Stay out of problems that are not yours.
He repeated it like a prayer when boys on the corner offered quick money, when he passed things on delivery routes he was never meant to see, when trouble called his name. It had served him well.
But that night, the rule failed.
He approached the woman slowly, hands visible.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She turned toward him. Her face stopped him for half a heartbeat. It wasn’t the face of someone stranded on a road. It was the face of someone stranded inside her own life. Her eyes were swollen, her cheeks drawn tight with the kind of crying that had gone on so long it had dried itself out. She wore clothes that cost more than Richard earned in months, but they were wrinkled, as if she had stopped caring how anything sat on her body.
For a moment she said nothing. Then she spoke in a voice so flat it frightened him more than panic would have.
“I don’t know where I was going anymore.”
Not, I’m lost. Not, my car broke down. Not, can you help me?
I don’t know where I was going anymore.
