Not the clerk.
Not the little girl.
Not even the man in the suit.

Only the baby cried between them.

The girl stared at him like she wanted to run… but her legs wouldn’t move.

“You’re lying,” she whispered.

The man slowly unfolded the photograph the rest of the way.

It showed a young woman standing outside an old apartment building, smiling into the camera with one hand over her stomach.

The girl’s breathing caught.

Because she had seen that photo before.

Hidden.

Folded inside the lining of her mother’s old bag.

The man’s voice shook.

“She vanished before I ever met the baby. They told me both of you were dead.”

The girl looked down at her little brother… then back at him.

“No,” she said quietly. “Not both.”

The man frowned.

The old clerk stepped out from behind the counter for the first time.

He looked at the man in the suit, then at the girl, and said something that made the air in the whole store change:

“She’s not the baby you lost.”

Silence.

The man turned slowly.

The clerk pointed at the child in the girl’s arms.

And said:

“He is.”

The suited man went completely pale.

The girl clutched the baby tighter, tears filling her eyes.

Because all her life, she thought she was protecting her little brother from strangers…

not knowing the stranger standing in front of her might be the one person he had been stolen from.

Then the convenience store door opened behind them.

The little girl turned—

and her face drained of color.

Because the woman who had warned her to never trust a man in a black suit had just walked in.

The end.