And it was at that exact moment, from a side service door, carrying a stack of fresh white towels, that the only person in the entire building who would emerge from this night better off than she entered it stepped quietly into the lobby.

Chapter 7 — Lupita

Her name was Lupita.

She was a woman in her mid-fifties, her dark hair streaked with gray and pulled back into a simple braid, and she wore the maroon vest of the housekeeping staff.

She had worked in housekeeping, Clara would later learn, for sixteen years.

Lupita took one look at the scene, and she saw all of it, instantly, in the way that a person who has spent a lifetime being overlooked learns to read a room quickly and completely.

She saw the sleeping child.