Chapter 18 #2
She took out her camera and looked through the viewfinder to get a good shot. Then Cal turned around, and the look on his face was so horrified, April lowered her camera without having gotten a single shot.
“Where’s Owen?” Cal asked.
“Right here,” April answered, turning to gesture to the spot she’d last seen him. But Owen wasn’t there. “He was right here,” she repeated in disbelief.
Her heart started to pound as Cal dropped everything and began looking for Owen.
He circled the booth, calling for Owen to no avail.
The panic on his face was something April had never seen before, and she’d seen a lot of parents worried for their children in her line of work.
Cal didn’t look like a parent searching for a child who had wandered off in a friendly crowd.
He looked like a parent whose child had wandered off the edge of a cliff.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” April said.
Cal didn’t even respond. He was beside himself, scared beyond reason. He started for the rides, still calling for Owen.
“Keep looking,” April said, as though there was anything else he would have done.
“I’m going to ask the ticket booth.” She had the thought that someone might have found him and taken him to the ticket booth to find his parents.
She half ran, half walked to the front of the fairgrounds, not wanting to seem panicked but feeling that way all the same.
When she arrived she ran to the front of the line, much to the irritation of everyone there.
But she didn’t care. “I’m looking for a boy, blond hair, about five. Has anyone brought him here?”
The person manning the ticket booth shook his head. “Sorry. Haven’t seen him.”
“If you do, keep him here, will you? His dad is looking for him.”
“Will do,” the ticket-taker said.
Satisfied that she’d done all she could there, April made her way back into the midst of the crowd.
And she did the one thing she knew Cal would not think to do.
She started asking for help. Every stranger she passed got to hear a description of Owen.
“He’s about this tall,” she said, holding her hand where his head would normally be. “He’s really sweet. Have you seen him?”
“No,” said the most recent stranger she’d asked. “But I’ll keep an eye out.”
“If you find him, can you bring him to the ticket booth? I’m going to check back there again in a bit.”
“Sure thing.”
“Thank you so much.” One thing April knew about Summit Falls was that the people here would rally together in a crisis. That was the problem with total isolation. People needed each other. Especially in a tight-knit community like this, she knew people would help.
She had asked close to twenty people whether they’d seen Owen at this point.
No one had seen him yet, but the thing she knew that Cal didn’t was all of them were now looking for Owen, and they were asking others to look for him, too.
Eventually, someone she hadn’t asked ran up to her.
“Hey, are you the lady looking for the kid?”
“Yeah! Did you find him?”
“He’s in the sandpit,” the stranger said. “He’s playing with other kids there. I don’t think he even knows he’s lost.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much!” April said.
“No problem.”
Part of her had known everything would be OK, but Cal’s panic was contagious, and she couldn’t help feeling a bit of it.
She ran to where she knew there was a giant sandpit at the center of the fairgrounds.
And just like the stranger had told her, she found Owen playing among other children, digging holes in one spot and building mountains in another.
“Owen!” She ran to him before his head even turned her way. Her arms were around him before he probably knew what had happened. “We were so worried. Why did you walk away like that?”
Owen wriggled out of April’s arms and gave her a shrug. “I got bored.” Quickly, he pivoted to what he’d been building out of sand. “Look what I made!”
“That’s very nice,” she said. “But your dad’s going crazy looking for you.”
“Oh,” Owen said, “he’s always like that.” And he went back to building his mountain.
On cue, Cal’s voice came thundering from behind her. “Owen!”
April turned to see him barreling toward them. “He’s OK,” she assured him. “He got bored and came to play here.”
As soon as he reached them, Cal growled out the words, “We’re leaving. Right now.”
Owen whined, “But why?”
“I told you never to leave my side,” Cal said. “You did, and now you’re going to have consequences for that.”
Tears started to roll down Owen’s face, and April got the urge to mitigate.
“I don’t think he meant anything by it, Cal.
” Cal said nothing but took Owen by the hand and dragged him through the fairgrounds toward the entrance.
April jogged after them, still trying to smooth everything over in the only way she could.
“He just got excited and forgot, I’m sure.
I mean, he doesn’t get to go to many of these things, right?
He was probably just too overstimulated to think carefully about it. ”
Cal stopped and whirled around. “So this is my fault?” he snapped.
“No!” April was stunned that he would even interpret her that way. “No, it wasn’t anyone’s—”
“Because you were supposed to be watching him, too, weren’t you?”
“I was watching him,” she said, shocked that she would have to defend herself. “I only took my eyes off him for a second. Come on, Cal, this sort of thing happens to parents all the time. No harm was done.”
“This time,” he muttered. “But you’re not his parent, are you? You’re not his mother, no matter how much you try to act like you are. And this was probably a good sign that you never should be.”
Those words stopped April cold in her tracks.
They hit hard, stabbed deep. She never would have expected such harsh words from Cal.
No matter how much she’d pushed him in the past, he’d always been open-minded and understanding.
He struck her as a patient, forgiving person who was willing to try new things and work toward bettering himself.
April resonated with that. She also loved to try new things and strove to become a better person with every day that passed.
But now Cal had made her feel like a terrible person, like the worst person.
Her eyes burned as she followed Cal and Owen slowly to the parking lot.
She was on the verge of crying, but she didn’t want to do it in front of them.
Cal was already helping Owen into the truck, and Owen was still sniffing and wailing, throwing a tantrum because he was being made to leave.
He probably felt like he’d done something wrong.
While April understood the concept of instilling important, self-preservation lessons in children, she usually disagreed that scaring them senseless was the right way to go about it.
But then, what did she know? She wasn’t anyone’s mother.
And it was looking like she truly never would be.
“Get in,” Cal said to her once Owen was buckled into place.
“I’ll…” April choked back her tears. “I’ll call a cab.”
He hesitated. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I’d like to stay a while longer.”
“Fine.” He shrugged, got into the driver’s seat, and started the engine.
April walked back into the festival feeling worse than she ever had. After a few minutes, she called her best friend, asking for a ride home.
“Yes!” Crystal said without hesitation. “Be there in a jiff.”
April felt bad putting her friend out, but then again, what were friends for? That’s what Crystal would say anyway. And the last thing April wanted to do was burst into tears in the back seat of a cab with only the driver to comfort her.