Chapter 4 - Forgotten Promises
I stepped slowly toward the cot, the shadows falling away from her face as I approached. Her skin was sallow, her cheekbones sharp and protruding, and dark purple circles bruised the skin under her eyes. Disease had ravaged her frame, leaving her a hollow shadow of a human being. Yet, as I looked closer into those familiar light hazel eyes, the dusty curtains of thirty years dissolved in an instant.
"Sarah... Miller?" I stammered, the name slipping from my mouth like a forgotten ghost.
A weak, painful smile touched her dry, cracked lips. "You... you remembered me."
Sarah Miller. She hadn't been a tenant to me; she had been my entire world when I was ten years old.
When my own mother was working sixteen-hour shifts at the textile factory, starving herself to buy my school books, it was Sarah's family who lived in the basement apartment across the alley. Sarah was two years older than me. When my mother fell ill and died in that freezing apartment, Sarah was the one who hid me in her closet so the child welfare officers wouldn't take me away immediately. She shared her meager crusts of bread with me. She was the one who sat beside me on the concrete stoop, binding my cut knuckles when I got into fights with neighborhood bullies.
And then, when I was twelve, I was swept into the foster care system. I was moved from state to state, hardened by the cruelty of the system, until I swore I would never be weak, poor, or helpless again. I cut off every single tie to my childhood. I deleted my past. I built a mountain of money and brick to ensure no one could ever hurt me again.
And while I was building my fortress, the girl who had shared her last piece of bread with me was dying in one of my own dilapidated, neglected buildings.
"Nathan..." Sarah coughed violently, her chest heaving as Lily gently patted her mother's back with a damp towel. "I... I tried to find you years ago. When my husband passed... when the medical bills started piling up... I didn't know this building belonged to your company until last month. I was going to write to you... but I was so ashamed."
"Ashamed?" Tears burned hot behind my eyes, a sensation I hadn't felt in decades. "You were ashamed? Sarah, look at this place! Look at what I let happen to you!"
"It wasn't your fault," she rasped, reaching out to touch my sleeve with her trembling, feverish fingers. "You escaped, Nathan. I was... I was always so proud of you when I saw your name in the papers. I told Lily... I told her that the man who owned the city used to be our friend."
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I sank to my knees beside the bed, uncaring that my five-thousand-dollar trousers were gathering dirt from the unwashed floor. I grabbed her cold hand between both of mine.
"No more," I said, my voice shaking with an emotion I could no longer control. "No more sewing. No more hiding. I'm taking care of this now."
