She nodded.
“When we were getting close, I spotted you.”
A small smile crossed her face as she remembered.
“I felt so happy.”
“Because you realized I was alright?”
Her eyes grew watery.
“That man told me you’d been hurt.”
I gently took her hand.
“He wasn’t telling the truth.”
“I understand that now.”
She drew an unsteady breath.
“But he knew my name. He knew Mrs. Benton, too. And he said you were in the hospital.”
My heart felt unbearably heavy.
For several minutes, my little girl had been caught between two confusing situations she couldn’t possibly explain.
An unfamiliar man insisting that her mother was !njured.
And a school bus driver who wouldn’t allow her to leave with him.
Then she’d noticed me waiting beside the road.
Safe.
Standing there.
She believed everything would finally return to normal.
“Then I noticed the man again,” Ellie murmured.
