She was running late, for the third time that month. It wasn't her fault that Oliver had been up all night with a fever and Lola wouldn't eat her breakfast. As she trudged through the sand on her familiar shortcut beneath the boardwalk, Jeannette smoothed back a thick sable curl and tried not to think about how angry Mrs. Denison would doubtless be at her tardiness. She needed this job; she couldn't afford to lose even a single paycheck, not when her children were already so hungry.

The sky was a sheet of pale indigo, dotted by wisps of clouds and an eerie stillness that chilled her to the bone despite the warming spring temperatures, when she saw the figure slumped against one of the boardwalk's worn wooden legs. Even from several feet away, she could see that he wasn't breathing; she rushed to his side, a lifetime of watching her mother tend to neighborhood wounds rushing to the forefront of her memory as she sprang into action, without another thought for Mrs. Denison or the paychecks she would be sacrificing for the sake of this stranger lying lifeless in her arms.

The room was artificially dark, with thin shafts of golden sunlight filtered through tattered lace curtains drawn tight over dusty windows. This is heaven, Richard said to himself, imagining his wife and his sister waiting just beyond the door. But almost immediately, the pain flooded back; he gripped his side reflexively to find it swathed in fresh bandages and opened his eye.

He was laying in a tiny room, tinier even than in the boarding houses he had called home for so long. The bed was about a foot too small, and his clothes lay draped over a rickety chair an arms length away. The familiar tin mask sat face-up on the small bedside table, staring up at him mockingly. You're not whole here, it seemed to say. Nothing else around him rang the slightest bit familiar.

The door swung open and a girl, pretty face lined beyond her years with worry, burst in clutching a basin of water and a towel. "I-I'm sorry," she stammered, clearly surprised to find him awake and averting her eyes accordingly.

"Where. Am I?"

"You're safe. Now, lay down." He hadn't realized he had been sitting up, but eased back against the pillows all the same. The girl sat beside him, close enough that he could smell the soap of the morning's laundry on her skin. She propped the basin on her lap and dipped the towel gently into its crystalline depths, lifting it to his face with a small, obsidian hand. "I found you on the beach. You looked like you were hurt pretty bad."

"And you. Saved me?"

She smiled. "Mama taught me never to turn away from a body in need." She swept the towel gently across his left cheek, gentle and unflinching. He felt the tears well in his good eye and tried to turn away, but she held his face in her hand with maternal insistence and continued her work.

"You should have. Left me there."

"Too late." She dipped the towel again and set to work washing his neck. "Already dragged you all the way here, lost my job no doubt. You got no choice but to live now."

He reached up and held her hand in his own, staring deep into her chestnut eyes as visions of the night before flooded back into his memory. "I'm a…bad person. I've done something…horrible."

"That's for God to decide. Now, you gonna let me wash this sand off you or not?"

She looked so much like her, like the poor girl he had killed. Same high cheekbones, same petite frame—but this stranger had a sparkle in her eyes that his wayward bullet had stolen from his victim's, and this made the guilt of his actions sting all the more.

"I'm sorry."

"For what, honey?"

"For—" It was Gillian who sprang to mind next, the hurt on her face as he sat on the witness stand and divulged only enough of the truth to bring about her condemnation. Had it really been worth all of this? Her fate had been all but sealed even without Jimmy's body, and he had already taken so much from her…"For everything."

The stranger lowered her hand and dropped her gaze to her lap. "Look," she began, her voice faltering ever so slightly, "I don't know you, and you don't know me. I've seen things I can't ever unsee, and you've done things you can't ever take back. But that don't make either of us bad people."

"But—"

"Let me ask you this: do you feel remorse for what you've done?"

His eye met hers and he nodded meekly.

"And are you gonna use this second chance on God's Earth to make good?"

"Yes. Of course."

"Then I don't see why you can't keep on living." She smiled and reached up to run her thumb gingerly down his scarred cheek, then held the basin firmly as she stood. "I'll bring in some dinner, now that you're awake. You can tell me what you done or not, it's up to you, but I'll sit with you either way. You're in my hands now, and Mama Jeannette won't let nothing bad happen to you. You hear me?"

He nodded. "I hear you."

Several days passed, and Jeannette proved an adept and attentive nurse. By the third day, his wounds had healed enough to allow him to walk about the apartment, but she insisted that he stay under her watchful eyes until she deemed him well enough to depart. In that time, he played with the children—Oliver took to him immediately; shy little Lola needed some encouragement, but he was sweet with her and she quickly came around. At night, Jeannette sat beside him with her mending in her lap while he told her stories about the family waiting for him in Wisconsin, and she told him of her mother back home in the Bayou and secrets she had never dreamed of revealing to another living soul. She trusted Richard, his gentle face and quiet demeanor. She liked him even when, late one night, he finally told her just what he had done, of the men he had killed who had deserved it, and of the innocent young girl who had not.

"It was an accident," she insisted, squeezing his hand as the tears fell fresh from his remaining eye.

"That doesn't. Bring her back."

She feared what he might do without her there to watch over him. She remembered her uncle, who had tried and failed to save the neighbor boy from drowning when she was a girl; she had watched his guilt eat away at him, driving him irrevocably towards the bottle that had been his downfall. "I wish I knew how to make it easier," she whispered, the melancholy building in her chest. "I don't think anyone does. You did what you thought you had to for your family. Do you really think you'd be helping them now by giving up?"

He didn't say a word. She patted his hand lovingly and returned to her mending.

The next morning, she awoke in the rickety old chair to find his bed abandoned. All that remained was a note on the pillow: "I'll try to keep living," it read, "if you do, too." Beneath the note was stack of bills, more money than she had seen in her life. She cradled it in her hands and squeezed her eyes tight, thanking the Lord for her dear, damaged patient.

"Please bless and forgive this kind soul," she prayed. "Please give him another chance to make good. I know he will."

The train ride was long, and his side ached in a constant reminder of what he had done, but he trudged along the dusty tracks and breathed in the sweet Wisconsin air with a renewed sense of wonder and appreciation. It had taken him nearly the entire journey to stop trying to push his victim's face from his mind—he owed it to her to never forget, owed it to all of them. He knew he could never hide from his past, and that every day of his future would be a constant reminder, but it wasn't the girl's face that he saw as he made his way up the narrow dirt path to his childhood house. It was Tommy's as he rattled off facts about the stars; it was Emma's, smiling knowingly as she cradled the child he never thought he would meet; and it was Julia's, glowing in dappled sunlight as she ran up the path now to greet him with a kiss and a warm welcome home.