The terror inside that simple sentence struck Manny harder than winter’s cold. It wasn’t ordinary fear. It carried memory, warning, and something like resignation. Whoever “he” was, she had learned to fear him deeply. Manny felt an old instinct reigniting, the one urging him to protect children who couldn’t protect themselves.
He pulled a chair closer, its legs scraping softly on the floor, and sat down to lessen his imposing height. He didn’t ask another question, letting the silence stretch until it was filled only by the dog’s steady panting and the distant, muffled page for a doctor. He simply said, “This is a good dog. He won’t let anyone near you unless you say it’s okay.” He watched her fingers slowly unclench from the thick fur, just a little. It was the smallest of signs, but it was a start. The overhead light flickered once, casting a brief, jumping shadow, and the girl gasped, shrinking back. Manny made a mental note to have someone check the fixture, but he knew the real darkness wasn’t in the wiring. It was outside, waiting. And it had a name she was too terrified to speak.
Over the next several days, Manny visited the girl, Mia, for brief periods, always careful to let her set the pace and the tone. Through hesitant, fragile fragments, she began to reveal pieces of her story in soft, trembling sentences she released like tightly held secrets. She spoke as if everything she’d endured still lived just beneath her skin, close enough to touch, and could rise up to swallow her whole again.
Eventually, she explained that “Max” wasn’t the dog at all. Max was her older foster brother, the one who had tried to shield her whenever their home grew frightening and dark. Her voice softened to a near-whisper when she said his name, the word carrying both a profound longing and a sharp, present worry, as though she feared that remembering him too vividly might mean losing him forever.
She revealed their foster caretaker was a man named Derrick Vale, whose temper erupted without warning or reason. Max, she said, used to distract him, deliberately stepping between Vale’s rage and the younger children. She stated this like a practised truth, something she and Max had repeated to themselves in silence—a desperate rhythm of survival.
The survival they had learned long before she ever reached Manny’s care had been forged on the worst nights. Vale would shout so loudly that even the neighbor’s dog barked incessantly, as though trying to drown out the sound. Mia would hide under her thin blanket, trying to make herself disappear, while Max would press his small weight against their bedroom door, holding it shut. Manny could easily imagine the sheer terror embedded in those endless nights, how fear had become a brutal routine for two children who were utterly alone.