hospital shifts and board meetings and rainy grocery runs. June Brooks had worn it like a promise.
Victor said Nia had stolen it.
Victor said she had sold it.
But there it was, beside a trapped puppy under a subway platform.
The signal at the end of the tunnel changed.
A green light went dark. Amber blinked awake.
Someone behind Nia muttered, ‘Oh no.’
A woman in a navy coat grabbed Nia’s sleeve. ‘Honey, don’t even think about it.’
Nia turned to the tunnel mouth. Far inside the dark, something moved. A low vibration passed through the concrete under her shoes.
The puppy looked at her.
Maybe it was foolish to think an animal could ask for help with its eyes. Maybe grief had made her hear things, see things, believe that the dead could leave signs in dirty places. But Nia saw the locket next to that trembling body, and suddenly the last year rearranged itself in her mind.
The locked study.
Her mother lowering her voice whenever Victor entered a room.
The afternoon June had pressed Nia’s hand and said, ‘If anything ever feels wrong, trust what you see, not what people tell you.’
Nia dropped her suitcase.
‘Call the station office,’ she said. ‘Tell them to stop the train.’
A businessman in a gray suit lowered his phone. ‘Kid, stay back.’
Nia lowered herself over the platform edge.
The first scream came from the woman in the navy coat. Then another. Then the platform became one wide, panicked sound.
‘Get up!’
‘Pull the alarm!’
‘There’s a girl down there!’
Nia’s shoes hit the gravel hard enough to send pain through her ankles. The smell of oil and damp concrete rose around her. Up close, the puppy was smaller than she had thought. A torn strip of blue ribbon was tied around its neck, too tight and stained with grime.
‘It’s okay,’ Nia whispered, though nothing was okay. ‘I have you.’
The locket lay inches from the rail.
She grabbed it first.
The metal was cold, heavier than she remembered. As her fingers closed around it, a man’s voice cut through the shouting above her.
‘Nia. Put that down.’
Her body went rigid.
Victor Raines stood at the platform edge, looking down at her in his dark overcoat, silver hair perfect despite the rain outside. He did not look afraid. He looked offended, as if she had embarrassed him at a dinner party.
For one frozen second, the train did not matter as much as his face.
He looked from the locket in her hand to the puppy, and his jaw tightened.
‘Give it to me,’ he said. ‘You have no idea what you are holding.’
The rails began to hum.
The platform erupted again. A transit worker in an orange vest shoved through the crowd and dropped to his stomach, shouting for someone to cut power. A red emergency light flashed against the tiled wall.
Nia shoved the locket into her coat pocket.
The puppy whimpered.
She crouched and reached for the bracket pinning its paw. Her hands were slick with fear, but her fingers found the edge of the metal and pushed. It did not move.
‘Nia,’ Victor called, his voice changing. Softer now. Public-soft. ‘Listen to me. Come up, and we can fix this. You
