She had smiled, said she understood, and never came back.
Now she worked odd shifts washing dishes, cleaning offices, unloading produce trucks—whatever paid cash fast. Noah picked up scrap metal, fixed broken headphones, and sold anything he could repair. They stayed together by being careful, invisible, and lucky.
That morning, luck had not looked interested.
Red Oak Storage held abandoned-unit auctions once a month, and the place drew resellers, bargain hunters, junk men, antique pickers, and people who treated other people’s bad luck like a weekend sport. Riley and Noah had come because an older man from the church soup line had told them that if they hung around until the end, sometimes bidders left behind worthless junk. Scrap metal still bought a burger. Sometimes.
Rows of metal doors stretched across the property like giant filing cabinets. Men in work boots drank coffee from gas-station cups. Women with clipboards and sunglasses scanned everything with sharp, professional boredom. A tall auctioneer in a tan cowboy hat stood on the back of a flatbed trailer, joking into a microphone that squawked every few words.
