: Marcus.
“Ma’am,” he said softly, “step aside, please.”
Before I could answer, my son ran forward, arms around Marcus’s leg, trembling. “Please don’t take our home.”
Silence fell.
Marcus froze, looked at my son, then past me into the apartment. His gaze landed on the wall I’d never touched: the photographs.
My husband in uniform, smiling. Kneeling in the grass with our son, both laughing. Holding our newborn daughter, careful and proud. And the last one: the folded flag, soldiers at attention, me hollow-eyed beside a coffin.
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