Chapter 3
After I hung up, I climbed back into the trash can.
He had told me not to leave.
But there was nowhere else for me to go.
The trash can was the best place I had.
Snow came in through the gaps in the lid and landed in my hair.
I folded the poster up and pushed it under my shirt, against my stomach.
The paper was cold.
But it felt warm to me.
I looked down at myself, filthy and in rags.
If he came and saw me like that, he might not believe me.
I scrubbed at my face with my sleeve.
It wouldn't come clean.
The cracks on my hands had split open and were beading blood, and they stung.
I gave up on it.
I pulled my hands back inside my sleeves.
I started saying it over and over inside my head. My name was Emma Perry.
Emma.
It was such a pretty name.
It sounded so much better than Emily.
Linda had told me she picked my name because a weed didn't die no matter how many times somebody stepped on it.
But Emma was different.
Emma sounded like the name a person said when they missed somebody.
Had anyone ever missed me?
The wind picked up.
My teeth started to chatter.
My hands and my feet had already gone numb.
I didn't know how much time had gone by.
It might have been half an hour, and it might have been an hour.
I started to get sleepy.
Linda had said that anyone who got sleepy outside in the winter was about to freeze to death.
I pinched my own arm as hard as I could.
It hurt.
I still wanted to sleep.
Maybe he wasn't coming.
Maybe he thought I had made it up.
Nobody would believe a little kid calling from next to a trash can.
I closed my eyes.
My head went fuzzy.
I remembered a girl I had seen by the school that summer, and her mother had come to pick her up.
Her mother crouched down and wiped the sweat off the girl's face. "You must be hungry, sweetie. I brought you some watermelon."
I stood off to the side and watched them for a long while.
Linda had never once called me sweetie.
And nobody had ever come to pick me up.
I had never tasted watermelon.
I was drifting.
But some part of me was still awake.
Then I heard something.
It was far off.
It sounded like a lot of cars.
It kept getting closer.
I made myself open my eyes.
Hard white light was coming through the gaps in the lid.
It wasn't the streetlamp.
It was headlights.
There were a lot of them, and they were bright enough to hurt.
The cars pulled up and stopped.
Car doors opened.
One opened, then another, then more than I could count.
There were footsteps.
They were fast, and they were everywhere.
A man shouted, "Search every corner around here. Open every trash can."
It was that voice.
It was the man from the phone.
But he didn't sound the same.
On the phone, his voice had been shaking.
Out there, he was giving orders.
Every word came down like something heavy hitting the ground.
The footsteps came closer.
My heart started banging.
I was scared.
The fear came up out of nowhere.
What if he found out I wasn't his daughter?
What if he saw me like that and didn't want me?
What if he hit me the way Linda did?
Somebody shouted, "Over here! There's a trash can."
The footsteps stopped right beside me.
Somebody pulled the lid off.
Light came down on me, and I couldn't see.
I put my hand over my eyes without thinking.
A man in a black coat was standing next to the trash can.
He was a tall man.
The light was behind him, and I couldn't make out his face.
He looked down and saw me.
His whole body went still.
One second went by.
Then his legs gave out.
A grown man that tall went straight down into the snow.
His knees hit the ice hard.
He reached out a hand.
It was shaking.
He couldn't hold it still at all.
He wanted to touch me, and he didn't dare.
His hand stayed there in the air.
Then he spoke.
His voice came apart.
"Emma, daddy's here."
I didn't move.
Nobody had ever said anything to me in a voice like that.
It was so soft, as if anything louder would make me run.
His tears landed on the back of my hand.
They were hot.
It was five degrees out that night, and his tears were hot.
A young man in a suit ran over, and when he saw me, his mouth opened and closed, and nothing came out.
He turned away and covered his face with his hand.
The man pulled his coat off.
His hands were shaking so hard that it took him a long time to get the buttons undone.
He wrapped the coat around me and lifted me out of the trash can with it.
The coat was huge and heavy.
But it was warm.
It was the warmest thing I had ever felt in my life.
He held on to me hard.
It felt like he was trying to put me back inside himself.
I was wrapped up in the coat with half my face showing.
I saw his face.
He wasn't young anymore.
There was a deep shadow under his eyes.
His chin was rough, as if he hadn't shaved in days.
But he had a good face.
I had seen my own eyes in that broken piece of mirror.
They were the same eyes he had.