“She just showed up at the school’s front entrance,” Mrs. Gable continued, her voice breaking slightly. “The night watchman found her banging on the glass doors. Julian… she is barefoot. She is bleeding from her feet. She is freezing cold, and she is in a severe state of shock. She refuses to speak. Her vocal cords seem completely locked.”
“Is she safe?!” I shouted into the phone, the professional data analyst evaporating, replaced instantly by a terrified father. “Did you call the police?!”
“The police are on their way, and I have a blanket around her,” Mrs. Gable reassured me quickly. “But Julian, she won’t talk. We gave her a notepad and a pen to see if she could tell us what happened. She just keeps writing the same sentence over and over again.”
“What did she write?” I demanded, my hands shaking so violently I almost dropped the phone.
Mrs. Gable took a shaky breath. “‘Grandpa hurt me.’”
The hallway spun. My seven-year-old daughter. My quiet, sweet, incredibly smart little girl had somehow fled her grandfather’s massive, highly secured suburban estate in the middle of the freezing night, run three miles barefoot over asphalt and gravel, and sought refuge at her elementary school.
I bolted back into the conference room, grabbed my laptop bag, and sprinted for the elevators without a word of explanation to my team.
As the elevator descended, my fingers fumbled frantically to dial my wife, Sarah. She was supposed to be staying at her father’s estate for the weekend with Ana while I was overseas.
Ring. Ring. Ring. “Hi, you’ve reached Sarah. Leave a message.”
Voicemail.
