Eric's Edge by Holley Trent

things as soon as I can find a good place to stop. Shoes and backpacks for sure, and probably their clothes if they have complicated hems and seams.”
    Nina wrapped her arms around her knees and made herself very small.
    Gabe sighed in that, well, what next? way some people did when they’d already endured too much.
    “You can get one of those big plastic trash bags from under the sink and toss their stuff in there. As soon as I find a dumpster, we can toss everything in. You can put them in a couple of my T-shirts for the time being.”
    Nina’s small shoulders shook and her sob came out before she could even put her head down.
    Gabe just frowned.
    Maria knelt up and hugged Nina. “Oh, honey, it’s okay.”
    “I want my stuff.”
    “We’ll get you some more. We’re going to stop somewhere and get you clothes and shoes, right Eric?”
    “Yep. As soon as we’re far enough out of the metro area for my liking.”
    “They’re mine ,” Nina emphasized.
    “We don’t have a lot of stuff,” Gabe said. “We haven’t since we came up here.”
    “Oh, I see.” Maria rubbed Nina’s back and cringed. Even if Maria weren’t an empath, she would have known exactly how the child felt. She’d worked in child services long enough to see dozens of kids removed from their homes with only enough stuff to fill a single kitchen-sized trash bag. Of course they formed attachments to trifling things. Those things were familiar and theirs .
    Maria sat back on her feet and caught Eric’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “Can we try to be sensitive here? Maybe let them keep their jackets?”
    “Sorry, no.”
    “Eric, I—”
    “It has to all go, Maria. There’s no way to check it without ripping every single seam, and we don’t have time for that. We need to get out of this state.”
    Nina sobbed harder.
    Gabe sighed again and shrugged out of his jean jacket. He handed it to Maria, keeping his upper lip stiff and obviously trying to set a good example for his sister.
    Maria draped the jacket over her arm and gave Nina’s knee a squeeze.
    Goddamn it, Eric.
    He could have waited until they had new stuff to strip the old away from them—to mitigate the feeling of loss.
    She’d have to take it up with him later, though. In front of the kids, they needed to present a united front.
    “All right,” she said brightly. “Maybe you could change in the bathroom.” She found one of the T-shirts Eric had mentioned and handed it to Gabe along with a trash bag. “If you have anything in your pockets, bring it out with you so we can look through it, okay?”
    “Okay.” Gabe took the shirt and bag, and walked the short distance to the tiny bathroom.
    Maria took the seat he’d abandoned and put her arm around Nina’s shoulders. She rubbed her arm and hugged her sideways.
    “You know, when I was a kid, my mother and I moved all the time,” Maria said. “When I was old enough to carry a purse, I started to always keep a change of clothes in it, and everything I didn’t want to lose if we had to leave fast. All the photos I liked—this was before there were fancy smartphones like there are now—plus little knickknacks I’d collected here and there, and even a couple of books.”
    Nina sniffled. “It must have been heavy.”
    “Oh, so heavy. And I used to snarl at people if they tried to root around in it. I knew I looked like a crazy bag lady, but I didn’t care. The stuff in that bag was mine and it was up to me to protect it if I wanted to keep it.”
    “I want to keep my stuff.”
    “I know you do, honey. But the difference here is, well…”
    “Nobody wanted to kill you,” Eric said.
    Maria groaned inwardly at Eric’s candor and shot him a glare via the rearview mirror.
    He narrowed his eyes at her. She’d known him long enough to know exactly what that stare meant—that she shouldn’t even try to argue with him—but she wasn’t going to stop pushing back when she saw fit. He wasn’t going to hash his words,