She wiped her face with her sleeve. “So I waited until everyone was asleep. I packed a bag. I got the kids. I took Mom’s car. I drove. I just drove. I didn’t know where to go. I just knew we had to get away.”
“I have seventy-three dollars,” she said, her voice breaking. “I was trying to get to my grandma’s house in Tennessee. She doesn’t talk to Mom anymore because of him, but I thought maybe she’d help us. But the tire blew out twenty miles ago, and I kept driving because I was too scared to stop, and now I don’t know what to do.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay, Madison. First things first. Let’s get those kids out of the trunk. They need air.”
“But someone might see—”
“It’s midnight on a country highway. Nobody’s seeing anything. Come on.”
She opened the trunk with trembling hands. Three little kids were curled up inside—two boys and a tiny girl, all holding each other. They were wearing pajamas. The oldest boy was clutching a stuffed dinosaur. The little girl was crying silently.
“It’s okay,” Madison told them. “This man is going to help us. He’s safe.”
I helped lift them out of the trunk. They were terrified of me at first, but Madison vouched for me, and slowly they relaxed. The eight-year-old boy, Tyler, had a bruise on his cheek. The six-year-old, Mason, had a healing burn mark on his arm. The four-year-old girl, Lily, wouldn’t speak at all—just clung to Madison’s leg and stared at me with huge, haunted eyes.
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