The doors opened with a tired hiss, like the bus itself was relieved someone had finally said something out loud. Cold air rushed in, sharp and real, and for half a second I couldn’t move—because leaving your child, even when every instinct is screaming, feels like tearing against your own ribs. Rachel reached for me.
Not gently. Not the way a daughter reaches for her mother. Her fingers closed around my sleeve too fast, too tight.
“Mom—wait,” she said, voice cracking in a way that sounded practiced, not panicked. “You’re overreacting.”
Overreacting. The word landed wrong.
Flat. Empty. The older woman behind me didn’t touch me again.
She didn’t need to. She simply said, calm as breath, “Now.”
I stepped down onto the gravel shoulder. The bus doors closed immediately, faster than they should have, like the driver didn’t want a discussion either.
Through the glass, Rachel stood frozen in the aisle, that canvas bag pressed to her chest, her mouth open as if she’d forgotten which lie came next. The bus pulled away. And that’s when everything broke loose.
Rachel screamed my name—not “Mom,” not the word that carries love—but my name, sharp and desperate, like someone shouting after a dropped wallet. I stood there shaking, watching the bus shrink into the curve of the road, when the silver sedan I’d noticed earlier rolled forward from behind the trees. Too smoothly.
Too deliberately. It stopped where the bus had just been. The passenger window slid down.
A man leaned out, eyes cutting past me, following the bus instead. His jaw tightened when he realized I wasn’t on it. “Where is she?” he asked Rachel, who was now running toward him from the bus stop turnout further down the road, her voice already tumbling over explanations.
I didn’t hear the rest. Because the older woman was suddenly beside me again, her hand firm on my elbow. “We need to move,” she said.
“Right now.”
My legs barely worked, but I followed her across the road and into a small gravel lot hidden by pines. She guided me into her car—an old sedan with dents that told stories—and locked the doors the second I was inside. Only then did my body remember how to breathe.
I started shaking so hard my teeth clicked. “What—” I tried. “What was that?”
She didn’t answer immediately.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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