Rain drizzled over Manhattan in thin silver lines, turning the sidewalks slick and shining beneath the streetlights. Most people hurried past the little hot dog cart on the corner of 48th Street without ever looking up.
Margaret Lawson wiped the steam from the metal window of her cart and quietly rubbed her aching wrists. At sixty-two years old, standing on her feet for twelve hours a day was no longer the easy task it had been in her younger years.
But the bills did not care about her sore knees or her tired bones. The bills simply had to be paid, the same as they had been every single month for the last forty years of her hardworking life.
“Hot dogs! Fresh hot dogs!” she called out half-heartedly into the cool New York air.
The lunch rush had already faded into memory. Evening shadows stretched between the tall buildings, and the city moved with that calm, distant rhythm New York is so well known for.
That was when she first noticed the little girl.
