It was early evening when I arrived and as I'd expected the door was unlocked and slightly ajar. Amelia had always been fierce and smart, but never without a hint of carelessness - eggshells in our breakfast, too much or no sugar in our coffee. She never locked the back door to our house during the day, naively believing that as long as it was light out, we'd be safe enough. I was thankful for a moment that since I'd been gone, that much hadn't changed. Once I stepped in, though, I saw a woman who couldn't have been my sister at any point in our lives.

She was on the other side of the kitchen door, which was propped open, allowing me a pretty wide view of the store. Her dirty blond hair was pulled back into a frizzed-out ponytail and covered with a dowdy handkerchief, and she was much shorter and thinner than I'd remembered. For most of my life I had been smaller than Amelia, and growing up I'd thought she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. Even now I could still feel how perfectly my head fit in the curve of her neck when she held me and how soft her long curls felt, slippery in my palms as I twisted my fingers through her hair. But this woman was hardened, compact, and weighed down by stress and age - I wouldn't have settled for the idea that it was her if I hadn't heard another woman behind the counter call her name. I stepped further in, then ducked quickly as someone entered the kitchen in a rush. It wasn't Amelia; I could tell right away from how slow the footsteps moved, almost like a shuffle. The footsteps came near me and I crawled stealthily away, hugging the base of the counter in the middle of the kitchen. As I slipped away from view, I peeked out and saw a girl peering into the refrigerator.

She couldn't have been much older than me, maybe twenty-one or twenty-two. She was wearing cuffed, paint-stained jeans under a short white apron, and black Converses with no laces. I couldn't see her face - she rummaged through the refrigerator for a bit, then emerged with a carton of milk and shuffled back out into the store - but something about her comforted me, the clean cuffs of her jeans and intentional carelessness of her laceless shoes; she was soft and real and probably the kind of person who smiled for no reason. I hadn't met many people like that.

There was a narrow door next to the refrigerator. I crept over and tried it; it fell open to reveal a tiny but impeccably neat office with a sizeable metal wardrobe in the back. It was relatively empty, save a couple pairs of dirty shoes and men's shirts. I stepped inside and shut the door behind me, a perfect fit. It smelled faintly of the shoes and old sweat, but it felt so safe shut up in this little box, no one knowing my whereabouts that in an instant I forgot about smelling anything. Leaning against the wall side, I closed my eyes for a moment, content to breathe quietly for the first time in too long.

I woke up what seemed like minutes later, but I could no longer hear any of the shop noises and the air was settled and still. Gripping the inner handle I inched the door open slowly and stuck my head out into the darkened office. There was a tiny window that let in a touch of moonlight, just enough for me to look around at the room's sparse contents. The walls were blank and a tiny television sat atop the wardrobe I had just stepped out of, its antennae askew and slightly bent. I pulled out the wooden desk chair and sat gingerly on it. A large, clumsy cordless phone sat at the far corner of the desk. I picked it up, turned it over; handwritten on the display beneath the numbers was a list of speed-dials. Home. Store 1. Store 2. Natalie. The rest, blank. I set the phone back in its cradle and pushed the chair back, stomach rumbling. I realized that I hadn't eaten anything today.