“You’ll answer if I call, right?” he whispered into my hair as I hugged him.
My heart ached. “Always,” I promised, kissing his forehead, breathing in the scent of his strawberry shampoo. “Always. I put a special card in your lanyard with my phone number on it. If you ever feel scared, you tell Grandma or Aunt Kara to call me. Okay?”
He nodded, but his grip on my shirt lingered for a few extra seconds.
For the first few hours of their first day at the park, my anxiety was somewhat placated. The family group chat pinged consistently with photos. There was a picture of Elliot offering a forced, slightly bewildered smile under the grand entrance sign. There was another of my dad, Ray, marching ahead through the throngs of tourists like a drill sergeant leading a battalion. Kara’s twin boys were blurs of movement in the background, fueled by early morning sugar.
See? I told myself, staring at my computer screen. He’s fine. You are being paranoid. Let him have fun.
I exhaled a long, shaky breath, finally letting my guard down. I silenced my group chat notifications to focus and walked into my afternoon meetings, armed with a fresh cup of coffee and a fragile sense of peace.
That peace lasted exactly three hours.
At exactly 3:17 p.m., my phone vibrated intensely on the mahogany conference table. I glanced down. The caller ID didn’t say “Mom” or “Kara.” It wasn’t my father.
It was a local Florida number I didn’t recognize.
My stomach immediately knotted. The heavy stone of dread returned, plunging straight into my bowels. I excused myself, interrupting the marketing director mid-sentence, and stepped out into the quiet, fluorescent-lit hallway. My hands were already clammy as I swiped the screen to answer.
