“Couldn’t breathe.”
“So I rode.”
“Didn’t know where.”
He paused.
“Passed a group home.”
The Cashier felt something cold move through her chest.
“What group home?”
The Biker named it.
The Cashier’s fingers went numb.
She knew that place.
Not from work.
Not from news.
From a room with pale green walls.
From a narrow metal bed.
From Christmas decorations made from construction paper.
From three years of her childhood.
The Biker continued.
“I stopped.”
He looked at the dolls.
“Asked how many girls lived there.”
The Cashier could barely speak.
“How many?”
“Twelve.”
The number landed differently now.
The Biker smiled sadly.
“Felt like she was giving orders.”
The Cashier stared at him.
“What year?”
He told her.
Eighteen years earlier.
The Cashier’s heart started beating harder.
She was seven that year.
Seven years old.
Living at that foster home.
She remembered December.
Not everything.
Childhood memories from that period came like photographs dropped onto a floor.
A hallway.
An old television.
A woman wearing Christmas earrings.
A girl crying because she had been moved two days before the holiday.
And a doll.
A brand-new princess doll.
Pink box.
Blonde hair.
Blue dress.
The first new toy she had ever owned.
Not donated after another child grew tired of it.
Not missing shoes.
Not scribbled on.
Not from a plastic bin shared between six children.
New.
Still attached to the cardboard with clear ties.
She remembered holding that box against her chest all night.
The Cashier grabbed the counter.
The Biker noticed.
“You okay?”
She shook her head.
Then laughed once because the alternative was crying immediately.
“Wait.”
She stepped away from the register.
The Biker frowned.
“Ma’am?”
“Just…”
She held up one finger.
“Wait.”
She hurried through the employee door.
Into the break room.
Her hands shook so badly that she almost dropped her phone.
She opened her photo gallery.
Scrolled.
Years.
Folders.
She had photographed the doll two months earlier while cleaning her apartment.
She still owned it.
Of course she did.
The dress was faded.
One shoe missing.
Hair tangled.
But she had never thrown it away.
There.
The photograph filled her screen.
Blue gown.
Plastic crown.
She zoomed in.
The back of the little cardboard accessory book sat beside the doll.
There was a sticker she had kept inside the box.
She knew what it said.
She had read it hundreds of times as a child.
The Cashier ran back.
The Biker was still standing at the counter.