A man in a thin jacket, clearly not meant for the season, with a gray sweater peeking out from underneath, was hugging a little girl. His hands, large and calloused, were a purplish-blue from the cold. His cracked fingers held the child so tightly it was as if he were trying to transfer the last of his own body heat to her.
Between them, nestled in the open collar of the man’s jacket, was something ash-gray. Looking closer, Eleanor flinched: it was a purebred British Shorthair cat. The animal was breathing heavily and rapidly, its sides visibly swollen from a late-stage pregnancy. The cat wasn’t trying to escape; it had squeezed its eyes shut and buried its nose in the girl’s neck, sharing its quiet, intermittent warmth.
Eleanor moved closer. The snow crunched under her expensive boots. The man looked up. His face was gaunt, his cheekbones sharply defined under gray skin, but his eyes held no plea for charity. There was only a hollow, weary defensiveness.
— You’ll freeze out here, — Eleanor said quietly. Her own voice sounded strange in the swirling silence. — The temperature is dropping.
The man looked at her, then at her expensive coat, and a bitter smile flickered in his eyes. He pulled his daughter even closer; she seemed to have stopped shivering and had fallen into a heavy stupor.
— We’re just resting, — his voice was hoarse, raspy from a cold.
— Don’t lie to me, — Eleanor took another step. — The child’s lips are blue. What happened?
The man was silent for a few seconds, watching the snowflakes melt on the cat’s gray fur. Then he exhaled, and it was the sound of a man who no longer had the strength to keep up appearances.
— We got kicked out yesterday. Right onto the street. My wallet… got stolen the first night at the bus station. The shelters won’t take you without ID, and the ones for the homeless… they don’t allow kids. Or pets.
He touched the cat’s head with one finger.
— Her name’s Luna. Purebred. My wife, Laura, named her. She passed away three months ago. This cat is all Alice has left of her mother. I can’t abandon her. I just can’t.
Eleanor looked at them and felt something inside her crack. In this man, in this little girl, Alice, and even in this miserable cat, she saw a reflection of her own white envelope. Their tomorrow was gone, too. They were also standing on the edge, and the world around them was as bleak and indifferent as her own. The only difference was they had a love that made them freeze together on a single bench, while she had an empty mansion and millions in the bank that she couldn’t take with her.
— Get up, — Eleanor said suddenly, her voice firm.
The man blinked, uncomprehending.
— What?
— I said, get up. Enough sitting here.
— Where would we go? Nobody’s waiting for us.
Eleanor looked at her hands in their leather gloves, then at his fingers, raw from the cold. The impulse she felt had nothing to do with her usual logic. It was something from childhood, something human, something she had spent so long successfully suppressing.
— Come with me.
— Why would you do that? — a note of suspicion entered his voice. — We’re… we’re nothing to you. We’re dirty, homeless.
Eleanor gave a bitter smile, remembering the diagnosis in her purse.
— We’re all just temporary in this life. Some of us just find that out sooner than others. Let’s go. My house is ten minutes from here. It’s warm.
She reached out and touched little Alice’s shoulder. The girl opened her eyes—huge, gray, and full of an unchildlike wisdom and pain. She looked at Eleanor, then shifted her gaze to her father.
— Daddy, — the little girl whispered, — I’m cold.
The man gritted his teeth, holding back a sob, and slowly, struggling to straighten his numb knees, he rose from the bench. He held the bundle containing his child and the cat tightly to his chest.
— What’s your name? — he asked, looking at Eleanor with a kind of frightening hope.
— Eleanor Vance, — she replied, and for the first time on this endless day, she felt her heart, which had seemed like a dead piece of ice that morning, begin to give faint but real thumps.
They walked down the snowy path: a wealthy woman with a straight back and a broken man carrying all his simple, precious worldly possessions. Behind them, the city continued its bustling life, unaware that in that moment, a small, terrifying, and beautiful miracle had just occurred in the park.
The heavy oak doors of the mansion swung open, and a thick, enveloping scent of expensive perfume, sandalwood, and that particular sterile comfort found only in the homes of the very rich hit them. The man froze on the threshold. His battered boots, soaked with salt and grime, looked sacrilegious on the gleaming marble of the foyer.
— Come in, don’t just stand there! — Eleanor’s voice was dry but commanding.
From the depths of the house, stepping silently on the rugs, came Susan. She stopped short, adjusting her immaculate white apron. Her eyebrows shot up, and her eyes reflected not just alarm, but genuine culture shock. Before her stood her employer, pale as a ghost, and behind her, the living embodiment of a life disaster.
— Ms. Vance! Good heavens, who is this? — the housekeeper wrung her hands, instinctively taking a step back. — They’re… they’re covered in snow. It’s dripping on the rug…
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