She’d given some thought to cutting her straight brown hair shorter for the race, but kept it long because it allowed for the perfect ponytail, and the rhythm of it swishing against her back helped set her run pace. Whenever she taught, she kept her hair clipped back with a barrette that exposed ears too large for her head. At one time they were her most embarrassing feature, but she’d long outgrown her self-consciousness from the days of ‘Dumbo,’ a taunt she’d endured back in grade school.
She had expressive brown eyes that sparkled with wonderment and joy at every mundane story she heard from her charges, and a small nose that fit her head a bit better than those ears. Although she was thin, she was also soft, easy to hug and hold, a warm and inviting presence in the classroom. She welcomed the children every day with a tender smile, exposing the dimples Arthur later confessed had made him fall in love at first sight.
Arthur was at home getting dinner ready with Ryan, who was feeling better as the afternoon wore on. While they owned and operated a pizzeria in town, Arthur made sure pizza was a once-a-week treat, and that night they were having hamburgers.
Grace had promised Jack a stop at the playground, but it would be a quick one, as the forecasted rain started to fall just as the duo arrived. As the rain became heavier, she thought of calling Arthur to come pick them up, but Jack was enjoying the mud puddles too much, and Grace couldn’t get enough of his laugh. So what the heck, they’d be wet. They’d live.
If she had taken a different route home, hadn’t promised Jack she would let him play, she never would have heard the sound. It was a plaintive, lonesome wail, high-pitched but mournful, definitely that of a child. The sound caused her to hurry around a sharp bend. There, standing alone and rain-soaked next to the slide Jack wanted to use, was a little girl. Knowing children as she did, Grace put the child at age four, no older.
It wasn’t a shock at first. Grace assumed, having been to parks before, that she’d turn her head this way or that and see Mom or Dad, perhaps hidden beneath an umbrella, their focus on their phone. She might have politely educated them on paying proper attention, no more. But when Grace scanned the area, there was no one in sight. The park was completely deserted.
The rain had started to come down even harder, turning into thick, cold drops that completely camouflaged this poor child’s tears. Her cheeks were splotchy red, and her bottom lip, delicate as a rose petal, jutted out from the top one as it quivered. She looked light as a songbird, in a sweet yellow dress with thin straps holding it up on her delicate shoulders, but it was far too little fabric for the weather. She had no coat—no coat in the rain!—and she’d been soaked to the bone, her blond hair matted down against her little head, white sneakers splattered with mud. Her small body shivered from an uncontrollable cold, or fear, or a combination of the two, Grace couldn’t say. She knew only that every sob from this poor little waif broke her heart into countless pieces.
She didn’t go to the Montessori school, otherwise Grace would have recognized her immediately. Still, she was familiar with many of the children from town. For all of the times Grace had come to this park to watch her boys play on the slide or the swing, this girl was one she’d never seen before.
Grace experienced an initial moment of fear, a feeling of icy dread that coated her in the same way as the rain. Somewhere nearby, behind the bushes perhaps, or next to the roundabout, she’d look and see two feet sticking out that belonged to this child’s mother, a woman who had either suffered a medical event or maybe even an assault. Swampscott was a safe town, but it wasn’t crime-free.
Grace clutched little Jack’s hand tightly in her own as she approached the girl with hurried steps. Scanning the area for those feet, Grace had to wipe away the rain that stung her eyes, flattened her hair, but she saw nothing, no sign of any person, mother or father.
The poor girl, dirty and shivering, began crying even harder as Grace knelt on the ground to wrap the child in her jacket. Jack clung to Grace’s leg as though she were a life preserver, which in a way she was. She knew without asking that her son was scared, nervous, and unsure as well.
“What’s your name?” Grace asked the girl. “Where are your parents?”
The girl didn’t answer, but pointed to the road.
Oh, thank goodness, Grace thought. There were steps leading up to the level of the street, and surely at the top of those stairs, she’d find this child’s mother in a frantic search for her missing daughter. Grace ascended the concrete steps with Jack on one side of her and the little girl on the other, holding each child’s hand as they went up. Having given her coat to the girl, rain plastered Grace’s shirt and jeans to her body, making it uncomfortable to climb those stairs. When she finally reached the top step and had a look around, she did not see anyone searching for this lost child.