"Then why are you following me?" she asked.
"Because you ran away with my food."
Her chin dropped. "I'll bring it back."
"That isn't what I asked you to do."
"I didn't know it was yours."
Ray looked at the empty space around them, then back at the bundle in her arms. "You knew it belonged to somebody. That's enough. But I don't think you were planning to eat it yourself."
She did not answer, and the silence told him he was right. He took one deliberate step back, putting more distance between them rather than less. A grown man in a leather vest had followed a frightened child into the dark, and whatever his intentions were, he understood how the situation might look to her. He held both hands where she could see them and left the path to the street open.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Why?"
"So I don't have to keep calling you 'hey.' Mine's Ray."
The girl considered him. "Lily."
"All right, Lily. Who's the sandwich for?"
She swallowed. "My mom."
The rain seemed louder after she said it. Ray had expected a younger brother, perhaps a friend hiding nearby, or a lie that would put an end to questions. Instead there was an eleven-year-old girl who had entered a room full of men twice her size and risked taking food because her mother had none. He felt an old, unpleasant memory stirring at the edge of his mind and pushed it away before it could settle.
"Is your mother sick?"
"She hasn't been eating."
"That's not quite the same thing."
"She says she's not hungry. But I hear her stomach. And she gets dizzy when she stands up too fast." Lily looked down at her hands. "Yesterday she gave me the last toast. She thought I didn't notice."
Ray looked at the sandwich again. The paper was becoming soggy, and half the lettuce had fallen out. It was a poor thing to carry through the rain, yet she held it with the caution of someone transporting medicine. He could almost hear his younger brother's voice from twenty years earlier, asking for something small and trying to make it sound smaller. For a moment, Ray could not trust himself to speak.
"Do you have somewhere safe to go tonight?" he finally asked.
"Home. Three blocks that way."
"Anyone there besides your mother?"
"No."
"Then go home. Eat whatever part of that you want, and give her the rest. I'm not taking it back." Ray reached into his vest and removed a card bearing the name of his repair shop.
He held it out, but did not walk closer. "There's a number on this. You and your mother can call if you're short on food. You don't have to come back here and take it from somebody's plate."