Safe and Sound

14

*March 2020*

Hannah and Ashley sat on a wooden bench in Central Park, watching the ducks swim and dive in the small pond, watching people pass and young children and elderly men and women throw dread to the ducks who eagerly snatched the bread out of the water and squabbled over the larger pieces, quacking loudly at each other. It was peaceful, serene. In the centre of Central Park, it was hard to tell that you were in the middle of a bustling city. Birds fluttered around in the trees above their heads. Butterflies danced in the sky. Bees and wasps buzzed around the flower beds. Red, yellow, pink, blue, purple. The colours that accented the green of the grass. Plenty of pollen to make honey.

It was warm for early March, the sun was shining brightly, sending a warm glow through the trees. The air was still and humid, like the calm before a storm. For once Hannah and Ashley were grateful for their thin clothes. They'd recently found a ten dollar bill in the gutter and used it to buy themselves a ham and cheese sandwich each and some bottles of water. But Ashley had to take note of how the money didn't go as far as it used to. The ten dollar bill would have bought them two sandwiches each and three bottles of water each five years ago. Now, it was one sandwich each and two bottles of water, a significant difference. The price of everything had risen with no explanation. The mother and daughter savoured the food, not knowing when their next meal would come.

Hannah looked up from her sandwich when she felt someone sit beside her, close but not too close. She raised her eyebrows. The person beside her was a girl, young and blonde, not much older than she was. The redheaded child tipped her head to the side, observing the girl. She was crying, her face buried in her hands. Hannah could just make out a nasty purple bruise in the shape of a handprint on her left cheek. Hannah turned her head to glance at her mother then returned her eyes to the girl beside her. She cast her gaze to her sandwich and pulled off half of it, offering it out to the girl beside her, nudging her arm gently to get her attention.

The blonde girl lifted her head from her hands, sniffing, wiping her eyes. The angry purple bruise on her cheek looked sore. She stared at Hannah apprehensively, glancing at the piece of sandwich. When Hannah nodded, holding her hand higher, the girl took the piece of sandwich. She bit into it, sniffing again.

Hannah smiled softly and turned her head, biting into the piece of sandwich in her hand. She chewed it and swallowed, returning her eyes to the duck pond. She watched a tall blonde man in a baseball cap and an equally tall blonde woman, her hair flowing down her back, dark sunglasses covering her eyes, stop by the pond, watching the ducks for a moment before taking a photograph on their phones. She watched as the man frustratedly reminded the woman how to take a photograph on her red phone, - "Taylor, seriously, how can you forget how to take a photograph", he was English - then he smiled and kissed her cheek delicately. Hannah spotted another man, dark hair, shoulders high, not too far away from the couple, scanning the faces of the people in the park.

The woman laughed melodically and Hannah, out of the corner of her eye, saw her mother's shoulders tense slightly at the sound and then relax as the couple moved on. The child raised her right eyebrow curiously as she watched the couple walk away. Her eyes wandered to the side of her mother's face and she watched her chew the sandwich. Hannah's eyebrows furrowed, eyes narrowed for a brief second she remembered the girl sitting beside her and turned to look at her again.

The girl had no jacket. She wore a short sleeved red and white striped t-shirt and a pair of baggy blue jeans. One blue converse lined her right foot and her left foot was only covered by a black sock.

Hannah cleared her throat. "Where... where's your other shoe?" She asked quietly, nodding to the girl's feet.

The girl lifted her eyes, wiggling her shoeless foot. "Oh... at home... Well, it's not my home... not really." She cleared her throat.